A weekly newsletter for animators who want to stay sharp. One short film. Three fresh jobs. The tools, films and rants I'm into this week. Plus honest notes from 25 years of freelancing in animation. Every Sunday, 1pm Paris time.
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I made two sales at 2am in my underwear
Published about 3 hours agoΒ β’Β 10 min read
Issue #114 | August 30th, 2026
Paranorman by Laika Studio
Hey Reader π
I'm writing this one from my couch.
No co-working space today. We've got renovations happening all weekend, and this is the big one: the upstairs floor gets finished, which means we finally move the bedrooms up thereβ¦ which means I finally get my studio back. All to myself. π¨
It feels like I've been waiting centuries for this.
I have a ton of content piling up and nowhere proper to make it. That's about to change.
About Citron (and why it was never really about Citron)
Here's the thing people get wrong when they launch a script or a plugin on a big platform. You see the huge user base and you assume that's the whole strategy. Ship it there, they market it a bit, done.
That's not why I did it.
The idea behind Citron was never to stop at Citron. It was to learn every single step of creating a product and selling it online. Building the thing. Support tickets. Customer emails. Refunds. The whole damn machine.
And then the part nobody talks about: figuring out where this thing actually sells. YouTube videos. Short walkthroughs. Ads, maybe. Content that's actually shareable.
Because once you've done it once, you can do it again. And again.
Meanwhile, the freelance side is going insane
I just finished an entire film in three days. Full animation in After Effects for a company's 50th anniversary. Delivered yesterday.
I've also got Unreal work going, and I just sent a quote north of 15K for a film mixing 2D animation with Unreal.
It's paying well. It's interesting work. After 25 years of freelancing I know I'm well paid at this, and honestly I could probably charge more.
But I'm still selling my time.
And I'm tired. I'll be honest with you, I've been a bit bummed these last few days. Just⦠worn down.
What I want is more of what Citron does. My son woke up at 2am the other night and I couldn't get back to sleep, so I went to the couch and answered a few emails. In that window, two sales came in.
Two sales. While I was sitting there in the dark in my underwear.
It's small. It's slow. The dopamine hit is absolutely insane.
September is my New Year
Everyone does resolutions in January. I never have. For me it's always been the end of summer. Back to school energy. This is when I look at everything I did this year and decide where Animator NOW actually goes next.
Right now there are two directions: keep shipping products like Citron, and double down on teaching freelancing.
Which brings me to something I need to say out loud.
The Skool community is pretty dead. That's just the truth.
So it's one of two things. Either I learn the Skool game properly, put in serious time, and rebuild it into something that actually helps a lot of people the way I see other communities doing⦠or I close it, refund who needs refunding, hand everyone the course for free, and restart in a completely different format.
I genuinely don't know yet. And that's fine.
Because the question isn't what business should I build. The question is what life do I want, and then what work fits inside it.
Design the life first. Then find the business.
Do it the other way around and it eats you from the inside. You end up with a company and no time to actually live.
One thing I need your help with π
I really, really want to play the YouTube game. Seriously this time.
The problem: I have no idea what the main channel should be.
Some of it's obvious. If I launch a podcast, the video version lives there. Product walkthroughs and Citron tutorials get their own playlists. Fine.
But the main videos? No clue.
Option one: pure freelancing value. Everything I know about building a real freelance business, given away.
Option two: a vlog. Basically what you're reading right now, but on camera. Me going from a career as an animator and motion designer to something closer to a solopreneur. Building things, shipping them, freelancing, struggles, talking freely into a lens.
There's a poll below. Tell me what you'd actually watch.
What should I actually make videos about on my YouTube channel?
Reminder β οΈ Citron is still 30% off for the next week. There's a trial too, so you can just go poke at it and see if it does what you need before spending anything.
I've had stop-motion on the brain all week. No real reason. Maybe it's Laika finally putting Wildwood on the calendar for October, after all these years. Something about that pulled me back toward the craft.
So I went looking for a stop-motion short. I found this one. And wow.
Tokri is fourteen minutes long. I didn't feel a single one of them.
A little girl in Mumbai breaks something precious of her father's. To fix it, she takes to the streets to weave and sell baskets. That's it. That's the whole story.
And there's nothing revolutionary about it on paper. Girl makes mistake, girl tries to make it right. You've seen that shape a hundred times.
But it's where it happens that makes it land.
You feel India in this film
I've never been. And after fourteen minutes I could start to imagine what it feels like to be there. The sound design does an enormous amount of that work. So does the craft in the sets, the street shots, the sheer density of things happening in frame.
Suresh Eriyat and Studio Eeksaurus spent eight years on this, self-funded, coming back to the puppets between commercial jobs. You can see every one of those years on screen. Roadside stalls, buses, traffic, layered peeling walls. They built Mumbai out of clay and it moves like the real thing.
β
And here's the part that fascinated me as an animator
The characters are not beautifully designed. Let's be honest about it. The expressions are sometimes a little off. You don't get the level of finesse in the emotion that you'd get from a Laika or an Aardman.
And you don't care. Not even a little.
You follow these characters. You feel what they feel. You're with them the whole way.
Which is exactly the thing you're chasing when you build a protagonist. Not perfect faces. Connection. If the audience is inside the character, everything else becomes secondary. This film is a very clean proof of that.
β
The pacing is the real lesson
Watching it, I kept thinking about Miyazaki. About ma - that Japanese idea of the space between actions. The pause that isn't empty. The silence between the words that isn't dead air.
Tokri has that. There's room to breathe. The dad goes to work, the dad comes home, they look at each other. Nothing is rushed toward a climax.
It flows like a river. No big ups and downs. Just a slice of life for a modest family, held long enough that you actually settle into it.
And the cinematography is genuinely on point. The compositions, the lighting, the camera choices. Nothing feels like a compromise for the medium.
β
Just go watch it
Put your headphones on. Don't multitask. Give it the fourteen minutes.
It's one of the most beautiful stop-motion films I've seen in a long time, and honestly, I traveled. I went somewhere else for a bit.
βMotion Designer (Brand Team) - Baseten Β· San Francisco, New York or Remote (Hybrid)β Baseten runs the inference infrastructure behind a long list of AI companies, and they just raised a Series F. They want one motion designer to define the entire motion language for the brand, from five-second social clips to a Times Square takeover. They say outright this isn't about executing an existing system, it's about building one. Salary band is published at $190K to $240K, which is not a number you see on a motion posting very often. βPosted: August 27, 2026. β
βSenior Motion Designer - AKQA Β· London, UK (On site)β Five years plus, working next to the Design Director on concept through delivery. The listing is unusually craft-specific for an agency of this size: style frames, storyboards, animatics, kinetic type, and a stack that runs After Effects and Cinema 4D through Blender and Unreal. There's a mentoring component too, so it suits someone ready to lead a small motion team rather than just take briefs. βPosted: August 25, 2026. β
β2D Animation Apprentice - BUCK Β· Amsterdam, Netherlands (On site) βSix months, paired with a working BUCK artist as your mentor, animating real client work in After Effects with Cavalry and Rive in the mix. They explicitly welcome recent graduates and self-taught artists, and say curiosity matters more than the length of your reel. You need the right to work in the Netherlands. If you're early and want to learn inside one of the best motion studios on the planet, this is the door. βPosted: August 24, 2026.
The Random Stuff
π― A beekeeping mini-doc that made me want to quit animation and buy hives
I spent a chunk of this week talking with my best friend about where he should point his talent next. He has a real eye for photography. Not anti-AI, just⦠pulled toward the human side of things. Same as me. I use the tools, I'm not precious about it. But something in me keeps drifting back to people making things with their hands.
And I think that's not just us.
The more everything gets cold and digital and instantly generated, the more people quietly want the opposite. Connection. Texture. Proof that a human was there.
We were talking about what he should shoot - musicians, orchestras, opera, craftsmen in their workshops - and then a few days later I stumbled on this. A mini-doc about Gibbs Honey by Mig Beauregard. Framing, color, pacing, soundβ¦ all of it is just right. It's short. It doesn't try too hard. And by the end you genuinely want to go become a beekeeper.π
What gets me is how little it needs. No big concept. No twist. Just two people who really know their craft, filmed by someone who really knows his.
That's the whole thing. Somebody paid attention, and it shows in every frame.
If you're an animator wondering what still cuts through in 2026 - this is your answer. Not the technique. The attention. Go watch it and tell me you don't feel something.
π Ed Hooks, the monk in the animation cave
If you don't know Ed Hooks, fix that today.
He wrote Acting for Animators, which is one of those books that quietly rewires how you think about performance. I met him years ago at FMX during one of his masterclasses, and we've stayed in touch ever since. Lately more and more on LinkedIn, and I've been reading his Substack religiously.
His latest one knocked me sideways.
Ed Hooks
He tells the story of walking into PDI in 1998 to teach acting to the Antz animators, and completely bombing. Nobody learned their lines. The improv games died. HR took him to lunch and told him straight up: it's not working.
So instead of quitting, he asked the animators to show him how they actually work. Rolled his chair desk to desk and watched.
That's the part I love. He didn't force actor training onto animators. He took the best of what he knew and rebuilt it around how animators genuinely spend their days. That's why the book works. That's why it's still relevant almost 30 years later.
And now he's this wise man watching the whole industry catch fire with AI, sitting calmly in his cave, dropping essays that put everything in perspective. No panic. No hot takes. Just someone who's seen enough cycles to know what actually matters.
Pure gold every time. Go subscribe.
π§ Tetragrammaton with Rick Rubin, and the Rick Beato episode
You know Rick Rubin's face even if you don't know his name. Giant beard, sunglasses, permanently barefoot. He's everywhere and most people have no idea what he actually does.
What he does is produce records. Red Hot Chili Peppers, Johnny Cash, Beastie Boys, Slayer, Adele. That kind of range.
He also runs a podcast called Tetragrammaton, where he sits down with musicians, actors, scientists, writers, whoever, and just⦠talks. Slowly. No promo cycle energy. No rushing to the next question.
People ask me all the time: "I've got two hours to kill, what should I listen to?" This week a friend asked me that, and I sent her the Rick Beato episode.
Two hours and eighteen minutes of two people who are deeply serious about their craft, taking their time. Beato talks about getting dropped from a band, producing full time, then starting a YouTube channel in 2015 with a video of his son's perfect pitch. He now has millions of subscribers because he explains what's actually happening inside a song.
Which, if you think about it, is exactly what a good animation breakdown does.
You don't need to be a musician for this one. If you make anything, there's something in here for you. Start with this episode, then go dig through the archive. π
see ya'll next week! π
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₯°
A weekly newsletter for animators who want to stay sharp. One short film. Three fresh jobs. The tools, films and rants I'm into this week. Plus honest notes from 25 years of freelancing in animation. Every Sunday, 1pm Paris time.
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