How I learned Unreal in three months

Issue #95 | April 19th, 2026

Hello Reader 👋

Quick one this week, because I'm genuinely buzzing.

The Freelancing for Animators community has four paying members right now. Plus the founding members from the previous community who are still showing up and getting involved. All in, we're around 11 people. And I couldn't be happier about that number.

I'm going to be transparent… I'm not even trying to grow it right now. Because this size is exactly right to actually do the work. Nobody's spreading thin. Nobody's getting lost in a sea of Discord pings. I can sit with each of them, one on one, and we can actually move the needle on their freelance careers.

We had our third office hours yesterday. Almost everyone showed up. One hour wasn't enough, obviously… We're working through the fear, the doubts, the real questions about what it takes to build a freelance animation business.

And the best part? We're building the course together. I upload one new module each week. They ask questions. I adjust. Next week I'm doing a quick After Effects overview, because every animator needs that tool in their back pocket to kick off a career. It can go anywhere they ask it to go… and that's the whole point.

These four people are locked in on the same goal I am. That's rare. And it's beautiful to be part of.

If you've been curious about the community and want to see what's inside - there's a 7-day free trial. Zero risk. You get full access, join the office hours, check out the modules, and if it's not for you, you just cancel before the trial ends. No charge. Simple as that.

The other thing I've been obsessing over 👉Unreal Engine

I've been learning it for three months now. And honestly? Jumping into Unreal Engine might end up being one of my biggest achievements of 2026.

I've wanted to learn this tool for a long time. Kept pushing it off. But this year I finally jumped in… and I'm not looking back.

I've learned a lot of software over the years. Always self-taught. Never took a course. But this time I did something different. I opened Unreal on one screen, and Claude on the other. And I just… started asking questions.

Breakdowns of how the Sequencer works. Shader explanations. Blueprint logic. Whatever I needed, right when I needed it.

Four months in, I'm not just dabbling. The knowledge is deep. It's stuck. It's the kind of learning I know I'll still have in six months if I take a break and come back.

Forget tutorials. Forget courses. How many tutorials have you watched and forgotten? Be honest.

Having an LLM next to you while you actually use the software, in the exact moment you have the question… it compounds. You start slow and you ramp up faster than anything I've ever experienced. It's Matrix-level. I know Kung Fu now. 😅

Learning is a huge part of my daily life. And this feels like a superpower.

One last thing: my Substack

I started a new newsletter on Substack.

Here's the why. For years, LinkedIn was my main channel. Everything else was repurposed from there. But the problem with LinkedIn is you're not really writing… you're performing. Hook, re-hook, format, attention game. It's a set of rules that aren't really you.

I'm way more comfortable writing an essay than chasing a hook.

So from now on, the content for Animator Now! starts there. In the letters. Real stories from 25 years of freelancing. The incredible ones. The hard lessons. The stuff that's actually useful for someone trying to launch or survive this career.

First one went out last week. One per week from here on. Link's below if you want in.

👉 My very first letter HERE

Oh, and one more thing...the studio 🔨

On Monday, I'm picking the house renovation back up.

Sharing a photo of where things stand. Wall insulation is almost wrapped. Everything else still needs doing… but the plan is to have it fully done by July. My own space to animate, record, shoot, build. Finally.

I'll drop more photos as we move forward so you can watch it come together with me.

Alright. Let's get into this week's issue.🚀

The Spotlight

I'd been seeing this thumbnail for weeks. Scrolling past it over and over. And this morning something clicked and I finally opened it.

This is exactly what I love about this newsletter. You stop spotlighting films and you start going down the rabbit hole of every short you've been ignoring. Then boom… you find a gem.

Slow Light is a story of a boy who's born blind. At the age of seven, he suddenly starts to see. But his eyes are so dense that it takes seven years for light to reach the retina. So he's always watching reality from seven years in the past. The consequences? Emotional immaturity, lack of understanding of the present, belated reflection on long-gone facts. The man is never mature enough for his age. He lingers.

Right as I finished watching, I realized something else… this one's distributed by Miyu Distribution again. Of course it is.

The concept alone is a highway. Once you build a story around an alteration of perception or body like this, you suddenly have infinite scenes and ideas to explore. It reminded me immediately of Jérémy Clapin's Skhizein (2008), where a man lives exactly 91cm away from himself after being hit by a meteorite. Same territory… the mind and the body out of sync with the world.

It also hit me like that scene in Interstellar where Cooper watches the videos of his kids growing up in what feels like real time for him but is decades for them. That gut-punch emotional thing where someone is pulled out of their own life and forced to see it from above.

That's what this kind of concept does. It gives you distance. It creates massive emotional stakes from a very simple setup.

Craft-wise, this film rips.

Two techniques, clean division. The present is stop-motion paper animation — tactile, cut-out, layered, physical. The past is 2D, black and white. That contrast does all the heavy lifting narratively. You always know where you are in time without a single line of exposition.

And the transitions. This is where the motion-design sensibility kicks in. It's graphical, it's elaborate, and it's never moving shapes just to move shapes. Every transition carries the story. Every cut earns its place.

Music and sound are terrific. You know by now that when I share a film here, the music is almost always doing a lot of work. This one is no exception — Piotr Kaliński on the score, Carlos Abreu and Miguel Gonçalves on sound. The sync between image and sound is uncanny. It's one of those films where you feel the sound design is inside the image, not next to it.

It won a bunch of prizes, including Best Animation Short at Tirana, Silver Animusz at Animator Poznań, and Best Art Direction Commendation at Cinanima. Well-deserved.

Go watch it. It's 8 minutes. You'll step out of your own life for a bit.

🎬 Credits
Directors: Katarzyna Kijek, Przemysław Adamski
Design: Kijek/Adamski
Stop-motion animation: Katarzyna Kijek, Przemysław Adamski 2D animation: Ala Nunu, João Gonzalez, Jakub Kaczmarek Music: Piotr Kaliński
Sound: Carlos Abreu, Miguel Gonçalves (Ingreme)
Voice: Philip Lenkowsky
Color: Ala Nunu, Hugo Sequeira, Jakub Kaczmarek, João Gonzalez Grading: Andreia Bertini (Walla Collective)
Production: Piotr Szczepanowicz, Grzegorz Wacławek — Animoon
Co-production: Bruno Caetano — COLA Animation, Kijek/Adamski
International distribution: Miyu Distribution

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The Job Fair

Senior 3D Animator - Wingingstones Animation Studio · Remote
Wingingstones is looking for veteran 3D Animators (6+ years) to join their core team on a new animated series and a full-length feature film. Strong character performance and cinematic storytelling required. Remote-first. Russian language a plus. Posted: April 16, 2026.
Freelance 3D Animator - B-Water Studios
B-Water Studios is hiring a freelance 3D Animator for a nostalgia-fueled character-driven series — Snorks — directed by Didier Ah Koon with character designs by Dave Alvarez. Focus on cartoony timing, expressive acting, and strong silhouettes. Collaboration with Dodo Reanimation Lab and Willem Dutilh. Posted: April 15, 2026.
3D Animator Artist - The Lead Vision · Sector 1, Vaishali (NCR), India
The Lead Vision is hiring a 3D Animator Artist with 2+ years of experience. Expert knowledge of Maya or Blender for character animation, strong grasp of weight and timing, and bonus points for MoCap cleanup experience. Posted: April 16, 2026.

The Random Stuff

🎹 Studio.com — Charlie Puth's songwriting breakdowns

Okay, I have to warn you first. This one is a rabbit hole.

If you've been making music in Logic, Pro Tools, or whatever your flavor is… go check out Studio.com. It's a platform where creators walk you through their actual process, start to finish. I've been watching Charlie Puth write and produce songs from scratch, and I ended up staying up until 2 in the morning more than once this week. No regrets.

It's the kind of content I can watch for hours. You pick up little tricks, keyboard shortcuts, production choices, the way he thinks about a hook. Way more valuable than tutorials, because you're watching the real decisions happen in real time. Same principle as learning software with an LLM next to you, honestly… learning by watching someone work. If music production is your thing on the side, you've been warned. 😅

🎬 Out of Words — the stop-motion game that stopped me in my tracks

This one's been all over my feed and I'm obsessed.

Out of Words is a co-op platformer coming in 2026 from Kong Orange and WiredFly, published by Epic Games. Every character, every set, every puppet is handcrafted stop-motion. Then it all runs in Unreal Engine 5.

I think this is one of the most exciting things happening in our craft right now. We're in an era where you can actually mix traditional animation techniques with modern real-time tech, and it doesn't feel forced. It feels new. Guillermo del Toro called stop-motion "AI-proof" and I agree with him — but what's wild about Out of Words is that it proves stop-motion and cutting-edge tech aren't opposites. They can dance together. Check the behind-the-scenes videos on their YouTube channel. Site's here: outofwordsgame.com and let it wash over you.

🛠️ Blip - the AirDrop killer you didn't know you needed

If you're a Mac user, you already know how blessed AirDrop is. iPhone to Mac, drag and drop, done. But the moment you step outside the Apple world… Windows, Android, PC, you're kind of screwed.

Blip fixes that.

It's a free cross-platform file transfer app. Mac, Windows, iOS, Android, Linux — all talking to each other. You can send massive files over Wi-Fi or the internet, no size limits, no cloud upload, no waiting. You don't even have to be on the same network or in the same country. Encrypted in transit. Direct peer-to-peer.

Honestly, it's the kind of tool I wish had existed ten years ago. Download it for free at blip.net and stop emailing yourself Dropbox links.

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