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Issue #103 | June 14th, 2026

Hey Reader 👋

Some dates in life just… pull everything toward them. Like gravity.

Right now, that date is July 1st.

That's when we move into the house. Our century old house. The one I've been renovating with my own two hands - and I'll be honest with you, it is not going to be perfect. Not even close to done.

Here's the thing about me. I'm not a handyman. At all. My dad was - he could fix anything. But for some reason he never taught me, never handed me the tools, and I never really asked. I don't fully understand why. It just… never happened.

So here I am. 48 years old. Learning the craft as I go, on a 100 year old house, doing every single trade at once.

Each thing on its own? Fine. Manageable.
All of them at the same time? Pure insanity. 😅

And saying it out loud doesn't make it any lighter. But here I am anyway, trying to make the best of it.

Then there's the second deadline.

One of the biggest film projects I've worked on, for one of my clients. And there's a lesson buried in this one that I want every freelancer reading this to hear.

My contract said I'd deliver "60 minutes of content."

Content.

That one word is doing a LOT of heavy lifting. Because "content" can mean a hundred different things depending on who's reading the contract… and that gap is exactly where freelancers get burned. Read your contracts. Know what that word actually means before you sign it.

I'll dig into this one properly in a future issue. It deserves its own deep dive.

Right now, though? Life is testing me.

There are seasons where life just throws everything at you at once, almost like it's curious to see how you'll respond.

And I'll tell you something. All those motivational lines you scroll past on Instagram - "nothing is permanent," "be grateful, look around," all of it - it's one thing to read them. It's a completely different thing to feel them in your core.

I've spent years on this. Introspection, understanding how I react, how I feel, how I cope. And somewhere along the way it stopped being words and became… me. That's what keeps me calm, almost all the time. The only moments I crack are when exhaustion takes over and my brain just can't run the way it normally does.

But overall? I'm calm. Grateful. Lucky. Even in a complicated stretch like this one.

Here's the part nobody warns you about.

This calm, this work you do on yourself - it's your personal journey. But you don't live alone.

You live with a partner, kids, parents, friends. People who are wired differently. People who haven't walked the same road or done the same inner work.

So even after years of becoming steady… you also end up carrying their anxiety. Their fears. And that's its own kind of exhaustion - the quiet kind.

But you know what? I think that's love.

I always wanted to become the strongest version of myself. The kind of person my family could lean on, heavily, whenever they needed to.

And still - even at your strongest, you hit a limit. There's always a limit. Pushing past it while staying solid for everyone else… it's hard. And right now, I'm standing right in the middle of that.

So if you're reading this and your family leans on you the way mine leans on me - I feel you. Truly.

Just remember it's worth it. You're becoming a strong human. A foundation - for your family, for the people around you, for so much of your life. And I take real pride in becoming that person.

None of this has anything to do with animation, I know. But these intros are almost always deeply personal… and I want to keep them that way. Because something tells me a lot of you feel exactly this.

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

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The Spotlight

This week's pick is a third-year film out of CalArts. And here's the thing about CalArts films, same as watching something out of Gobelins… you press play already knowing it's going to be good. The pedigree does half the work before the first frame even loads.

This one still surprised me.

​

It's called Everywhere at the End of Time, directed by Melody Cheng. Barely four minutes long. Two characters wandering a building complex that's about to be demolished, talking about memory, about objects, about what we hold onto.
The story is honestly kind of opaque. You don't fully grasp what it's "about" on a first watch, and I don't think you're supposed to.
Because the feeling shows up long before the meaning does.

The music got me first

I'm a musician, so maybe I'm wired for this. But twenty seconds in I was already gone. The first notes land and I thought… wait, that's Ravel. And it was. Ravel is probably my favorite composer alongside Debussy, so the second those horns and pizzicatos came in, the film had me by the collar. She didn't write original music, she reached for Ravel, and it's exactly the right call. That piece carries more melancholy in eight bars than most scores manage in eight minutes.

Every shot is a painting

I mean that almost literally. The backgrounds are gallery work. The lighting is gorgeous. And here's the interesting part from a craft angle: the animation is barely doing anything. Things move a little. No big acting showcase, no flashy mechanics. The voices carry the weight, the paintings hold the frame, and the whole thing just sits inside an atmosphere. A couple of the classroom shots gave me strong Oni​ vibes (the Tonko House show I worked on. It's on Netflix, and if you haven't seen it, go, right now). The characters themselves are super simple, kind of funny, genuinely original. Nothing overdesigned.

Where it slips

It's not flawless, and I'd be lying if I pretended otherwise. The mix needs work. The music sometimes swallows the dialogue and you lose a line here and there. Classic student-film thing. But it's a polish note, not a structural one. Nothing that breaks the spell.

Why it works

Here's the part I can't fully explain. The visuals, the music, the voices… at some point they all start vibrating at the same frequency. Everything locks in. And it hits. The nostalgia, the memory of a place that's about to stop existing, it all lands without the film ever forcing it on you.
​
That's the thing you can't teach. You can teach animation mechanics all day. You can't teach that.

Beautiful work from a third-year student. Go watch it.

🎬 Credits
Director: Melody Cheng
​Voice: Imogan Dymott (Red), Taylor Williams (Blue)
​Music: Maurice Ravel, "Pavane pour une infante défunte"
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Share this short film to someone! 😊

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The Job Fair

• ​3D Lead Animator - ATLANTIS ANIMATION
  ​As Lead Animator, you will guide and support the animation team alongside the Animation Supervisor, ensuring the creative vision is realized while maintaining technical and artistic standards. You’ll mentor animators, provide feedback, and help deliver believable performances, action sequences, and emotional beats in line with the show’s style.
  Contract length: From as soon as possible until October/November 2026
  ​Posted: June 12, 2026.
• ​Junior 3D Artist - Rezzil​
  We are Manchester and London based, with a growing team working across sports, gaming, data, broadcast and future computer vision and AI products.
  ​
  This is a hands-on role for someone with strong foundational 3D skills, a good eye for detail and the motivation to learn from experienced artists. You’ll assist our senior artists with day-to-day production tasks, helping create, optimise and polish assets for real-time environments across Unity, Unreal or similar engines.You’ll be working on sports-focused products where visual quality, performance and usability all matter. This would suit someone early in their 3D art career who has already built solid skills in 3ds Max, Substance Painter, and Photoshop, and now wants to further develop in a fast-moving real-time production environment.
  ​Posted: June 12, 2026.

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The Random Stuff

🎬 The Corridor Crew video I couldn't stop rewatching

Been on a Corridor Crew binge this week and man, it feels good.
These guys have that "what if visual effects" energy. Reminds me of the ILM crew back in '77, building the first thing in a warehouse with their bare hands. Same passion, same obsession... just with computers now. Geeky in the best way. Funny. Stupidly knowledgeable about the tools. And you can feel they genuinely love building cool stuff.

But this one hit different.

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It opens with the Lord of the Rings Blu-ray behind-the-scenes. Hours and hours of footage. If you're in this industry, you know exactly what I mean. That BTS is the reason a whole generation of us got in. Weta Digital, Weta Workshop, Peter Jackson and the crew on set building that trilogy... that's how I discovered animation. Full stop.
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Quick personal note: about 20 years ago at Animation Mentor, my mentor was Jason Schleifer. Animation lead on Lord of the Rings, the guy who helped bring Gollum to life. One of the best humans in this business. Love him.

Then they get into the actual trick. Forced perspective. The kicker? They pulled it off in camera AND on a moving camera. No CG. The moving camera part is the real breakthrough, and it's wild watching them reverse-engineer it.
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Just pure VFX history and culture. Go watch it.🔥

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🛠️ The graph editor I always wanted (and I need your help)

Quick one before you go… I've been quietly building a tool. It started as an itch I couldn't scratch.

The After Effects graph editor hasn't meaningfully changed in over a decade. Every animator I know works around it instead of with it. So I started building the one I always wanted.

A few things it does:

1. A graph editor you can pop out into its own floating window
2. Click one property and edit just that curve, everything else out of the way
3. Maya-style zoom and pan, plus one tap to frame your whole selection
4. Copy the shape of one curve and paste it onto another
5. One-click overshoot and bounce, no keyframing by hand
6. Separate position dimensions without destroying the animation you already made

Here's where you come in.

Reply to this email with the number from the list above you'd actually pay for today. One number, or a few. That's the whole ask.

And if the honest answer is "none of these, I don't need this"… tell me that too. I'd much rather hear it now than spend my summer building the wrong thing. 😅

I read every reply.

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🎥 That new Pixar teaser broke my brain (in the best way)

Gatto. Enrico Casarosa's next one, the guy who did Luca. The teaser dropped this week and I've rewatched it way too many times.

First little thing... that hint of the Godfather theme right at the open. Chef's kiss.

But here's what got me. The big cat - that's Rocco, the mob boss, voiced by Laurence Fishburne - moves in a way I've genuinely never seen before.

​

It reads like 12fps. That limited snap I'm obsessed with, not the glassy fluidity of 24. But freeze it frame by frame and it is NOT on twos. They're not holding the drawing dead for two frames like classic 2D. There's always a tiny bit of movement under it.

So the rhythm goes: big move, micro hold. Big move, micro hold. The pose snaps hard, then instead of freezing it just... breathes a hair. Never a dead frame.

It's the graphic punch of 2D limited animation fused with Pixar's golden rule, the moving hold. And nobody's written about it. Every article out there is about the painted look (which, fine, it's gorgeous). The timing is the real trick and I haven't seen a single person clock it.
​
I notice it most on Rocco, who moves slower and heavier than Nero, the little black cat. Slower motion, more room to catch the trick.

Bonus: watch for the smear lines. Not smear frames, actual lines drawn on top, pushing that hand-painted 2D feel even harder.

I'm stealing this. Everything I make is already 12fps anyway. This is the next thing I try. 😊

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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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