I vibe-coded an animation tool.

Issue #107 | July 12th, 2026

Hey Reader 👋

What a week.

Full. Intense. A little bit rough, honestly. But the good kind of rough.

We finally moved into our house. Except "moved in" is generous. We're living in the middle of the dust. All of us sleeping in one bedroom on the bottom floor, pushing to finish the paintings so we can lay the floor and finally start bringing in furniture.

It's basically camping. In a big house. 😅

We'll manage. It happened. That's the part that matters.

And then there's the other thing.

Yesterday I shipped my first digital product under Animator NOW.

It's called Citron. A graph editor for After Effects.

I've talked about this one before. And look, if you come from 3D, you know exactly what I mean. In Maya I can spend hours in the graph editor and it just feels good. Everything responds. You understand how the curves move, how the whole thing breathes. If you're a 3D animator, this resonates. I know it does.

Then you open After Effects… and all of that comfort is gone. You're stuck with this ancient, clunky, genuinely awful graph editor.

I always wanted to fix it. But I'm not a developer. Never was. Never will be.

Except now we can vibe code things.

So I built one. And to be completely honest with you - after using Citron on my own projects, it is absolutely, mark my words, impossible to go back to the default After Effects graph editor. Impossible.

And maybe that's not even because Citron is that good. Maybe it's also just because the AE graph editor is that bad. Probably a bit of both.

Here's what this whole thing stirred up in me.

Since the iPhone dropped in 2007, since the App Store, I've been obsessed with apps. With how we interact with computers. UI, interfaces, the moment something makes perfect sense… and the moment it completely doesn't.

That eye has always been second nature to me. I just never had a way to use it, because I couldn't code.

Now I can. With Claude, I can actually build the things I see in my head.

And if Citron works - if the launch lands, if the sales are decent - that's my green light to keep building tools for animators and motion designers. Because the whole process of making this thing… debugging it, chasing pixel perfection, fixing bug after bug… I loved every second of it.

Right now Citron is out with 8 beta testers. Mac, Windows, different AE versions. I'm collecting every bug before we launch on July 21.

Want it early? Subscribe to the list HERE and you'll get the link two days before everyone else.

Oh, and one more thing… there's another work update brewing. Something that came completely out of the blue. Something that could genuinely change how my future looks, on a lot of levels. But nothing's signed yet, so I'm keeping my mouth shut for now. (It might have something to do with the GIF on top of this email 👀)

The Spotlight

A public park. A businessman working. A family picnicking. An old man and his dog. A couple kissing like the world's about to end. Ordinary people, ordinary afternoon… and then the wind starts to blow.

That's the whole setup. And it's already enough to sell me.

Full disclosure first, because you deserve it. This one comes out of L'École des Nouvelles Images, which is and always will be the best animation school in my heart. Not just because I taught there. Because of the people. I've never crossed a team so genuinely dedicated to turning students into actual artists and storytellers. Never. In any school I've worked in.

So yeah. I'm biased. But hear me out, because my read on this film is still honest… it just happens to be a great film on top of it.

Here's what I love. This is exactly my kind of thing - daily-life tableaux, little scenes stacked next to each other, people who only interact because they're stuck sharing the same small public space. And then the wind arrives. It starts small. It tinkers with each situation, a little more with every beat. And then they push it.

They crank the wind past realism until people are literally flying off, tangled up in each other, and suddenly you're not in a park anymore… you're in pure poetry. Bodies drifting, lives shifting, something rising.

And then it's over. The gust passes. Everything settles back down. Life just keeps going like nothing happened.

That structure is the whole magic trick. And it's beautifully pulled off.

The directing is on point. The timing of every little action, every secondary action, is purposeful. Nothing is loose. It's all orchestrated, and orchestrated well - which is not easy to do with six directors and a cast this big.

The animation is exactly what I love, too. It serves the story and not one frame more. No showing off, no crazy acting, no "look what I can do." Just enough to land the beat and move on. When animation goes minimalist like this, on purpose, and still reads perfectly… that's craft. That's control.

The rendering is its own little pleasure. You feel the 3D, but not too much. On some still frames it flips and reads like flat 2D. I love how they handled the sets - thin 2D linework laid over a 3D world, that graphic-novel feel. Very Sempé, very Watterson if you know those.

Sound design is beautiful. And yes, I'm biased here too - it's Pierre-François Renouf, who's done the sound on basically every ENSI film, and who happens to have been my sound designer on a bunch of my own films. Amazing human, amazing ears.

Distribution is Miyu, which… if you've been reading this newsletter for a while, you already know. We've probably featured 20-30 Miyu films by now. They keep finding the good ones.

Just under seven minutes of poetry, comedy, and life. Classy, classic, and quietly devastating in the nicest way.

Go watch it.

🎬 Credits

Director: Martin Chailloux, Ai Kim Crespin, Élise Golfouse, Chloé Lab, Hugo Taillez, Camille Truding
Production: Julien Deparis - École des Nouvelles Images (ENSI)
Screenplay: Camille Truding, Martin Chailloux
Sets / Visuals & Textures: Élise Golfouse
Storyboard: Hugo Taillez
Animation: Ai Kim Crespin
Compositing: Chloé Lab
Music (original score): Camille Riey
Sound mix: Pierre-François Renouf
Distribution: Miyu Distribution

Share this short film to someone! 😊

The Job Fair

Senior 3D Animator - Zagg Inc
As Senior 3D Animator, you'll own the look, motion, and rendering quality of Mophie's product visuals — from photoreal hero shots to dynamic animated spots for paid social, web, and retail. You'll work closely with the Creative Director, motion design, and product marketing teams to translate product features into compelling, technically polished 3D content, and you'll bring deep hands-on expertise in Cinema 4D, 3ds Max, or Blender to every project.
Posted: June 23, 2026.
2D Animator - 3 Doubles Producciones
If you are interested in joining an innovative and supportive team environment, where you can collaborate with talented creatives on both established and original content, we encourage you to apply. These positions are located in our studio in North Lakes, a suburb of Brisbane. Please apply only if you possess legal working rights in Australia.
Posted: July 9th, 2026.
2D Animator - Magnanimous Group
We are looking for a creative and detail-oriented 2D Animator to join our events team. The ideal candidate will be responsible for creating compelling visual content, motion graphics, and animated assets that enhance event presentations, brand films, digital screens, and immersive experiences.
Posted: June 26th, 2026.

The Random Stuff

👀 The Dark Side Of Getting Rich On YouTube (Ali Abdaal x Matt D'Avella)

I'm only about 40 minutes into this and I already know it's going in here.

It's a long interview between Ali Abdaal and Matt D'Avella - two guys who genuinely made it on YouTube, sitting down to talk honestly about both sides of that. The dream, and the dark side of the dream. The anxiety of building a team, the hamster wheel, the constant "is this enough yet" tug-of-war. The stuff creators usually don't say out loud.

Little bit of history for me here. When I first started poking around this whole entrepreneurship / internet content creation world years ago, Ali was one of the very first people I watched. And look… he talks way too fast, he can be weirdly obsessed with the money side, he's got his quirks. But somehow it works. He cracked something open for me and led me to a ton of other creators I'd never have found.

And Matt D'Avella? I love that guy. I actually watched one of his films on Netflix without even knowing he'd directed it - his minimalism documentary - and only connected the dots later. He's a real filmmaker. Knows the gear, knows the craft, knows exactly what he's doing. The YouTube thing came on top of all that, not the other way around. And you can just tell he's a genuinely good dude.

Two people like that, being honest about what getting rich on YouTube actually costs? Yeah. I'm in.

Because I'll admit it - part of me still wants to play the YouTube game someday. But only if I find a niche that's genuinely worth talking about. Not for the game itself. For something real.

Go watch it. to be a bad synth player. That's the level of thought going into it. Feels like the kind of guy you'd just want to hang out with. Go watch him talk about it.

🎬 Not Alone (Illumination)

Real talk before I get into this one: I don't watch much animation these days. Outside the film I spotlight every week, I've barely touched a feature in… a long time. I'm two Pixar movies behind. Haven't seen Elio. Haven't seen Inside Out 2. I know. It's bad. I need to fix that. 😅

But this trailer stopped me.

It's the first look at Not Alone, the new one from Illumination. Timothée Chalamet voices Joe, an introverted rocket mechanic, and Selena Gomez plays Fran, an astro-botanist building the first plant-fueled rocket. They meet, sparks fly, and then three tiny alien fugitives crash into Joe's life. Classic Illumination high-concept comedy.

Design-wise? Nothing that reinvents the wheel. It lives in the exact same universe as the Minions and everything else Illumination puts out. We've seen this look a hundred times. Makes sense too - one of the co-directors is Eric Guillon, the guy who actually designed the Minions.

But here's what got me. The glow. The lighting. The art direction. The animation itself is genuinely neat. There's a warmth to how it's lit that pulls you in even when the character design isn't surprising you.

And Timothée on voice? Come on. The guy is great in basically everything he does, and this is his first feature animation role. I'd bet money he nails it.

Not my usual pick. But a fun one. And honestly a small kick in the butt to go catch up on all the animation I've been neglecting.

🚀 Starter Story (YouTube channel)

Last one, and it's a channel I keep coming back to for pure fuel: Starter Story.

Yeah, the titles can get a little clickbaity. But underneath every one of them is a real story, because that's the entire DNA of the thing - actual people who started an actual business, got somewhere with it, and sit down to tell you exactly how.

And that's what makes it so good. It's not another parade of people who make billions. A lot of the time it's someone who launched six months ago and is already onto something. And honestly? That person can tell you the truth with way more accuracy and way more useful detail than someone who's been filthy rich for 20 years and forgot how they got there.

Here's the part that makes me smile. Pat Walls built Starter Story out of a tiny Starbucks about 8 years ago, one founder interview at a time. And this year he sold the whole thing to HubSpot. Not "almost" an exit - a full one. The real deal.

And the kicker? Months before it happened, he literally tweeted that HubSpot should buy Starter Story. Out loud. In public. Then went and closed the deal. That's not luck. That's a guy who knew exactly what he'd built and wasn't shy about naming where it should go.

So if you're into entrepreneurship, building products, SaaS, anything digital - go dig into this channel. There's a paid community with the full library of case studies if you want to go deep, but the free YouTube stuff alone is already a goldmine.

Watch a couple. You'll get why I keep going back.

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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The Animation Sunday

I vibe-coded an animation tool.

The Spotlight

The Job Fair

The Random Stuff

The most money I've ever made from a product

I said no to an animation job this week

Four years in a dark room for 17 minutes of film