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Issue #119 | October 4th, 2026

Hey Reader 👋

There's a dilemma I've been living with for 25 years.

Employee… or freelance.

It even lives inside my own house. My wife is a full-on employee. She works in banking, and she wants everything that comes with it - the salary, the benefits, the security.

Me? In a 25-year career, I've spent only 8 on a full-time contract.

And I liked it. I enjoyed being part of a team, and the jobs I signed up for were really interesting.

One of them came right after Animation Mentor. I was trying to find work as an animator from my hometown, where there is absolutely no animation industry. I had kids. I couldn't leave. I had bills to pay.

So I said yes to an art director job in advertising and marketing.

I have mostly good memories from that time. Except for a few moments… watching my peers from Animation Mentor get hired at Framestore in London, and everywhere else. Younger than me. No kids, no responsibilities. They could move wherever the job was.

I couldn't.

But the older I got, the more the entrepreneur side pulled me in. I still respect people who don't want to go down that road. It's a tough one. It's not for everybody.

Don't start a business

I've wanted to share this with you for weeks, but other thoughts kept getting in the way.

I love Andrew Wilkinson, and I'm not sure why. The guy is a Canadian billionaire. His life is about as far from mine as it gets. And still, his words keep landing right in the middle of my life.

In one of his recent newsletters, somewhere between him looking for a boring business to buy and him buying a second Picasso, there's a short section called "Don't start a business."

Here it is.

Read that and the obvious question is… why on earth would anyone want to be an entrepreneur?

For me, the answer is one word.

Freedom.

"How are you freer than me?"

Hear me out. When my wife hears that word, she goes - how on earth are you freer than an employee who has his weekends, his vacations, his evenings without bringing work home?

Fair question.

I think it's about the vision. And the problem with entrepreneurship is this:

You're a loser until you're a winner.

People understand entrepreneurship when they look at someone who made it. "Yeah, sure, it makes sense."

But show them the same person two years earlier… the sleepless nights, the doubt about income at the end of the month, the stress, the anxiety… and they don't get it. How can you put up with that?

Then one day the guy starts making 30, 40K a month. And suddenly he was right all along.

That makes no sense to me. He never changed. He just kept doing the thing he wanted to do, and at some point it paid off. The only thing that changed is how people look at him.

Alex Hormozi talks about this in a couple of his videos. I'm not a religious person, but it really is like faith - believing in something you can't touch and can't see.

That's what this is. A vision nobody else sees, while you live surrounded by people who don't understand what you're trying to do. You put up with a lot of bullshit. A lot of people trying to pull you off that road.

Which is why finding a partner who understands it matters so much.

If you're at the beginning

I'm telling you this because if you're just starting to build something, you're going to meet those people. "Why are you doing this?"

A lot of people think work is shitty by nature. Something you're not supposed to enjoy. You get the money, you go on vacation, you come back.

There's this famous line about building a life you don't need a vacation from.

That's exactly what I'm trying to build.

I would have loved to start 20 years ago, and not wait until I'm almost 50. But that's where I am today.

If you want more of Andrew, his newsletter is here. That's the beauty of the guy - you don't need to be a billionaire or own a pile of stocks to get something out of it. A lot of it is just very simple. And if you've never read his book, Never Enough: From Barista to Billionaire, go read it.

For the record, I don't want to be a billionaire. I don't give a shit about that. I think that amount of money brings more downsides than upsides.

The in-between would be nice. 😅

If you're like me, I'm pretty sure you're going to love it.

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

This week's sponsor

The Spotlight

A young woman comes back to Anthéor, on the French Mediterranean coast. The wind is up, the sea is rough, and every place she walks through is full of shadows from a past she has to face.

This is probably one of the longest shorts I've ever reviewed here. 21 minutes. And somehow, it's not the one that feels long.

The pace is slow. Really slow. But the film needs that. It's that thing Miyazaki is always talking about, the "Ma"… you don't rush into things, you let the movie breathe. And the breathing is definitely there. The duration is actually helping the story.

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Every shot is a painting

That's the first thing I noticed.

It's made in 3D, but the rendering looks like a painting. Like an oil painting. The colors are great. The lighting is beautiful. And every single composition… you could grab the frame, print it, and hang it in your house.

I don't know how many shots there are in this film. But if there are 100 shots, there are 100 paintings.

A trip back

The story is very quiet. And it resonated with me a lot, because this is where I come from. The Mediterranean coast, the southeast of France.

Funny thing, I had never heard of Anthéor. Turns out it's a real place, a small corner of the coast near Saint-Raphaël.

What I get from it is a trip back into the past. She has a violent history behind her, probably the war. She remembers. She visits her old school, places that are kind of gone now. It's beautiful, and sometimes a little weird. You want to know what happened there. You want to go on this trip with her and see where it goes.

Take me somewhere

The sound design is just terrific.

And that's what I'm always looking for in a film, feature or short: how far it's going to take me out of my own reality. This one does exactly that.

The one thing

The animation is on point. But sometimes the way she walks took me out a little. She's a bit too stiff, especially in the way her feet touch the ground.

Really not to the point where it stops you from enjoying the film. It takes you out for a second or two, and probably only because I'm an animator and I see those things.

Overall? Just incredible. Give it the 21 minutes.
And of course… this is, once again, Miyu Distribution. 😊

🎬 Credits​
​Director: Patrice Joseph Blanc
​Production: Emmanuel-Alain Raynal, Pierre Baussaron - Miyu Productions​
​Co-production: Sophie Marron, Éric Serre, Flavio Perez - Les Fées Spéciales​
​Distribution: Miyu Distribution​
​Script: Patrice Joseph Blanc
​Animation: Thomas Caudron, Lucie Jean, Patrice Joseph Blanc
​Editing: Albane du Plessix
​Music: Nils Petter Molvær
​Sound: Pali Meursault
​Voice: Vanessa Cailhol

Share this film with your animator friends ❤️

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The Job Fair

• ​After Effects 2D Animator​
  Probably Fine · Remote (anywhere)​
  Probably Fine is an animated history channel building a permanent animation team, so this is recurring work, episode after episode, not a one-off gig. You animate their pre-rigged characters in After Effects to a provided animatic and voiceover, in a clean, snappy, deadpan style where comic timing matters more than anything. Send your reel, and shortlisted animators get a short paid test scene on the actual rig.
  ​Posted: September 29, 2026.
  ​
• ​Remote 2D Moho Animator​
  Telegael · Remote (must be resident in Ireland)​
  Telegael, the Emmy-winning Irish studio that has been making TV animation since 1988, needs a Moho animator for a full-time, fully remote 2-month contract with an immediate start. The work is character and prop animation from storyboards and animatics, inside an established TV pipeline. One catch: you have to be resident in Ireland for the duration of the contract, and applications close on October 9.
  ​Posted: October 1, 2026.
  ​
• ​2D Animation Director​
  LANTHR · Remote (freelance contract)
  ​A freelance supervising role on a 3 to 4 minute anime-inspired character trailer, the proof of concept for an original fantasy project called Just Your Average Nekomancer. You set the animation language with the director, review WIPs, do draw-overs and corrections, and mentor the animators rather than animating the whole thing yourself. Paid flat rate based on experience, starting January 2027, with applications open until November 7.
  ​Posted: October 4, 2026.

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The Random Stuff

🍋 School of Motion talked about Citron (and I missed it)

I recently reached out to Joey from School of Motion, just to see if he'd want to talk about Citron in a video or in his newsletter.

His answer: "Hey man, I would love to, but we already did in July." 😅

And then it clicked. That lines up exactly with the peak of sales I had in July. So I already have to thank them for that.

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Go check out the video. It's a great review, really nice.

One thing to know: it's not based on the latest version of Citron. We've added a lot of great things since then, like the ghost curve and the buffer curve. The UI has been improved way, way more, and there's a bunch of other tools in there now.

But the essence of what Citron is? Super well reviewed in there. Go check it out.
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And if you want to grab Citron, it's right there on aescripts.

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👀 The most uncomfortable interview I've seen in a while

I watched this body language breakdown this week and I really loved it.

Quick context if you missed the story. Elizabeth Holmes is the founder and former CEO of Theranos, the blood-testing company that turned out to be a scam. She was convicted of fraud and went to prison in 2023. There's a great HBO documentary about the whole thing, The Inventor.

Now there's a new film about to come out, You Can See Everything. For this one, Nathan Fielder moved into her home, with her partner and their kids, for the last weeks before she went to prison. Interviewing her, filming everything.

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And the way it's filmed is super weird. Both sides, the interviewer and her. It's so off that it's almost cringe, really uncomfortable to watch… and this analyst goes through exactly why it feels like that.

For animators, it's always a good idea to dive into body language and facial expressions. Knowing why a face reads as off is the same skill as making one read as true.

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🛠️ I already switched browsers...again

Last week I told you I'd moved to Brave. Well… that lasted about a week. 😅

Here's the thing. Arc is kind of dead. No more new features, the team moved on, and I really miss that experience. I wanted the closest thing I could find.

That's Zen. It feels like a really light Arc, almost a copy of it, running on the Firefox engine.

One warning. It's not Chromium, it's based on Firefox. So if you live inside your Chrome extensions, you might want to stick with something else. I use a couple of extensions, none of them really important, so it works for me.

If you loved Arc and you're looking for a replacement like I was, Zen is the one you might like. Go check it out.

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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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