Issue #111 | August 9th, 2026
Hey Reader 👋
Something happened this week.
I got asked to work on a production. As an animator. A real gig, real film, real studio. I saw the teaser.
And I said no.
I've been sitting with that ever since, because saying no to an animation job in 2026 - when so many animators I know are refreshing their inbox every morning hoping for exactly that message - felt genuinely strange.
But here's the thing. It also felt like relief.
The honest version
I've been directing films and supervising animation for a long time now. My demo reel as an animator? Not at the level some studios are asking for. That's just true. I could rebuild it. I could grind, update it, chase the standard.
I don't want to.
I'm 48. There are kids out there animating faster, cleaner, and frankly better than I would on that particular project. And the style they were asking for wasn't my jam anyway. I'd rather work on something that feels like a film - Ghibli energy, even in 3D - than something built to a spec I'm not excited by.
It's not that I stopped loving animation. I animate all the time on my own projects. I love it from the first day and I still do.
I just love it from a different chair now.
What I'm actually letting go of
When you pull the plug on something you've built a career around, you don't just let go of one thing. You let go of a whole stack of things you didn't realize were still stacked.
You let go of "working as animator at ILM in San Francisco".
You let go of "being an animator at Laika, on features, in stop motion."
Those dreams were real. I carried them for years.
But my dream changed. And I think that's allowed.
What's left is the exciting part
Director. Filmmaker. Entrepreneur. Teacher. Building a business.
Those are the things my head is actually in every single day. That's where my hours already go. The job title just hadn't caught up to reality yet.
So this week it did.
The bit that might matter to you
If you've ever felt this - the slow realization that the thing you chased for a decade isn't where your time or your attention actually lives anymore - you're not broken. You're just further down the road than your old plan.
Let it go. It's fine.
The only thing that really matters is that you keep moving toward something that excites you. Keep looking. Keep chasing the next thing that lights you up.
Because what you don't want is to stop looking entirely and just grind out the regular job to pay the bills. That's the actual trap.
Find the thing that excites you and chase it hard enough, and it never really feels like a job.
That's all I've got this week. 😊
Alright. Let's get into it. 🔥
The Spotlight
A little girl. A window. A world she builds because the one she's in isn't enough.
That's it. Four minutes. Stop-motion, made by two students in Uruguay.
And after spending half this issue talking about Laika and hundred-million-dollar craftsmanship, I wanted to put this next to it on purpose.
Abril was made at Universidad ORT Uruguay by Eliana Fernández and Sofia Caponnetto as part of their animation degree. They wrote it, directed it, and animated it themselves.
Let me be honest about the craft, because you'd notice it anyway.
The animation isn't smooth. Some of the movement is stiff, some of the spacing is rough, and if you're used to watching Laika or Aardman you'll clock it in the first ten seconds.
Doesn't matter. Not even slightly.
Because everything else is right. The lighting is genuinely good. The framing is considered. The composition holds. These two knew where to put the camera and how to light a set, and those are the choices that carry a film.
And underneath all of it there's an actual story with something to say. That's the part that flattens everything else.
This is the whole lesson, honestly
Craft pushed to the limit is beautiful. I love it. I've spent 25 years chasing it.
But craft without intention is just expensive noise. And intention with rough craft still lands.
That's the only thing that actually matters.
Why this one got under my skin
I have three kids. Two of them are teenagers now, 17 and 20. They grew up in the era where the screens were already everywhere, already in every pocket, already the default answer to every empty minute.
And I don't want to sound like an old fart about it… but I didn't understand for a long time that being bored is the doorway. That's where imagination actually starts. Not from stimulation. From the gap.
One of the notes on my school reports was something like: always looking out the window, watching the clouds, dreaming.
That was meant as a criticism.
It's who I am. It's how I built everything I've built. Not by watching the blackboard. By looking out the window.
I'm 48 and it hasn't changed.
Everyone right now is trying to fit into boxes and labels and categories. Meanwhile the thing we should be protecting is the empty space where a kid gets bored enough to make something with their hands.
Abril is about exactly that. About what imagination does for a child, and what happens when it isn't enough anymore.
Four minutes. Go watch it.
🎬 Credits
Director: Eliana Fernández, Sofia Caponnetto
Screenplay: Eliana Fernández, Sofia Caponnetto
Animation: Eliana Fernández, Sofia Caponnetto
Music: Rodrigo Espinosa Curbelo
Production: Universidad ORT Uruguay
The Job Fair
- Remote Storyboard Artist - Blue Zoo Animation Studio · Remote (UK-based)
Blue Zoo is hiring a story artist to work directly inside Blender, drawing with Grease Pencil in the actual scene with real environment assets and scale models rather than boarding separately and handing off. You own the edit - markers define the cuts, and publishing renders the animatic. They want strong posing, expert layout and composition, and the ability to land emotive character and witty comedy on the page. Runs mid-September through February 2027. Must have the right to work in the UK. They flag that the posting can close early if applications pile up.
Posted: August 5, 2026
- 3D Animator - Think Tank Academy · Liverpool, England, UK
A contract 3D animation role creating content for award-winning e-learning courses. Heavy on keyframe animation for bodies, faces and props, but you will also touch modelling, rigging, motion graphics and final edit assembly - a generalist seat rather than a pure animation one. 3ds Max or Maya required, Blender a plus. Worth a look if you want steady contract work with creative variety and you are not precious about wearing several hats.
Posted: August 5, 2026
The Random Stuff
🎬 Wildwood - and why Laika breaks my heart
If you haven't seen the Wildwood teaser yet, stop what you're doing.
It's probably the darkest, most emotionally loaded teaser Laika has ever put out. With a M83 song underneath it. A girl walking into a forest that clearly does not want her there. Everything I've ever loved about this studio is in those ninety seconds.
Here's the part that genuinely hurts me though.
Laika barely makes a dime. Missing Link grossed $26.6 million worldwide… against a $100 million budget. The most expensive stop-motion film ever made, and it lost the studio over a hundred million dollars.
The only reason Laika still exists is Phil Knight. The guy who founded Nike bought the studio, and his son Travis Knight runs it and directs the films. That's the arrangement keeping the best independent animation studio in the West alive.
Think about that for a second.
They make original films. Handcrafted. No sequels, no IP mining, no algorithm. And they can't compete with Disney or Pixar marketing budgets, so nobody shows up.
To me they're the Western Ghibli. Same DNA - the belief that animation is a medium, not a genre. It's cinema. Instead of actors you have puppets or digital characters. That's the whole difference. Not "family content." Not "cartoons." Just stories, dark ones included.
Wildwood looks like the climax of that entire thesis. Based on Colin Meloy's novel, directed by Travis Knight, out October 23.
I don't watch many animated features these days, honestly. This one I'll be there opening week.
🛠️ Adam Savage walking through The Mandalorian and Grogu
Confession - I eat lunch in front of a screen every day. I know I shouldn't. It's my one break, the moment I actually chill, and I'm not in my studio yet so it's wherever I can plant myself.
This week I watched The Mandalorian and Grogu across two lunch sessions. Loved it.
I've loved The Mandalorian since day one. Favreau brought back the original Star Wars energy in a way nothing else has managed, and the craft has only matured since.
Then I fell into this Adam Savage video where Favreau walks him through the actual sets and props.
They shot it in real Quonset huts in Los Angeles. Practical sets, physical environments, real builds mixed with real-time rendering for in-camera effects instead of pure green screen.
And Adam is the perfect guide for this. Ex-ILM model maker, Mythbusters, an actual craftsman who never stopped being a total fanboy. That combination is rare. He knows exactly how hard the thing in front of him was to build, and he's still losing his mind about it.
That's the energy I want to keep for the next twenty years, honestly. Know how it's made. Still be amazed by it.
🏰 Disney Worldbuilders
I don't fully understand why, but Disney theme parks are wired into me at some deep childhood level and it's never going away.
Whatever Disney becomes… however questionable their strategy decisions get… however weird it is to see Avengers land squatting in a Disney park… there's still this piece of my past permanently attached to all of it. The parks are a big part of that.
New feature documentary from Leslie Iwerks - Emmy and Oscar-nominated, and the person who made The Pixar Story and The Imagineering Story. She's also Ub Iwerks' granddaughter, which is a whole other level of lineage.
This one is about the people who actually build the worlds. Imagineers. The engineers and designers turning stories into physical places you can walk through. Interviews with Iger, James Cameron, Favreau, Feige, Jennifer Lee, Pete Docter, Dave Filoni.
Honestly? Being an Imagineer might be the ultimate dream job. Storytelling in three dimensions, at scale, that people physically inhabit.
Premieres at D23 on August 16, then hits Disney+ on August 20. Watch the trailer. It's pretty cool.
Like what you're reading? Don't keep it to yourself.
Forward this to one person who'd love it.
That's how we grow this thing. One animator at a time. 🥰
Philippe Duvin
Founder, Animator NOW
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