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Issue #106 | July 5th, 2026

Hey Reader 👋

Quick heads up - I've barely touched a computer this week.

Because as you're reading this, we're moving into the new house. Today. Right now.

And I'll be honest with you… it's not done. The paint isn't finished. The floor isn't finished. The whole place is still one big dust cloud. If it were just me and my wife, we'd shrug and figure it out. But doing this with a two-year-old running around? Different story. 😅

So here's the plan - park the little one on the ground floor, haul all the tools upstairs, and work as fast as I humanly can to get everybody into the bedrooms up there… so I can finally start setting up the studio down below.

We'll manage. We always do.

What I actually want to talk about this week: learning.

Because that's what this whole year has been for me. 2026 has been one long crash course.

Getting sharper with AI. Going deep with Claude. Picking up new tools left and right. Moving into Unreal and learning how to build actual films with it - that alone has been a wild ride.

And then there's the thing that has nothing to do with animation at all.

I always wanted to learn how to work on a house. Real craftsmanship. Handyman stuff.

My dad is a craftsman - the real deal. He renovates houses, fixes apartments, does pretty much everything with his hands. And when I was a kid I'd help him out here and there… but he told me something a few months ago that stuck with me. He said he was never really good at teaching me. He never let the tools go. Never actually handed them over.

So I never really learned.

And now? I'm standing in the middle of a full house renovation with no choice but to figure it all out myself.

A friend has been teaching me a ton. My dad's chipped in a bit too. But mostly I've had to deep-dive and learn it on my own. Plaster, electricity, concrete, sanding the stairs… all of it.

Yesterday I built a plaster wall. By myself. Start to finish.

It's nothing, really. But to me? It was everything. I was so stupidly proud of that wall.

And here's the part that caught me off guard.

It genuinely feels like unlocking a superpower.

You start looking around - your house, the garden, other people's places - and suddenly you see the matrix. You understand how things are actually made. There's something deeply satisfying about building something real for once… something that isn't digital.

Because that's the thread, isn't it. Building. Whether it's a digital product like the After Effects graph editor I'm cooking up (you can get on the list for it right HERE 👀) or a wall made of plaster and sweat - it's the same itch.

And underneath all of it is learning. Which is honestly one of the biggest joys I get out of this life.

If you're a learner too - if you can't physically go a week without picking up something new - then you already know we're living in an absurdly good time for it. AI can explain anything. YouTube, articles, books, podcasts… infinite knowledge, right there for the taking.

I almost never sit in nothingness. The medium just shifts. Driving? Podcast. Falling asleep? A book. At the desk? YouTube or an article. The sheer number of ways to learn something new is insane, and I love it.

So yeah. Just felt like sharing that this week. Feeling grateful. 😊

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

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The Spotlight

Sometimes a film sneaks up on you.

I'll be honest, graduation films like this one don't usually pull me in. But this one is special. It's a CalArts thesis film, barely over three minutes, and it does something unusual for the shorts I normally review here.

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The whole thing is carried by a voiceover - the main character, a widow, reading a letter she's writing about her life with her late husband. The pitch is simple: a grieving widow reflects on the last gift she received from her late husband.

And it's devastating in the best way.

You can feel the love in her voice. In the story. In the relationship. It's all there, and it's beautiful.

Every single shot feels like a painting.

The framing, the composition, the colors, the atmosphere - all carefully picked, all carefully built. I'm honestly not 100% sure how it's made. Looks like digital painting to me. And I love the line strokes… super uneven, kind of grainy, and it just works.

But the thing that got me? The light. There's an incredible sense of light in so many shots. Genuinely incredible.

The music is melancholic and melts perfectly into the theme, the voice, the letter. And the set design… the decor is spectacular. You can feel the research that went into it.

Then there's the color. It swings from bright yellows to deep blues depending on the shot, and it flips the mood on a dime. One second warm, the next aching. Beautiful.

It's a love story that's sad… but what you walk away with isn't the death. It's the love that was there. That's the whole trick, and it lands.

Go watch it. The paintings, the shots, the craft - all of it is worth your three minutes.

🎬 Credits​
​Film by: Esther Zhu
​Sound & Score: Mate Satalich
​Voice Cast: Michelle Cheng, Antoine Couttolenc Camacho
​Whistle: Amir Isakhunov
​Mix: Daniel Eaton
​Color Assistance: Emi Baumgardner, Celine Hung, Aniya Washington
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Share this short film to someone! 😊

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The Job Fair

• ​2D Animator - PicShot Studio · Remote
  ​Ukrainian art outsource studio hiring a mid-level 2D animator for character, background, and game asset animation. Spine + After Effects, 1.5+ years in gamedev. Posted: July 1, 2026.
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• ​2D Animator - JetArt Games · Remote / Relocate / Kyiv​
  Product gamedev studio looking for a mid-level 2D animator to create high-quality animation for characters, objects, and UI elements, working alongside game designers and artists.
  ​Posted: June 29, 2026.

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The Random Stuff

🎵 Finneas on scoring Beef Season 2

Okay, I love this guy.

If you don't know Finneas - he's an incredible musician, but he's also the brother and producer behind Billie Eilish. And now he's got his own thing going: singing, touring, being a genuinely fun human. This might be the first time he's composed an entire soundtrack for a TV show, and he did it for Beef Season 2… and it's pretty amazing.

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What gets me is how mature he feels for his age. It's kind of unreal. He talks about the craft - recording sprinkler systems at a golf course for rhythm, finding synths that sound like a swarm of bees, writing music for a character who's supposed 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.

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🤖 Claude Fable 5 is back

If you use Claude, you probably noticed their newest frontier model went dark for a couple of weeks. The US government hit it with export controls over security concerns, and Anthropic pulled global access for about 19 days.

Well - it's back. The controls were lifted June 30 and Claude Fable 5 returned globally on July 1.

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I honestly can't wait to dig into what we can build with this one. Quick heads up if you're on a paid plan: Fable 5 is included for up to 50% of your weekly usage limits through July 7, so play with it now while the getting's good. Wild times for AI. Things move so fast it's hard to keep up… which is a perfect segue.

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👀 Greg Isenberg's YouTube channel

If you feel lost in the AI world - honestly, same, it moves insanely fast - one of my favorite sources is Greg Isenberg. I love this guy.

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He's an incredible entrepreneur (CEO of Late Checkout, host of The Startup Ideas Podcast), and his whole channel is about using AI tools to build businesses and create real wealth. It's genuinely one of the best out there for this stuff. If you want to point your AI curiosity at something useful, go subscribe.
I love everything about what he does." and then you've lost an hour to the channel. No regrets.😊

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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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