Working weekends. I hate it. 🥱

Issue #92 | March 29th, 2026

Hey Reader 👋

I'm not gonna lie.

I'm tired.

Like… really tired.

It feels like I'm flying a massive plane right now, and I can't slow down for even a second. Because if I do, the whole thing drops out of the sky.

2026 feels like it's going one of two ways: I either crash in flames, or I land with fireworks. I genuinely have no idea which. The only thing I know is I have no choice but to keep going.

The FFA community launches April 2nd. My Unreal animation film has a hard deadline April 15th. I'm still moving with a film that I'm doing for Siemens. And we're renovating the house on top of all of it. 😅

I would never advise anyone to stack all of this at once. And yet, here we are.

So yeah. I'm working weekends. Something I hate. Twenty-five years of freelancing and I still walk into this trap. Not because someone forced me. Because I wanted to build this community. That matters. But it doesn't make it easier.

This week though, something hit me differently.

During my commute, I was talking with my best friend. She's the CEO of a visual effects company called Match Movers, brilliant at what she does. But like me, she's a musician at heart. We both are. We ended up in this industry, but music is what we are.

And we have the same problem.

If we only get one hour a week to play… it's not enough. It doesn't fill the void. It almost makes it worse. You get a taste and then it's gone, and you're back to the grind.

So I did something a little unusual. I talked to Claude about it. Like, actually talked. Shared the real dilemma: keep building toward financial freedom so music becomes possible one day… or drop everything and just make music now? I won't share the answer. But the conversation was genuinely profound.

Later that evening I watched Mateus Asato play something off his latest album on a Fender Stratocaster. Beautiful. Pure. And I read the comments.

One guy wrote something like: "I work in construction like a slave listening to this masterpiece. I wish I was home playing my guitar."

It just… stopped me.

Because that's it, isn't it? That's the whole thing. One life. One slot of time. And so many people spending it doing something that has nothing to do with what they actually love. Not because they chose it, but because the path was already laid out before they got there.

Steve Jobs said it better than I can: the world wasn't built by people smarter than you. Most of the walls you see? You can poke them. They move.

Building Animator Now! That's me poking at walls. Pure client work until I retire? That would be me just… following the path. I'm not built for that.

And that comment from a stranger on YouTube reminded me exactly why I'm launching this community. Not to teach animation techniques. To help animators get a little more free. Financially free enough to choose. Free enough to maybe spend a Tuesday afternoon playing guitar instead of sitting in a studio for nine hours waiting to be told what to do.

That guy in the comments, I thought about him. I felt for him. And I thought: that's who I'm building this for.

That's why I'm doing this. Even on the weekends. Even exhausted. Even with the plane at full throttle.

Alright, let's get into this week's issue. 🔥

The Spotlight

A few months ago, I almost put this film in the newsletter.

I had it ready. I had notes. And then at the last minute, I pulled it. Told myself the subject was too heavy, too rough, maybe not the right fit.

I've been thinking about that decision ever since. And this week I finally decided: no. Animation can tackle anything. Anything. And if there's one film that proves it, it's this one.

So here it is. Late, but here.

Pachyderme is a 2022 French animated short by director Stéphanie Clément, written by Marc Rius. Every summer, nine-year-old Louise is dropped off at her grandparents' house in the Provençal countryside for ten days. Green grass. Strawberry pies. Fishing with grandpa. Everything exactly as it should be.

Except it isn't. And by the end of these 11 minutes, you understand everything. And nothing feels quite the same.

The film deals with childhood sexual abuse, specifically incest, with a quiet and suffocating precision that is almost unbearable to watch and impossible to look away from. What makes it work, visually and emotionally, is how every single compositional choice is built around the psychology of dissociation.

The sky is almost always blocked out by the house, a tree, a window frame. Louise's body is often split by the frame, head cut off, figure fragmenting, as if she is already learning to leave herself. The grandfather's hands are enormous next to hers. None of this is accidental. Director Clément built a film that looks like a children's book on the surface and is a nightmare underneath. Which is exactly the point.

This film is also deeply personal to me because many of the people who made it are friends and former colleagues. Marc Rius, who wrote the screenplay, is someone I admire deeply. Stéphanie Clément came up through the same animation school world I've been part of for years.

And the sound design, which almost everyone who sees the film mentions in the same breath as the visuals, was done by Pierre-François Renouf, known as "Piaf", through his studio Le Refuge. Piaf and I have worked together on many client projects. He is one of the best sound designers and foley artists in French animation. When I eventually finish my first feature film, there is only one person I want to call for sound. That call is already decided.

The Blender pipeline at TNZPV is also worth noting. The studio shifted to a full Blender production entirely years ago, and Pachyderme is one of the best demonstrations of what that looks like at its finest. The aesthetic is painterly, textured, almost hand-drawn in feel. You completely forget you're watching CGI. That is not a small thing.

Nominated at the 96th Academy Awards for Best Animated Short. Winner at the Manchester Animation Festival. Winner at the Foyle Film Festival. And a film that quietly, devastatingly makes the case that animation can go where live action barely breathes.

Watch it. Then give yourself a moment after.

🎬 Credits

Director: Stéphanie Clément
Screenplay: Marc Rius
Production: Thomas Giusiano, Mathieu Rey, Marc Rius - TNZPV Productions & Studio in co-production with Folimage
Animation: Marthe Delaporte, Jérémy Ortiz, Marine Vaisse, Marc Robinet, Mina Convers, Morten Riisberg Hansen
Voice: Christa Théret
Music: Olivier Militon
Sound Design: Pierre-François Renouf - Studio Le Refuge
Distribution: Miyu Distribution

Selected at Annecy, Berlinale, Stuttgart (ITFS), Sundance, Animafest Zagreb, and many more. Winner of Best German Animation at the 2021 Festival of Animation Berlin.

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The Job Fair

Senior Animator · Pixel Movement
he game is built around combat that feels dynamic, readable, and satisfying from the first encounter, while still rewarding player skill and timing. Animation is central to that experience. Looking for a senior animator who can take real ownership of this area and help raise the quality bar significantly as we move toward first playable.
Senior Animator · Wolcen Studio
Wolcen is looking for a passionate Senior Cinematic Animator, interested in working within a multi-cultural team and Unreal Engine 5 in our journey to develop our next project.The ideal candidate is organised, self-motivated, and team-oriented, with a strong eye for narrative and storytelling. You will collaborate closely with our Cinematic Artists, Animation Director, and Narrative team to bring cutscenes and dialogue-driven moments to life.
Motion designer · Studio Bazuka
We are looking for a talented motion designer to design and produce visually impactful animated content for leading luxury, beauty, and live event brands. If you have mastered the art of bringing images to life and you envision each animation as a sensory experience, we would love to meet you!

The Random Stuff

🌐 Animator Now! Has a New Website

So the new Animator Now! website is live. And I have to say, I'm genuinely proud of it.

Here's the thing: I didn't use WordPress. I didn't touch Figma. I didn't spend weeks in Webflow going slowly insane. I opened Claude, described what I wanted, iterated a couple of times, even asked it to swap out icons for my favorites from Phosphor Icons, and it just… did it. Fetched the right ones. Placed them perfectly. The whole thing took about 30 minutes and was live on my server by the end of the day.

When I launched the first Animator Now! website years ago, it took me weeks in Webflow. Weeks. And it still didn't feel exactly right. This one does. Because now the site actually reflects what Animator Now! is: a platform for animators. A home. Whether that's a podcast, a course, the FFA community, the toolbar I've been building, CG Reeks, whatever comes next, it all has a place to live. Go check it out and let me know what you think.

🛠️ Rize - Because You Can't Fix What You Don't Measure

You know the saying: you can't optimize what you don't measure. That's exactly where I'm at right now. My time is absurdly scarce and I needed to actually understand where it's all going.

Enter Rize. It runs quietly in the background on your Mac (and Windows too, actually), and it just tracks everything automatically. No timers to start and stop. No manual logging. It knows what you're working on, how long, and how often you get pulled away. At the end of the week you get a report that shows you, brutally honestly, where your hours actually went.

You might think you spent 45 minutes on YouTube. Rize will tell you it was three hours, scattered across 25 little visits throughout the day. That's the kind of thing you can actually do something about once you can see it. There's a 7-day free trial and then a monthly subscription. Worth checking out if you're in a season where time feels impossible.

😤 Louis Theroux: Inside the Manosphere

Okay. This one is a bit of a detour from animation, but bear with me.

I watched Louis Theroux's new Netflix documentary, Inside the Manosphere. And it is insane. Like, genuinely insane that these morons exist somewhere on the planet and that people are actually following them and prizing them. Andrew Tate and all those guys. It's mind-blowing.

But here's what makes it so entertaining to watch: Louis Theroux, of all people, gets thrown into this world. Louis Theroux is not exactly what you'd call a masculine archetype, right? And watching him try to swim between those sharks… there is something deeply satisfying about the gap between him and these clowns. Half of his brain is smarter than all of those guys combined, and you feel it in every single scene without him even having to say much.

It's fun. It's painful. And it's worth your Sunday evening on Netflix.

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. 🥰