Issue #97 | May 3rd, 2026
Hey Reader π
Not gonna lie to you this week.
You know that thing where you push the limit, and at some point the limit pushes back? I'm pretty much there right now.
My son woke up at 2am last night. Quick wake-up, back to sleep in 2 minutes. But I couldn't go back down. I laid there until 5am running through my Unreal project on a loop in my head, and I started to seriously freak out.
The amount of content I signed for is probably way too much for one animator. I don't have the budget to bring someone in to help. I was even considering β at 3am, in the dark β using AI to generate filler shots just to hit the volume. That's where my brain went. That's how stuck I felt.
The math is brutal. To deliver on time I need to push out almost a minute of animation a day. Right now I'm doing 30 to 40 seconds. And this isn't a one-off β the contract could be renewed if I deliver well, so the stakes are stacked on top of stakes. Plus the other clients with real money attached. Plus everything else.
So Animator Now! is going to slow down a little for the next two months. It has to. I need to secure the bag first.
But here's the wild part β
Freelancing for Animators is going better than I imagined.
Every Thursday we meet for an hour. Yesterday it was almost an hour and a half because we just couldn't stop. The conversations are way deeper than I thought they'd be. People aren't just asking how do I get clients β they're asking what kind of life do I actually want to build. They're designing lifestyle businesses meant to last for years. They're thinking about freedom, not just freelance gigs.
That's the whole point. That's exactly why I built it.
7-day free trial, no payment, no risk. Cancel anytime before day seven if it's not for you. Modules 1, 2, and 3 are live. Module 4 is dropping a bit late becauseβ¦ well, see everything above π
If that sounds like something you're craving, come check it out below on the big pink buttonπ.
Real talk β
I'm not complaining. I'll never complain about having too much work. I'm just documenting it. This is the actual day-to-day of a freelancer. The good, the messy, the 3am spirals, all of it.
If you want more of that raw stuff, I write a Substack called Letters from a Freelancer where I share the unfiltered version of all this. Real client stories. Real screw-ups. Real lessons. Subscribe if that's your thing.
β
βπ My latest letter: Three in the Morningβ
House renovation is still insane. I tore my right shoulder yesterday. I'm a fucking wreck.π
But everything's fine. We keep going. That's the beauty of this thing.
Alright. Let's get into this week's issue. π₯
The Spotlight
A husband can't get his wife pregnant. So when she comes back from a liposuction appointment, he decides the bag of fat is the baby. And then he raises it.
That's the premise. That's actually the whole thing.
βOkay β you know me by now. In this newsletter I usually go for the experimental, story-driven, dramatic kind of short. The slow ones. The ones that punch you in the chest and don't let go for two weeks. That's my jam. I have this ability to just get fully drawn into something β you could do anything next to me while I watch, and I wouldn't see you or hear you. Completely embarked.
β
But here's the thingβ¦ I'm not only that fucking depressed animator who needs everything to be heavy and sadπ€£ I love humor too. It just has to be a certain kind of humor.
And this short? This one is exactly my jam.
I laughed out loud the whole way through. Everything about it works for me β the absurd situation, the story, those tiny finger animations that are so weirdly hilarious, the deadpan reactions, the way each beat lands.
And the thing that really got me β no dialogue.
This one was made by Frame Order, a studio from the Netherlands I've known for a while. They run a YouTube channel called Cartoon Box that's exactly this same brand of humor, and I could watch their stuff for hours. If you're into this kind of animation, go subscribe β your weekend is officially saved. π₯
If that's your jam too β go watch it. Seriously. 7 minutes.
You'll laugh!
π¬ Credits
βDirector: Joost Lieuwma
βWritten, directed, and animated by: Joost Lieuwma
βMusic: Jorrit Kleijnen, Alexander Reumers
βFoley, sound & mix: Jeroen Nadorp
βBackground advice: Patrick Schoenmaker
βProduced by: Chris Mouw, Joost Lieuwma
βExecutive producers: Arnoud Rijken & Michiel Snijders
βStudio: Frame Orderβ
The Job Fair
- β3D Gameplay Animator β GlobalStep Β· Pune, India (on-site, relocation if not local)β
β6-month contract animating snappy, cartoon-style gameplay characters. They want someone who can deliver high-energy, expressive motion that gives games their personality β readable, responsive, full of punch. If you specialize in toony gameplay animation and you're open to relocating to Pune, this one's a real animator role with a real reel-builder behind it. Posted: May 1, 2026.
The Random Stuff
π¬ Astartes II β Official Teaser Trailer
You probably already know about this one and I'm late to the party. But just in case you don't: yesterday during my office hours in the Freelancing for Animators community, someone shared this thing with me and I lost my mind a little.
It's called Astartes II, and it's the official teaser trailer for the upcoming Warhammer 40K animation series. The level of craft on display is just surreal. The cinematography, the sound design, the weight of every shot. I sat there watching it three times in a row.
βHere's the part that broke my brain β the original Astartes started as a solo project. One guy. Syama Pedersen, a 3D artist from New Zealand, made the first 13-minute miniseries entirely by himself. Three years of work, alone, in his own studio (Digital Bones). It went so viral that Games Workshop officially hired him to make Astartes II as a full GW production. This is everything I tell animators in the community β make the work, put it out into the world, the right people will find it. Sometimes it takes years. Sometimes it changes your whole career.
ποΈ How Do Artists Make Money? β Kevin Parry's podcast
I had the chance to interview Kevin Parry on the Animator Now! podcast a couple of months ago and he's one of the most thoughtful artists working today. He runs his own podcast called How Do Artists Make Money? with Caleb Staker β and if you're trying to build a sustainable creative business, this is essential listening.
βI shared this with my community yesterday because the conversations are exactly what we need more of in this industry. Real artists. Real numbers. Real strategies. No guru fluff, no "manifest your dream career" nonsense. Just working creatives breaking down how they actually make a living. Episodes cover everyone from animators to magicians to knitters to motion designers. Go subscribe.it
π€ Anthropic just dropped an official Blender connector for Claude
This one's nerdy but I have to share it. Anthropic (the company behind Claude) just released an official MCP connector for Blender β basically a bridge that lets Claude talk directly to Blender and manipulate scenes through natural language. The unofficial version has been around for a while, but the official one just dropped on April 28th.
βI tested it for like five minutes while working on my big Unreal project. I asked Claude to recreate my main character β an arctic fox β in Blender, just to see what it would do. The result? Pretty bad. It looked like the very first CG animation Pixar made in 1985. He didn't pull a single vertex β just slapped primitives together into something that vaguely resembled a fox-shaped abomination. π
But here's the thing. Watching an actual 3D program move by itself, driven by AI, is genuinely surreal. We're at the beginning of something. If AI can get inside the tools we use every day and start handling the boring stuff β the repetitive setups, the tedious cleanup, the busy work β that's a real win for artists. More time on the creative parts, less time on the grunt work. I'm watching this space closely.
Like what you're reading? Don't keep it to yourself.
βForward this to one person who'd love it.
That's how we grow this thing. One animator at a time. π₯°
Philippe Duvinβ
Founder, Animator NOW
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