Tomorrow I rent a car and drive northeast for about 4 hours, to begin my residency at MacDowell.

I had dinner outside on a blissfully balmy evening last week here in NYC but temperatures have dipped again. Peterborough, where MacDowell is located, has been trending about 5 to 10ºF lower. I think there may even be a dusting of snow.

There’s no wifi in Mac…

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I recently celebrated a milestone birthday.

Having been on earth for what seems an astounding amount of time, the idea of continuity is something I’ve been increasingly leaning into.

When I was younger I was always running toward something: college, job, promotion, financial security. I craved arrival: to check boxes, resolve issues, accomplish goals, get recognized, finish todos. I couldn’t wait to put my feet up at the end of the day.

But there really is no end to the day.

There’s always something, most of which is out of my control, often unpleasant and taxing, usually mysterious, sometimes violent. The peace I want, I have to make. I try to engineer life so that the option to “put my feet up,” when I want to put them up, is predictably available.

Recognizing that I have that option has been much harder than generating it.

When I was little I imagined that one day I’d have a place of my own, with lots of light, and billowing curtains. I dreamed of not having to answer to anyone else. Of living in NYC. Making art. Sitting at table with extraordinary company. Eating and wearing what I want. I dreamed of family, friends, and freedom.

To say that these are things I have…

With all that’s going on, I feel doubly blessed and grateful.

In the studio

I just returned from two weeks of travel, effectively taking a break from the film.

I was still able to finish the segment I was most recently working on, then get a crit session in, since last time:

The downshooter has been a joy, mainly. I had to replace a small part (always something!), but other than that the setup has felt much more reliable and efficient than its predecessors. The base is relatively easy and inexpensive to duplicate (short pipe, clamp) so I hope it’ll be a breeze to set up in New Hampshire when I go to MacDowell for my upcoming residency.

While I’ve been off-film, I made a mini zine for an international swap among artists.

It took more time and effort than I thought it would, but I really enjoyed making it. I first saw Austin Kleon making these and thought how fun! I’m glad to be finally making my own:

It’s my first year doing this, but I believe the swap is an annual affair organized by animator, professor, and studio mate Caitlin Craggs. Other participants include experimental animators Amanda Bonaiuto, James Thatcher, and Daniela Scherer. There are so many this year that we have two cohorts! Everyone makes thirty copies for their respective one; those who can meet in New York City will be gathering later this month to do the exchange in person. Next year I’ll try to share in advance so y’all can join in on the fun.

My mini zine is called “Spring Came, or Daylight Savings.”

I hate losing an hour every year, even if it’s one that I’ve only had on loan. A part of me dreads longer days that arrive early. Cold, dark mornings feel protective and cocooning. I work best then, when nothing else has begun yet, and the ideal place to be is inside, at the desk, alone with a steaming cup of espresso and milk.

Then again, spring is beautiful, bringing with it open windows, flooding the studio with light. I love drinking and eating outside. Balmy air, bare shoulders. The green smell of leaves. The sound of birds, a neighbor’s virtuosic piano-playing. Once in a while, a far-off muezzin.

A thing leaving, a thing returning. It’s a metaphor for things beyond seasons.

Investors, I include a copy of my artwork for you, should you wish to print it out and fold into a little zine.

You’re the first to see it! Enjoy.

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I can get stuck on what seems like the simplest of drawings, sometimes for weeks. I will draw and redraw to failure, hours eaten up as I struggle in place.

Going in circles on something embarrassingly straightforward, making what feels like zero, or even negative, progress, is terrifying. It makes me doubt myself in the worst way.

To break out of these spins, I switch gears and make—and try to finish—something else. It could be a different sequence. It could be a doodle. It could be latte art.

Being stuck is like going blank during an exam or forgetting onstage the line I have rehearsed a thousand times. The stress of it pulls me deeper in.

Ironically, struggling to escape can make it worse. What is it they say, if you find yourself trapped in quicksand? Stop moving so much. Float. Chill.

The best way I can put it is that when animation doesn’t work, it tends to be when I try to move something instead of try to figure out how it will move.

I repeat to myself: we have to be in the middle of something. In every single frame.

This perspective became an important anchor the past few weeks.

Life at 1, then 4, then 20x:

Unstuck:

Investors, find below the sequence with sound. Also, Provisions (sources of recent inspiration) and a closing micro-essay about unexpectedly sharing a meal with a diplomat from Dubai.

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At the end of a day at the Brooklyn studio, I stared at the ratio of eraser debris to drawings I’d produced in the swiftly-extinguished afternoon hours, sat back in my chair, and said to the artist sitting behind me: Why do we do this?

He only half-laughed.

Animators never lose an opportunity to tell you how hard animating is. How slow and time-devouring and weird and crazy-making. It’s un/fortunately also magically, unpredictably rewarding, and as wonderful as it can be miserable.

That makes it addictive.

I began animating on paper almost a year ago, learning how to use DragonFrame in the process. I started working on a film. I finished a primer, then a storyboard; I’m learning as I go. Six weeks ago, I put together an animatic.

Sometimes I need to scrap an entire day’s work and dream about the speed and convenience of digital animation. I miss being able to rotate, resize, duplicate, and loop within seconds. The effortlessness of animating multiple layers of movement. Zooming in, to inbetween at the smallest scale with precision. Discernible onion skins.

When I need to erase yet another bit of drawing, my fingers twitch for Command-Z. Sometimes a line just needs to be nudged a little; my instinct still, is to simply move it. In those moments, the idea of animating digitally + printing + tracing + scanning seems positively efficient. Easy. Fast.

So why don’t I go back to TvPaint, or at least some sort of hybrid flow?

I probably will eventually.

But not exploring on paper feels like a copout, akin to speaking only one language, or never leaving my hometown. I’m curious about ways of seeing and problem-solving that another language will open up to me. The film is important, but it’s also an excuse. To play, explore, and develop expertise in something that will expand possibilities and give me options.

Lastly, in the era of “let the machine do everything,” I’m increasingly drawn to do more of the labor myself.

This doesn’t stop me from complaining, and, no doubt fatigued, a friend said, If you found a way to produce your film perfectly to spec and vision with zero time or effort, would you use it?

My response was—I see what she did there—What would be the fun in that?

In the Studio

tl:dr; I iterated on my downshooter setup again and am working my way through a really unsexy stretch of animation.

This might be the sixth iteration of my setup.

I’ve gone to great lengths to construct a minimal setup with a certain aesthetic. I learned though that it’s near impossible to establish precision and stability for animation with a rig like the one I made.

After getting a taste of what it’s like to work with an actual camera + fixed stand at the Brooklyn studio (amazing), and with my Jerome Hill Artist Fellowship funds earmarked expressly for such a purpose, I bit the bullet and bought in.

The latest iteration feels surprisingly clean and minimal:

This was a long journey but I’m glad I went through it.

I’m keenly aware of the privilege afforded me by my fellowship grant, by the way. I recognize what a luxury it is to be able to prioritize experimentation this way. It’s hard-won and I’m going to make the most of it until 2028 when my fellowship ends.

A really unsexy stretch of animation

I explored compositing when I made the primer, but I think I want to avoid that level of complexity whenever possible. In the next bit I’m working on, I wanted to see if I could animate concurrent, but relatively simple, movement, without the level of fuss.

I did the curtains first, then paced the girl (and another girl’s head turn) in during a second pass. I was mindful of timing; the girl’s arms move at varying speed:

For largely static/looping elements or backgrounds, compositing seemed dumb to reject:

I like animating expressionistic sequences with big camera sweeps. I like solving the kind of problems that presents. I haven’t enjoyed animation grounded in realism as much. I don’t get bored but that gets me pretty close. I get through it by looking for opportunities in the din, things that feel alive and interesting, animated:

I’m putting in the hours hoping to improve dexterity so that I can experiment faster (and have more fun). Meanwhile, batting away doubt and fear is half the work.

At the end of the day of course, it doesn’t matter if it’s “just me” or not. The work still needs to get done.

MacDowell

I’m honored to be a Spring Summer 2026 MacDowell Fellow in film.

MacDowell is the nation’s oldest artist residency program, and luminaries like James Baldwin, Ta-Nehisi Coates, Teju Cole, Audre Lorde, Willa Cather, Laura Poitras, Leonard Bernstein have been Fellows.

I’m looking at the names in my own cohort and it’s hard to believe that someone like Mary Gaitskill?! is a peer.

I’m feeling a lot of things about this, but gratitude is way up there.

Provisions

The Prophet. I first heard about this book, improbably, on the spy romcom series Mr. and Mrs. Smith. It reminded me how time- and life-stage-sensitive books are. Years ago this book may have elicited, at best, indifference from me. Today, it moves me deeply.

Date snickers morsels. Sandwich some PB and almond slices between rolled-out medjool dates, par-freeze. Cut up into bite-size chunks, enrobe1 in dark chocolate, dust with flaky sea salt, freeze. Enjoy by piece after dinner.

C*nt Eyes rough cut of an unfinished short by Lale Westvind (h/t ). Fascinating what passes for “final;” I would gladly watch this on a big screen.

Trifling Habits I love Sarina Nihei’s work so much.

The Best Short Stories 2024, edited by Amor Towles. These O. Henry Prize Winners are exceptional. I’m getting back into short fiction and remembering what feats they are. I especially loved “Seeing through Maps” by Madeline ffitch. The incredible first sentence: “I was splitting wood at sunset when the cat jumped up on the chopping block in front of me, arched her back, and took a long piss.”

Eno. I’ve posted about this generative documentary before, but they recently had a global livestreaming event (sign up to be notified of future screenings) and I snagged a second viewing. The point is that the film is different every time it screens, so it was also my first.

In Closing, Onward

On the recent Monday that buried Manhattan under over 15 inches of snow, I went for a walk. I’d never walked through a blizzard before, only having read about them, rapt, in Laura Ingalls Wilder’s The Long Winter, so I hurried out the door lest I miss the opportunity.

I live in a three-flat Harlem brownstone and there were signs that one of my housemates had left, even earlier that morning. The snow, falling steadily, had already half-covered her tracks.

There had been hushed whispers about the impending storm for days, but it had felt mythical given that weather had been a balmy 40ºF, and light rains had melted away most snow banks. Spring seemed imminent.

Before New England got pummeled, I didn’t know that “blizzard” was a technical term (largely unrelated to amount of snowfall) referring to a severe meterological event with very specific characteristics: winds of at least 35 mph, sustained for 3 or more hours, limited visibility of 0.25 miles or less.

I immediately understood why blizzards have been spoken of as “disorienting.” Snow was still falling; wet, steady, blowing into my eyes and making my hair fly up in front of my face like fire. Street signs were obscured. Buried under mounds of white, boundaries and limits were erased.

I couldn’t tell where sidewalks ended and where streets began. Even as I walked a path I’d walked hundreds of times in my own neighborhood, I needed GPS to anchor me. This was when I noticed that my phone was running out of battery; I may not have access to it for my return home. It would be a tractable inconvenience, but it still struck me, and unnerved.

Trees looked otherworldly, laden with snow. Branches struggling under new weight, violent in the wind, broke and fell; a different kind of lightning.

The wind blew sheets of white across a largely empty landscape. That was what made a storm a blizzard, the snow that flew into faces and horizons and the façades of buildings, the snow that came between us and everything else.

I turned on 125th Street. Was it 125th Street? There were the usual storefronts and building signage: GAP, Spectrum, Bank of America, Blick, Aldo. But everything had been changed, everything was different. City Bike stations were bowed supplicants, or gothic monks.

Cars had become giant insects, with tails and antennas.

To help them in their metamorphosis, someone had stuck twigs in their snowy mantles. Tiny legs, rearing.

Birds were flying. There were still birds. And people, waiting for buses. But the people only showed their unmoving backs; they were silhouettes; they weren’t real. But the buses were real. There were still buses.

I marveled at this city.

Water got into my phone; I’d have to put it into a bowl of rice, later.

Animating, like a lot of art-making, can be a lonely affair.

Specialization, preferences, and equipment you think you need to do the work you want to do, accrue with years and experience. Homing in is great, but there’s a danger of it leading to fixation and rigidity. This in turn can lead to complacency, blindness.

I’m paranoid about this, and am trying to be more at ease working away from the comforts of my home.

So when a desk in Brooklyn came up for grabs in a studio with three other artists, it felt timely. It turns out that they’re all animators, and at least two of them teach.

The space is small, warm, and oozes whimsy. Artifacts feel talismanic.

Because we’ve followed each other on social media for a while and NYC’s experimental animation scene is smallish, the space already feels homey. Each person has a wall, and I’m at the back one with the yellow blossom. Work by , whom I’m subletting from, linger on the walls like protective charms.

Surrounded by strange art and ephemera, sitting in another artist’s chair, borrowing her equipment under the sun of that flower, I feel infused with magical powers. At least, good vibes.

Being productive away from home convinces me that I really can animate from anywhere, with as little as a phone and a shoebox:

I may need even less:

Final images would need to be reshot with consistent lighting and registration, but to animate, to shoot initial drawings and make sense of movement, I don’t need high fidelity or consistent anything.

I also keep an updated digital board of sketches for constant access to references:

I had my first full studio day last week.

Two other artists were there that day. After a little chitchat, we each fell into our respective zones. A companionable silence settled, broken only the intermittent joke or snack time (one of them had brought cookies). I drank seltzers from a well-stocked mini-fridge, plucked chocolates from a tiny shelf, warmed tea water in a little microwave that could very well be from the 80’s. A gentle gravity always returned me to my desk in an organic way. Work got done!

It was a dream.

That afternoon I started working on a new sequence. I’ve been chipping away at it since:

It was a good day.

Provisions

Day after the Party. Fun animated short via RCA Animation Films (shuffle mode is rad).

Knight of the Seven Kingdoms on HBO. Yes, I’m a GOT fan. Not everyone’s cup o tea, but definitely my pint of ale.

Five Frames with Annapurna Kumar at by Sam Gurry of the hilarious 24memespersecond. Fantastic debut episode.

Rachel Cusk reads Marguerite Duras. Two of my favourite writers, together at last.

The Interview: Gisèle Pelicot. The darkness of us is terrifying.

In closing, the single glove

I walk a lot. I love walking, rain or shine, covering 2 to 3 miles a day, 365 days a week. I walk for errands, I walk to think, I walk while I take calls. In the summer, I often walk back to Harlem from the West Village after dinner with friends; that’s about 7 miles.

One peculiarity about walking in Manhattan is the volume of unexpected street detritus. Gloves, in particular. Every walk, I see at least one. The strangest thing is that they are all single gloves. Some are knit, or trimmed with faux-fur. Some are bright red. Some are neoprene, running, or gardening gloves. Some say, be cool, others channel Edward Gorey. There’s the odd mitten mixed in there now and again.

What does this mean?

Does this only happen in New York City?

In Fargo, Season 1, Deputy Molly Solverson tells Lester Nygaard—a man whose lies may be catching up with him—a parable about a single glove:

There was a fella once, running for a train. And he's carrying a pair of gloves, this man. He drops a glove on the platform, but he doesn't notice. And then later on, inside the train, he's sitting by the window and he realizes that he's just got this one glove left. But the train's already started pulling out of the station, right? So what does he do? He opens the window and he drops the other glove onto the platform.

Unlike the fella on the train, these owners probably didn’t realize their loss until much later, when altruism (or just picking the fallen one back up) couldn’t come into play.

Perhaps even more so because of this, I find myself beseiged with questions, wondering about circumstances, owners, the other of the pairs. How something like a glove in winter—which a person presumably dons, one after its other, immediately upon exiting the car, the restaurant, or the train station—could end up, alone, on the sidewalk.

Whatever the backstories, it feels kind of poetic, this aggregation of single lost gloves. In a city where solitude and anonymity are unavoidable, where dining alone is routine, where the kindness of strangers abides, such an accumulation speaks to a kind of togetherness, too.

Until next time.

We start with a picture in our mind.1 Maybe it comes from a dream, or a memory; something we saw out of the corner of our eye, in the middle of a storm. We put it down on a piece of paper to bring it better into focus. We do this not to remember so much as not to forget. But such things resist. They don’t like containers, cameras; being captured. So we pretend not to care so much. We coax casually, with a few words; broad arcs on paper. Free to go at any time! Sketchy, loose; See? not too tight.

Just enough to recall a feeling, the end of a thread we can follow later.2

Now everyone can relax a little, because the container is bigger now—a room, a house, a world—separate from this one and increasingly autonomous. There’s freedom that comes with that kind of space. When we start making tighter lines it’s not so much like capturing and more like receiving. See? They arrive on their own, revealing.

Curious, even: Where does this lead?

Sometimes the question isn’t where but how? For instance, from here:

To here:

Once, we tried to answer this kind of question literally, just by reshuffling the pieces—as if A were simply a version of C.

But the result would often look lumbering and forced (because it was). Now we understand that it’s possible for some pieces to be hidden from where we’re standing, only visible from the other side of the room.

We look again: A leap is taken, then there is the landing, C.

Flipping from one to the other reveals the possibility of a B:3

Which might in fact be a contraction:

Contraction and expansion can be articulated:

And this is how a picture begins to move:

We didn’t know so much was possible in thirty-two pictures:

Our eyes are gone now so we let this thread rest, following others until there’s enough for continuity, change, and consequence.

Still, we feel animated (so to speak) about this beginning.

Provisions

I’ve been eating half of a cinnamon raisin bagel from the one and only Barney Greengrass here in NYC (bring cash), toasted, with a generous smear of cream cheese, every mid-morning to soothe an unquiet mind.

This interview with artist Mary Laube blew my mind. She talks about, among other things, “objectness” and the voice of margins, plainly and without airs. She happens to be a friend but her work has always been mysterious and intimidating for me (in the best way possible).

“Bad Lunch” is a essay written by a former chef about her misadventures in cooking for the ultra-rich dregs of humanity on luxury yachts. The level of excess and rot is truly impressive and would be hilarious if it were fiction. From the January issue of The Sun, one of the best literary magazines I’ve read (and I’ve read many).

Mother Mary Comes to Me is a memoir by Arundhati Roy, who, by the way, I had no idea was so cool. She reads (and sometimes sings) the audiobook version herself, and it felt special listening to it. The love she felt for her mother despite their complex and often disturbing history moved me deeply.

Khus Khus Kama Balm for winter skin. It’s expensive but one jar will last forever. It’s also an artisanal product made by a small, woman-owned business that I think is nice to support.

In closing, Now.

As early as Monday, we heard that a winter storm was going to hit. They said, half of the country will be affected. Everything these days sounds and feels hyperbolic, but the exaggeration ends up being real. They said, It will arrive early Sunday. Weekend farmer’s markets, where I get my eggs and yogurt, were canceled. On Thursday afternoon, I went out to pick them up elsewhere.

At Trader Joe’s, a security guard was metering entry, letting people in only a few at a time. Inside, the checkout line looped around the perimeter of the packed store, its tail spilling out the door where the front of it was coming in like a nightmarish self-rejecting ouroboros. Entire shelves had been emptied. It reminded me of 2020, when we had willfully created a scarcity of toilet paper. Yet no one was running or screaming or fighting, over toilet paper or anything else; the scene felt more like an aftermath, like something you walk into after something had happened.

Something had happened, in Minnesota. The government had shot and killed another person, a 37 year-old man named Alex Pretti. This also sounded absurd, we the free and the brave. In the rectangle of the phone a swarm of uniformed men piled on him, shots ringing out. An enraged, frightened smattering, tinny through speakers. Dispersal and stillness, the screams of a woman, what the fuck did you do.

I thought about those in the melee, Alex, and the shooter. In another time, they could have been neighbors. One sneezing, the other, bless you.

There was snow in Minneapolis. They said: subzero temperatures. We were going to get a storm in NYC too. We were waiting for it to happen, trying to prepare by buying pretzels and beer and boxes of mac and cheese. In the shuffling line, time oscillated between the future and the past, but there were signs that we were actually here; that something was happening right this minute. Everyone was a little bit rushed, the set of their mouths a little bit grim. People spoke in murmurs and sussurations. One person stepped out of place to get something they had forgotten. They walked as if they were sleeping. When they hadn’t returned by the time the line moved, we pushed their abandoned cart forward.

Winter has been a “feels like 10º F” kind of situation here in NYC. I’ve been holed up eating soup, reading stories, not talking much. I’m saturated with what’s been going on. I’ve been battling with, and traveling back and forth across the country to take care of, my elderly mother. I’m preparing for things that weigh on my mind.

Right now I’m inclined toward silence in the studio too, experiencing a near-superstitious reluctance to verbalize. I haven’t wanted to talk about, explain, or expose what I’m working on.

The irony, obviously, is that this newsletter is precisely about shining a light on process.

It’s of course not uncommon for artists to be cagey about what they’re making while they’re making it, and we’ve been here before: this tends to happen at the beginning of a project, or after a break in a plateau. In a previous issue:

A few ways I try to protect the germ as it takes shape: talk about it in retrospect; share what it is now versus speculate; focus on process versus prospect…

In another:

The gestational phase of a project is always a tricky one to navigate in terms of verbalization and sharing (both can be toxic for delicate things). So while the germ of the idea comes into its own, I’m gonna try to ruminate and observe, versus describe or define.

Last week I had my first crit/mentorship session of the year (more on this below). Butterflies’ wings came up as an analogy; the consequences of disturbing fragile structures. Dreams came to mind, too: once vivid and alive, they begin disintegrating as soon as one looks too closely, for too long, or tries to capture them in words.

It’s possible to handle delicate things, but there’s a kind of dance I think we have to do. Talk around them; use symbols instead of words; feign nonchalance or even ignorance, until they’re too established to leave.

In the studio

I’d planned on taking January off but was compelled to publish this sooner than later. Not only because I’ve been working, but because I’ve been restless about the newsletter itself. I wanted to, I don’t know, set the stage. This felt uncannily reflected in another newsletter that came into my inbox the other day, with the subject “Going dark:”

We’ve been thinking about what it means to withdraw…What does it mean to step back from spaces that don’t serve us? Can this be done responsibly? How can we protect our attention and energy while still representing and staying true to the things we believe? We’re going to be practicing what we’re preaching. How and where we show up will be changing. Less noise. More signal.

I’m curious how desire for renewal, restraint, and change will manifest here in TLB.

While we think on it, let’s ease in with some talk about new-ish tools I’ve been using, then peek—however obliquely—at a photographic timeline of recent work.

Tools

I now use the Desiderata Bamf fountain pen (close-up in an earlier issue) with Carbon Platinum Black ink almost daily. It’s an investment and relatively high-maintenance, but I think it’s worth it:

The Fude de Mannen fountain pen, inexpensive and lower-maintenance, has become just as core to my drawing practice. It has an angled tip that allows me to go from hairline to very thick stroke width as I sketch. I’ve had it for years but could never get it to work properly. Turns out that the ink cartridges that come with it are trash; use a converter with good ink to get it to perform. CPB to the rescue again! I love this smooth, luxurious ink. If the pen stalls, flush the nib with scalding water (e.g., under the tap) to ungunk after a day away:

Albrecht Dürer watercolor pencil #199 Black has also been in my toolbox for a while. I forgot how much of a joy it is to use. Sketch with a light hand; experiment by adding water:

Watercolor markers—a recent Xmas gift from one of my sisters—are quite fun:

Here is an obligatory shot of my forever inky-fingers:

A timeline of recent events

And now, what I’ve been up to, in a context-light progression of pictures.1

Organizing:

Visualizing:

Expanding:

Feeling:

Framing:

Big picture-ing:

Provisions

I’ve been inspired, and filled up, by so many things the past few weeks. Here are six:

Braeckman x Spilliaert, art book. My newest obsession: the late Belgian artist Léon Spilliaert and his work, mostly Indian ink wash and colored pencil. I came across this fascinating exhibition catalogue as I went down one rabbit hole:

Good Hang with Amy Poeler & Gwyneth Paltrow. Podcast episode. Gwyneth Paltrow may be out of touch, but she’s also really funny.

The Sound of a Wild Snail Eating by Elisabeth Tova Bailey. Observations. A brief book about stillness and patience, written while the author was suffering from a mysterious illness that had her bedbound for years.

A City and its Uncertain Walls by Murakami. Novel. I got this when it launched at midnight at my favourite bookstore in town, the delightfully anachronistic Three Lives and Co. Finally finished it. I wouldn’t call myself a fan of magical realism, but this was hauntingly charming and unsettling.

RCA Animation Films via EoF #11. A collection of animated short films. A goldmine of animated shorts, for free. I love the shuffle feature.

Magician Studio BK. Customized mentorship sessions for animators. Last but not least! I rely heavily on animators in my local community for conversation, critique, and advice. Many are educators as well as practicing artists, and I feel blessed to have these relationships. Magician is run by Amanda Bonaiuto and James Thatcher; each have limited monthly slots for mentees at sliding scale, starting at $75/hour. I’m not sure if they have any slots left but you can probably get on a waitlist if not! I usually meet with Amanda via Zoom so being remote is not an issue.

That’s all2 for today.

Until next time.

I finished my six-minute film 엄마 나라 | Mother Land in August 2023.

Weeks later, it went up as a part of a group exhibit called Han at The Culture House gallery in Washington, D.C.

This film is non-narrative1, non-linear, sans dialogue, with first-pass live shots mixed with likewise-sketchy animation. It was realized by a series of personal catastrophes, all of which had come in quick succession: the disappearance of my mother as I had known her, the death of my father, the dissolution of a five-year relationship.

In many respects it’s a closed film. It was foremost for me: making it was one of the ways I tried to survive, and the process allowed me to be with what I otherwise wouldn’t have been able to hold at the time. Many would be nonplussed by it, especially without context. It would most certainly be difficult to curate or categorize.

So when I sent it out into the festival circuit, it was with low expectations. I was struck and humbled by its world premiere at Brooklyn Film Festival in 2024. It has journeyed far from New York since, to screen at four more festivals around the world:

• Altered Images Oct 2024, London, UK

• American Documentary and Animation Film Festival Mar 2025, Palm Springs, USA

• San Diego Underground Film Festival Apr 2025, USA

• Thessaloniki Animation Film Festival (special screening) Nov 2025, Greece

Now, it is returning home.

As I close out 2025 and quietly make the film available online, I find myself a different person, of a different life. As I welcome it back, I see that it has changed, too.

ARTIST STATEMENT

엄마 나라 | Mother Land, 2023
Watercolor on paper, digital, phonotrope
Animated and shot footage, 6 min

The “phonotrope” is a simple looping animation that comes to life on a turntable. It invites a meditative regard, while simultaneously establishing remove—the animations cannot be seen with the naked eye.

In 2022, the mother I knew disappeared, suffering from depression and the strain of caregiving for almost a decade. A slow burn over summer and fall months exploded over three days in which my mother was involuntarily committed, and my father died. This six minute film, consisting primarily of hand-painted and filmed animations, is a way for me to be present with the raw, intense, and inexpressible in a way that feels both honoring and tender. The months-long process of making it has helped me see what I can’t yet look at directly.

The film is also an exploration of what I believe are parallels of longing: traumatic reverberations in an historical, cultural, and national—as well as the personal and familial—context. As I deliver this film, I find myself confronted with difficult emotions around hidden labor and the price it exacts from Korean women across generations. Legacies of absence and division further complicate how I feel.

Much of the footage is shot with an iPhone and macro lens attachment, held 1 inch away from images spinning 45 revolutions per minute. Inherent repetition in the medium leads to stillness in attention, while the way it forces fragmentation of narrative, underscores realities of fracture.

The film’s loose structure is inspired by salpuri, a traditional Korean shamanic dance of “exorcism.” It’s often referred to as an expression of han, which can be thought of as deep sadness in the context of Korean culture and history. It begins slowly, speeds up, then slows down again, returning physically to where it began—but transitioning spiritually beyond.

Yesterday I woke to a blanket of snow over New York City.

When I drew apart the curtains, big, fluffy flakes were still falling. A steady dusting would continue for hours. I suppose we’ve had some every year, but it’s hard for me to recall local snowfall after 2019. All of Manhattan seemed outdoors by 11am. A sugary Central Park was populated by miniature human beings in pastel-colored puffers slinging snowballs. It was as if the city had fallen under a spell. To my delight this happened on a Sunday, when I try to be clear of plans. The fullness of the day, and its snows, could be all to myself.

As the year comes to a close—again!—I marvel at the cyclical relentlessness of all things: relationships, history, desire, violence.

This morning I awoke to shootings in Sydney and Rhode Island, as well as the deaths of Rob and Michele Reiner. My mother’s voice was thin on the phone. Yesterday’s elation gave way to a dull lowness (surely to rise, and fall, again).

The radiator whistled.

I recently read the Best American Essays [of] 2025, over half of which were about war, hunger, decay, and disaffection. Saturated, I favored those that were less on the nose, like “Zeppole" by Khalil Abusharekh and those that felt more tonally cool (at least on the surface), like Nuar Alsadir’s “On Boredom,” as well as those that felt removed altogether, like “How to Love Animals” by Matthew Denton-Edmundson.

Of course, none of these are truly “removed;” each essay political (how can anything not be, now?); carefully curated and desperate in one way or another.

Afterward, I had a strange feeling of missing something that likely never existed in the first place.

From William Deresiewicz’s “Respect, or the Missing Relation:”

But if we need to love the other in order to treat them correctly, then we’re all in a great deal of trouble. We should not have to empathize or sympathize or understand or “leap the chasm of otherness” or “be in relation.” We only have—but this is not an easy thing—to see the other in itself and for itself.

Yesterday I woke to a blanket of snow over New York City.

2025 retro

I write a summary of milestones every year to track professional progress and notable shifts. If it feels gratuitous, please skip to “In the Studio” or “In closing;” I won’t be offended.

• I became a Jerome Hill Artist Fellow (film).

• I became a Periplus Fellows (creative non-fiction).

• I was shortlisted for the Academy’s Gold Fellowship for Women.

• My film 엄마 나라 | Mother Land (trailer) screened at four festivals—two domestic, two abroad. In the next issue (on December 30th) I’ll be releasing it online to everyone after over three years in the festival circuit.

• I went to Korea to begin research for my next film.

• I showed in two exhibitions: Leisure | 여유 (linework mounted on maple) for Hanbeon Deo at Golden HOF here in NYC.

• Message · 통신 for Yaksok (my first sculptural piece, acrylic on suspended hanji) in Los Angeles.

• I attended a summer session at Martha’s Vineyard Institute of Creative Writing and came away with both knowledge and connections.

• I finished and submitted one essay, “Versions,” with responses currently pending from three journals. I had planned on writing and submitting four this year.

• I read fewer than ten books (not including audio books). Reading so little longform fiction/creative nonfiction has much to do with me falling short of my writing goals.

• I filmed a formal pitch that got me shortlisted for an Academy fellowship. Investors, you can finally see the 3 minute video, below.

• I began animating on paper for the first time (versus digitally then transferring onto paper), using Dragonframe and a custom downshooter setup.

• I received generous guidance and mentorship from professionals who are not obligated to me in any official capacity. Of note are Anna Samo, a member of the Academy and one of the founders of Animation Speak/Easy; and Dr. Donald Quist, an author and professor of creative writing.

• As in recent years, I sought quarterly critique from animator and educator Amanda Bonaiuto, who continues to be an invaluable and timely source of wisdom and insights.

Other notables:

• I was beleaguered by tendinitis this year, a late summer flare-up followed by weeks of food poisoning/stomach flu, then a lingering sinus infection—all of which were unusual for me and hampered an already stop-and-go practice in 2025.

• I saw at least nine theatre performances, including Shakespeare in the Park’s Twelfth Night at the newly renovated Delacorte starring Lupita Nyong’o and Sandra Oh; Waiting for Godot starring Keanu Reeves; Eurydice starring Maya Hawke; Trophy Boys starring Louisa Jacobson; and the intense and marvelous Oedipus starring Lesley Manville.

• My mother came to visit me in NYC. She came with my sister, with whom I’d been increasingly estranged. I’d been working on this relationship for over a decade and, for the first in a long time, we felt like sisters again.

In the Studio

Here’s something I’ve been noodling on:

It’s a sequence of lemons that will fit into the story somewhere down the line. I don’t work linearly, and it’s been cool to learn that I’m not alone (writers Susanna Clarke and R.F. Kuang work in out-of-order chunks, as does animator Sarah E Jenkins).

The looping keys are kind of fun on their own:

I want it to be pretty slow though so there’s been a lot of tedious (albeit meditative) in-betweening:

Just as I got going, I noticed that the shots were shifting for no discernible reason. I thought that my latest downshooter iteration would prevent something like this, so I was disheartened.

The focus shifts, as noted by “1” and “2” in the lower left of the following animated GIF, may look subtle at a glance, but that kind of problem compounds in animation, resulting in e.g., flicker when new images are edited in between existing shots:

I would walk away for a minute then come back to find that shots didn’t look right. I thought I was going crazy.

So that’s been a disruptive drag.

After talking to Dragonframe folks, I realized that this could be a software issue rather than a mechanical one. I’ve reverted to a dev build, and so far that seems to have quieted the gremlins…🤞

Always something 😬

Provisions

For inspiration and restoration:

1. Piranesi by Susanna Clarke. I thought this had just come out, but it was actually published in 2020! She’s the author of Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell, which I also loved. Piranesi is a triumphant re-entry after a decade and a half’s hiatus due to illness. An interview here. I listened to the audio in addition to reading the book; it is excellently narrated by British actor Chiwetel Ejiofor.

2. The neti pot. Whenever my sinuses are out of whack, rinsing them with distilled water and dedicated salts greatly shortens the length of downtime. This is the one I have.

3. Mug cakes, especially on cold nights, with a movie. This one from NYT Cooking is pretty bomb. Cut down on sugar or use allulose (don’t @ me).

4. The peanut butter from Target. I eat a lot of ground peanuts and this is the GOAT. No salt, no sugar.

5. The LAMY Safari rollerball pen. Smooth as butter.

6. Flamingo Estate Olive Oil. I like giving (and getting) things that can be eaten or drunk. I just received a bottle of this grassy, velvety expression and it’s perfect for the gourmand in your life.

7. Coltrane medium-roast decaf beans from Wimp. Full disclosure, the owner is a friend, but I’m really picky about coffee and these are wonderful. If you like Intelligentsia’s Black Cat Espresso beans like I do, you will be hooked on these as a decaf alternative.

8. Suna Chocolates. Delicious high art made by another friend. If you’re in Arizona, these are worth your attention and taste buds.

In closing, radiator

Earlier this week a plumber was working on one of the building’s radiators and forgot to flip the boiler switch back on. That night the temperature fell to 20º F, “feels like 5º.” As it was near midnight when I noticed the rapid cooling of the apartment, I decided to wait until morning to call my landlady.

My flat is always toasty warm, so much so that I have the luxury of keeping the windows open during the bitterest of winter nights. It was shocking to be reminded how insulated I am by modern comforts, and how significant their obliviating power. How exposed I would be without them—in the woods, or at sea.

This year I turned increasingly inward. Retreating at the slightest whiff of drama, withdrawing into a contracting circle of confidants, recusing myself from rooms.

It’s been nice, and I think important, to focus on priorities and meaning in this way, especially in the context of repetitions. Not that this is not hard. Aloneness—despite glittering events, rich bread, warm hearths—can be no less burdensome than loneliness, its more passive and plaintive cousin.

The surfacing clarity is that certain contrasts are worth exploring while others should be gracefully retired. And that what I’m navigating is a desire to engage in a new capacity.

Until next time.

Bonus for Investors: Vespertine pitch

Investors! Below is the 3-minute pitch that got me shortlisted for the Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences Gold Fellowship for Women.

Read more

As if by design, I got food poisoning less than two days before Thanksgiving.

I woke up in the middle of Tuesday night with chills and rapidly-rising nausea, sleeping and expulsing in feverish fits for the next thirty-two hours. At one point I woke to shadows, wondering deliriously why it was dark so early in the day. It was 11pm.

Because I am slightly crazy, I still planned to go to Thanksgiving dinner at a friend’s house. It is always spectacular and I look forward to it every year. By sheer will I made it out of, and returned to, my borough without issue. I was even able to enjoy a taste of every glorious thing at dinner:

The next day, I told another friend that I wasn’t sure what had made me so sick. I was still not well and the bug would endure for another week. I usually have an iron stomach and am able to eat nearly anything—expired milk, unwashed produce, animal left out a tad long on the counter—with impunity. She replied: maybe you weren’t sick from something you ate. Maybe you just needed to release something.

I’ve been thinking about what she said ever since.

In the studio

I’m iterating on my downshooting setup for the umpteenth time. Working with paper is laborious and just frickin hard compared to how I’m used to animating (TVPaint software) but I want to see how I, and the work, could evolve through it. So I’ve been doubling down to make the mechanics as ergonomic and joyful to use as possible.

First, a review of the rig’s evolution.

Iteration 1.

I started with a registration “system” taped to my dining table. I didn’t put much thought into the setup and had just dived in, curious to see how small and fast I could go. I was using Dragonframe for the first time and realized how key (🥁) it was going to be in animating this way.

Iteration 2.

I made the rig portable and made an effort at registration.

Iteration 3.

I dialed in the resolution and made the rig more structurally stable. Even at this point I didn’t realize exactly what it would mean to be “precise” in this context (spoiler: way beyond what I’d expected):

Iteration 4.

I put together a darkroom to deal with lighting:

While each setup was an improvement on its predecessor, it still wasn’t there yet.

1. The color temperature was dialed in but lateral lighting created shadows:

   

2. Nothing felt ergonomic. Discomfort distracted me and made hard work harder.

3. The setup felt impractical and sloppy. My studio is also my home and it took a lot of time to register and break down every single day. Sometimes it took an hour to dial things back in and that is a sh*tty way to work.

4. The rig was unwieldy. There were too many floating pieces, the base thick and heavy, the whole thing too fussy and bulky to carry, let alone port to remote studios (e.g., at residencies).

5. I didn’t like looking at it. I’m not a stereotypical perfectionist but I am type A, and a professional designer who values simplicity and minimalism. And this did not feel simple, nor minimal.

This brings us to iteration 5.

I started by sketching on paper. The designs included ideas for a lightweight collapsible darkroom too, but I’ll tackle that later:

I almost forgot how fun it is to design and build something:

The basic idea:

I started using physical levels to register the camera instead of relying on digital:

Finally:

The new workstation setup:

I got rid of an old Cinema Display (RIP) to make room for the downshooter and I can now easily swivel between the Cintiq and the new setup. In addition to being a digital drawing tablet, the Cintiq (which is height and angle-adjustable) is now also: main display, writing desk, drawingboard, and lightbox rest as needed:

I added a removable felt strip on the bottom of the Cintiq that will serve as both ledge for paper and rest for a lightbox:

The Cintiq can also be repositioned for typing:

The new rig:

1. Is small enough to travel with (about the same size as my lightbox when collapsed)

2. Has attachments for easily removable, adjustable, lightweight, rechargeable overhead lights

3. Uses a glass top for unimpeded illumination

4. Can deliver foolproof registration every time (I need to tidy up some things glass-top when materials arrive)

5. Can fold flat (transit closure and handle to be added later)

I took it for a spin and couldn’t be happier:

I love not having to reach around a light or being forced to slouch. The registration is unfussy, and if I need to move the phone, re-registration is a non-issue.1

I’ve further simplified things with voice control so I don’t need to touch the phone as much:

An ergonomic workspace that’s a joy to use and a pleasure to look at?

Definitely worth the trouble.

Provisions

1. May Ray: When Objects Dream at the Met. It’s huge. Allot two visits for this.

2. Ordinary Life animated short by Yoriko Mizushiri (free on Animation Showcase).

3. Hydraulic Fitness Stepper, a small-footprint, goes-under-the-chair godsend for rainy days and late night cabin fever, good also while watching something brainless.

4. Alchemised isn’t the kind of thing (romantasy) I normally consume but I got it for free on Audible and ended up enjoying it during walks and errands. I may be biased because of Saskia Maarleveld’s exceptional narration, but the non-smutty parts (about war, religion, morality) felt almost literary.

5. Sunday Morning cinnamon rolls. The hype is real. Skip the blueberry lemon curd.

6. 15 Woodworking Basics You Should Know. I guess this is what I’m into now.

7. KPop Demon Hunters (Netflix). As an immigrant kid who suffered through Orange County in the 90s, I would have given anything to have had access to something like this. Golden, truly.

In closing, gratitude

Lately I’ve been feeling stuck in a kind of hectic holding pattern, a lot of effort without satisfaction or epiphany. I’ve been overthinking too (not great for making art), and missing the feeling of finishing something. This is probably why I took so much pleasure in designing and constructing my new downshooter setup—design is about problem-solving and execution, very much not what art is about.

That’s perhaps its own trouble and blessing.

When illness struck, I was forced to stop spinning in place. The violent physicality of sickness knocked me out of my head, keeping me in the body. Being sick gave me an excuse to do nothing, be nothing, with little choice but to accept: fever, fatigue, fugue. I could allow myself to stop gritting my teeth toward some pre-defined “next” in the context of an agenda.

In the end I feel so grateful for the brutality of this thrashing, for being relieved of control, and for the purging, purifying nature of sickness, where a body empties out and the mind enters a rarefied and blissful nothingness.

Until next time.

My tendinitis is slowly retreating after a steroid injection. It has acquired a possessive modifier, as if it were something I own and keep in the house; like a broken dish, or a baleful animal. Recovery is so subtle day to day that progress is noticeable only through a longer lens. Two red points remain where a nurse practitioner had punctured the skin to push a substantial needle through. Twice. The marks look as though they could have been made by a small but determined vampire.

My disability incentivized me to change things in my daily routine. One was to do something about the hard-to-turn steam knob on my espresso machine, which was not only a pain (literally) to use but lessened something that I otherwise looked forward to.

The Breville Barista Express is an unfancy but dependable workhorse, and quite popular. It’s also notorious for spotty workmanship in recent years. When my wrist was healthier the knob was a small annoyance. It only takes a second to turn after all. But it’s something I use every day, first thing in the morning, sometimes again in the afternoon, and I turn it six times per use. Cumulatively, I spend more time with it than with a lot of other things in life.

I decided to replace it with a lever, which wasn’t the quickest thing to do but also not the craziest. Now I’m delighted every time I steam milk. I no longer dread tussling with the knob and my hand doesn’t hurt afterward. I like looking at it. It was unequivocally worth the effort and time.

All this to say: there are bigger problems in life, but exactly: why bother with the small ones if it can be helped? Smallest persistences are often the least tolerable—a shard of glass, a paper cut, that scratchy tag on the inside of a shirt—and their elimination often the most gratifying.

Anyway I would rather save my wrist, and headspace, for other things.

Optimization and pleasure casade. In my opinion they play an outsized role in productivity, and eventually quality of work. I believe that there is no irritation in a routine too small to fix.

In the studio

I’m finishing up paintings for an exhibit and dialing in technical details for my next film. I recently shared a preview of my animated short 엄마 나라 | MOTHER LAND (trailer) with Investors. The film will go online in the next few months for everyone. Today: behind the scenes on both painting and animation.

—

It’s been a mad few weeks and I haven’t been able to spend much time outside the studio. I’m depleted! Thankfully it is November (how the f) and I plan to slow down and recharge while the world succumbs to the holiday crush.

Paintings

I’m going to be in a group exhibit called Yaksok (“Promise” in Korean) from November 27th, 2025 to January 17th, 2026 in California.

The artist statement for my piece, Message · 통신:

A promise is an oath made and fulfilled by a promiser to a promisee. This presents as a giver/receiver dynamic in which the promiser is active, the promisee passive. But are things as unambiguous as they appear? What role does desire, hope, and prophesy play in fulfilment? Might a promise originate in the promisee, the one to whom it returns?

Message · 통신 is a hanging installation of acrylic on hanji (Korean mulberry paper). Three panels whose arrangement is reminiscent of byeongpungs (병풍, traditional Korean folding screens depicting symbolic images with auspicious meaning) show a supplicant sending a signal; a consciousness hovering over; a god hand listening. Hanji’s hardy materiality is a metaphor for resilience; white paper and hardware offer a canvas for otherworldly visions; suspension allows the panels to stir and sway with the movement of proximate spirits. The fragility of the materials speaks to the tenuous nature of such dialogue.

I’ve never worked on a sculptural piece before so it was a long process of (new) problem-solving. I iterated on the concept through three prototypes over many weeks; an abridged summary, below.

I started out with sketches before moving on to acrylic on 14x54” strips of hanji. I tested various formations, materials, and methods for mounting:

Ultimately I decided to go with thicker pvc pipes up top and slightly smaller ones on the bottom. I also landed on a formation that emulates panels on a traditional Korean decorative folding screen, or byeongpung (병풍):

The panels will be just over a few feet off the ground and hang fairly close together:

After the first iteration I revised the composition to span three panels instead of two:

I designed and put together some pipe-sleeves (this was a huge pain):

Painting was the most fun but it took the least time. I used practice sheets which aren’t exactly suited for suspension, but it’s where things led so I went with it:

I ironed the paper before mounting. I also steam-ironed after mounting but didn’t have a chance to document that. Next time I might look into pre-stretching (thicker) hanji before painting on it:

By the way, I got this tiny table saw and it is everything. I can’t believe how much it can do! I used it to machine and sand my pvc pipes, but it can handle a lot more.

While I loved the kinetics of single-string suspension, the movement was too unpredictable and wild. I ended up going with double-string which allows the panels to move while maintaining consistent relationships with peer panels:

Enfin:

There was something uncanny about producing this piece, as though it came in and through me. I look at it and think: did I make that, where did it come from.

Off it goes to Los Angeles. More details soon.

Animation

I’m back on the film next week; I’ll be brief on it for now.

A lot of lessons and questions came out of finishing my primer¹ and I’ve been dialing things in since. Remaining biggies are lighting and scale.

I tackled lighting first.

Filming with natural light was causing flicker, so I needed to create a more controlled environment for my downshooting setup. So I cobbled together a mini dark room out of cardboard:

These are from test shots at different times of the day, in combination with different kinds of ambient/artificial light:

It’s been working great:

Lighting is now in a good place.

In parallel I’ve been trying to put in hours to improve dexterity and comfort with this method of animating, particularly in terms of scaling shots and moving the camera around:

Next, I need to develop opinions on resolution, detail, and—potentially—color.

Provisions

Stuff to sustain, nourish, inspire.

1. Carottes Malika is one of most delightful things to eat, and quite elegant. Simply:

   1. Toss carrot strips with some sesame oil (this is KEY), olive oil, balsamic, and ACV.

   2. Dress with coriander leaves.

   3. Sprinkle with chili pepper flakes and sesame seeds.

   4. Salt and pepper, bien sûr.

2. Life isn’t fair. “In this rare interview, renowned poet and essayist Anne Carson, known for her unorthodox blending of genres and forms, reflects on her approach to writing and touches on themes of memory, autofiction, and her recent diagnosis of Parkinson’s disease.”

3. Weapons is now streaming on HBO. Halloween might be over but oh my god. Mysterious, unsettling, creepy. Strangely moving. too.

4. Katabasis. Kuang uses the word “purchase” a lot. Find purchase. Make purchase. The writing felt relatively lazy and uneven. Let’s be real, this is a beach read; I preferred her more literary, tighter Babel. Still, I’m a sucker for beautiful last sentences and appreciated the final nod to Dante. Also, the woman is not even 30 and she’s on her one millionth novel. You have to admit, you’re impressed.

5. Confetti. You can now see Amanda Bonaiuto’s film online! This experimental animated short has inspired me out of many creative ruts.

In closing, details

I have a little brass dish that fits in the palm of my hand. It has unusual heft for such a tiny thing. I admire its brushed surface, its finely-honed simplicity. It seems surprisingly singular; I’ve looked for another like it and have come up empty-handed.

Friends know that I’m partial to small objects, especially if they’re made out of ceramic, glass, or metal. All the better if their silhouette is minimal: dessert plates with barely a lip. Salt spoons. Lilliputian jars for jam, eyes of newt.

I don’t underestimate the pernicious power of trivialities (small baddies can metastasize, or skewer), but I also believe that the power of small things can and do work in the other direction.

In my home studio, I eventually iterate on every detail, editing and optimizing in a leisurely, unending cycle. Consequent ease of use leads to beauty in the hand as well as for the eye. The experience feels like being in a relationship with a living thing, the space evolving with me.

Routine pleasure leads to exponential restfulness. That in turns leads to freedom and expansiveness in which making things itself becomes a greater pleasure.

For me, anyway.

Until next time.

The kind of tendinitis I suffer from now and again is called De Quervain’s Tenosynovitis. Tendons on the thumb side of my right wrist become inflamed, and lateral deviation is painful. After a steroid injection last spring, I recovered, promptly forgot that I ever had this problem, and blithely returned to overexertion, then to inevitable injury. I get …

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Remember how a few months ago I had to film a pitch in one week?

I can now share why: I was nominated for the Academy’s Gold Fellowship for Women back in March. In June I was notified that I’d advanced to the semifinals and would I please provide a formal pitch. In August, I received news that I was one of the finalists. In September, fellowships were awarded by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences to one U.S.-based, and one non-U.S., woman filmmaker. Spoiler: I did not receive the U.S. fellowship (and the $35,000 that comes with it), but as one of the final contenders I will get matched with an Academy mentor in 2026.

The six of us (including the two fellowship recipients) were just announced by name:

I’m incredibly honored. The recognition feels doubly nice because I’ve mostly been heads down, just doing the hard things that make me happy (versus the hard things that don’t).

A big part of why I tell stories is to connect, but ultimately my practice is a long game for the ideas, the doing of it—because, quite simply, I like it.

I like external rewards too, and am grateful for them. They can be beautiful byproducts of, and lead to financial support for, living the way I want to live. In any case, I hope it’s encouraging to see them come to a weirdo like me: doggedly consistent, consistently advancing; who nevertheless is not polished or methodical in the conventional sense.

In the studio

I’m working part time on my next animated short film. In the previous issue, I talked about non-animation work. It went out only to Investors because of the intimate nature of the content; directly from journals and sketchbooks. This issue contains both non-animation and animation updates. Tendinitis seems to be improving, albeit at a glacial pace.

Yaksok · acrylic on hanji

I took a brief break from my film to start preparing for an upcoming show called Yaksok (Korean, “Promise”) in Los Angeles. Two shots from the recent investor-only issue for context, below.

After many sketches and compositional iterations, I decided to paint this:

I’d fully intended to paint it on a cut of 26x42 inch paper:

But ended up on these practice strips of hanji with acrylic of all things, both of which I’ve relatlively little experience with:

When I hung the strips up to dry, I was struck by how they moved when I moved. I also liked how the picture changed according to my perspective:

I’m going to make a few refinements and will repaint these. I also need to figure out mounting. But the meat of the installation is in a good place! This process has been for me near-ideal in terms of reception-to-articulation, where I listened and let surface what wanted to surface, how it wanted to surface.

This piece, tentatively titled Manifest, explores the idea that a promise is a collaboration between the promiser and the promisee. The kinetic, sculptural aspect of the work has felt very much in vibe with the idea; its fragility a metaphor, its movement suggestive.

Animation · graphite on index cards

One of the most valuable features of a live/work art studio, at least for a type A neat-freak like me, is its modularity. Nearly everything in my flat can be repositioned, reconfigured, and repurposed with ease:

I’m trying to animate with this setup whenever possible to keep my dining table free of clutter. As for the animation itself, the primer¹ is finally finished. I could honestly refine for a while longer (and do have a few loose ends to tie up), but part of why I create a primer in the first place is to be able to go fast without being precious.

Inbetweening, 1x to 4x to 20x speed:

Most importantly, a primer provides: an opportunity to practice and experiment “in theme,” a contextual reference of iterations (style, mediums, technique), and immediately applicable lessons.

Key takeaways from the primer

1. Separate motion tracks for flexiblity, within reason.

2. “Pre-comping” (collapsing initial layers into one before adding another) is a way to work with complicated, multi-threaded movement.

3. Finalize speed of one layer before adjusting those of related layers.

4. Mind the safe areas. Experiment with field guides, maybe a stencil.

5. Straight-ahead animation has a distinctive, dreamlike feel compared to pose-to-pose; lean into this instead of fighting it.

6. Slow things down. This is related to the previous takeaway.

7. Store index card drawings like recipes.

   

8. Write frame numbers in the upper right corner of cards for easy reference.

   

   Previously, I had frame numbers bottom left, making it hard to locate drawings quickly:

   

9. Use a standard, low gsm index card. Low quality paper is not necessarily “bad;” lots of professional artists like Tina Berning intentionally paint on “cheap” or found paper, even with watercolors.

10. Use an acrylic sheet to flatten paper before shooting, as needed.

11. Use controlled lighting consistently. (I’ve been lazy but will need to be stricter about this going forward.)

12. Use a bright lightbox; struggling to inbetween is no fun.

    

    I vetted two light boxes recently, by the way:

    

    To be honest the cheaper one works great. I love that it provides a warm temp option and doesn’t need to be plugged in. It has a ridge which may bother some but I ended up using it for registration and it kept cards from sliding off when working at an angle.

13. A mechanical pencil won’t provide as much texture as a regular pencil but it works well for detailing at small scale. HB for a dark-enough line that erases well.

14. Setting up (and in general, working with) a downshooter takes time. The slightest camera bump means moments lost to re-registration. Keep optimizing. Use tricks. Set up as much as possible the day prior.

15. I’ve been using this numbering system: base 1, 2, 3, 4; breakdowns 10, 20, 30, 40, inbetweens 11, 12, 13, 14. I may do a whole ‘nother issue on this.

Evolution of technique and expression in the primer

• 0 to 6s: sloppy as I figure things out, animating small on paper (I think 2x3”) for the first time, using Dragonframe (note the pre-license watermark).

• 7 to 15s: improving alignment, fluidity, expression. Kind of digging the visibility of annotations and hardware in some of the frames.

• 16s onward: improving resolution, dialed-in scale (3x5”), began using a mechanical pencil for easier inbetweening. Lots of flicker due to inconsistent lighting, which I don’t wholly dislike.

• 21s onward: playing with 3+ layers (moon, tectonic heads, stairs). A special kind of hell.

• 37s onward: finally leaning into what makes straight-ahead unique.

Investors, continue reading to watch the primer with sound, below. I also discuss the biggest takeaway from this exercise, share what I’ve been taking in for inspiration and nourisment (Provisions), and end with a microessay about Brian Eno (In Closing).

Everyone else, hope you enjoyed this rather dense and nerdy issue!

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I ate dinner at an outdoor table the other night. It was probably the last time this year that I’ll do so with bare shoulders. Late afternoon heat smoothed into evening, just that side of balmy. There was a continuous breeze. It would diminish at times to almost nothing before growing and waning again, seemingly without end. Summer i…

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This morning, the radiator clanged on.

It’s September already. I’m both elated and terrified. Fall is beautiful in New York and I’m luxuriating in falling temperatures and shorter days. In parallel, I feel in debt to time and am trying not to think of the waning year in terms of all that I’ve done, and not done. Administrative duties for my mother overwhelmed most of last week. Tendinitis is flaring up again, almost completely immobilizing my right thumb.1

By chance the other day, I came across an article on Ursula Le Guin’s writing routine. I feel like this happens surprisingly often. I’m not even a fan (I haven’t read anything she’s written, though I’ve tried; not very hard), but I now know off the top of my head that between breakfast and noon, she put in five hours of writing. This is my kind of ideal, especially Mondays through Wednesdays, Thursdays being meeting days and Fridays receiving appointments and administrative overflow. Thu, Fri, Sat evenings absorb social engagements. Sometimes—like last week—everything gets blown out of the water.

One thing that struck me is that, along with five hours of work, Le Guin set aside the first 45 minutes of her day for ostensibly doing nothing, two hours in the afternoon for reading and music, three hours in the evening for dinner.2 The straightforward expansiveness—and consequent productivity—in this feels like a lesson, and a reminder.

The analog in my life, I suppose, is Sundays. They’re for speaking little, seeing no one, and avoiding obligations—even to myself. I’m not religious but I hold to this religiously. Rest may seem counter-intuitive when behind and indebted, but personal history has proven that in the long run, recess pays dividends.

In the studio

I'm working on my next film, currently part time. I share progress every two weeks. In the previous issue I discussed compositing, or animating in layers, on paper. In this update, a lot of inbetweening on the primer¹ to slow things down.

First tectonic head layer, soloed:

Second tectonic head, soloed and slowed down:

Rear stairs, slowed way down:

Compared to last time:

Members, continue below to see how these layers come together in a composite. Plus, a peek at a work journal entry (where do the hours go?!), Provisions (animation is hard, let’s eat cinnamon rolls), and a microessay on how I did Sundays in my twenties.

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Summer in NYC is usually, for me, a time of excess and overwhelm. I once likened the breakneck feeling to being on a runaway-train.

Everyone seems to be launching a book or getting married; Shakespeare in the Park reconvenes (splashier than ever with multiple headliners and a newly renovated Delacorte); beloveds rotate through town with a sequential brutality that feels pre-meditated. In addition, big things tend to die in summer: the refrigerator, the A train, the HVAC system at my mother’s house. This requires detours, cross-country administration, funds.

I myself become a blur.

I develop a strange feeling of disassociation. My center feels dislodged (off, if you will), and the disequilibrium has a domino effect. I sleep and wake late, my Sundays disappear, my attention span struggles to hold a long article. Deep work becomes elusive; I’m distracted by text messages and Instagram reels.

As summer begins to cool, the spell starts to lift; I emerge from the extended fugue. I say “No,” more often. I put away the phone. I start to pull myself together.

This happens every year.

In the studio

I'm gearing up to animate my next film. I share progress every two weeks; I’m almost done with the primer1. In the previous issue I shared what it’s looking like so far, to temporary soundtrack, with Members. In the primer’s final segment, the night outside shifts to the inside. This update is about compositing.2

During crit today, I said: Animating can be so joyless.

Making things move on paper can be very, very slow-going. I’m impressed by how soul-suckingly removed from story it can get. The process is further stymied by the fact that I’m drawing everything on paper, and shooting versus scanning, for the first time. I’m figuring out methods of iteration as I go.

We left off here:

I cleaned it up a bit since then:

I want to retain the look of childlike mark-making, so I’ll continue with graphite on index cards (versus paint / ink on cels, or transparencies). Drawings will be blended3 using “darker color:”4

The result is not a perfect match:

So I use curves to adjust:

Before, and after, curve adjustment (animated GIF):

In any case, I have to draw each layer, or “track,” separately. I can lean on the lightbox a little, but because I’m using complex camera movement and morphing, where shapes and layers interact in ways that are hard to predict, it’s somewhat like drawing blindfolded.

It’s remarkable how much suffering it takes to make things move so little.

Enjoy the play by play.

A tectonic face:

Another tectonic face (a blip):

Composited:

Right away I didn’t like how synchronized this felt. If the animation had been on a single track, I would have had to redraw the frames with no guarantees. Instead, I was able to simply move the second track a few frames over to play with offset. This is the main benefit of compositing:

Next, rear stairs:

Composited:

The animation was already brisk, but by the time I added the front stairs…

and composited it…

There’s way too much information to process. Story begins to feel muddled, becomes harder to read. So I re-time the base to slow things down:

Significantly slower!

This should give us more room to move without being rushed. By this point though I was going cross-eyed and felt increasingly uncertain about what I was looking at, or how I felt about it.

So I finagled an hour of crit from an experienced animator friend whose craft and opinion I respect a lot. We don’t meet often but each time we do, I get a ton out of it. I walked her through what I had. I complained a little. We discussed scanning v. downshooting, “philosophies” around inbetweening, camera flow. We asked each other questions. I ended up articulating thoughts around paper size for the first time.

A very good session.

What a relief to get visceral reactions to something that hadn’t felt fresh to me for weeks. This exchange not only encouraged and energized me, but in a way, it gave me back my eyes. I can see the work again; I can move forward with renewed momentum. And joy.

Not a moment too soon.

Provisions

• I’m Late, animated short.
  Sawako Kabuki’s work is fun, sexy, irreverent. Cool to see it in the context of a topic like this:

• “Shadow of a Doubt. How anxiety hijacked modern life,” essay in Harper’s.
  ”Perhaps it stood to reason that after centuries of stigmatizing people for mental illness, we would cleave to an innate model that exonerated them from blame. But in the process we did something unwittingly pernicious, deflecting onto the individual genome our collective failings.”

• “The Way We Live Now: 11-11-01; Lost and Found,” oldie-but-goodie essay in NYT by Colson Whitehead.
  “History books and public television documentaries are always trying to tell you all sorts of ''facts'' about New York. That Canal Street used to be a canal. That Bryant Park used to be a reservoir. It's all hokum. I've been to Canal Street, and the only time I ever saw a river flow through it was during the last water-main explosion. Never listen to what people tell you about old New York, because if you didn't witness it, it is not a part of your New York and might as well be Jersey.”

• Balsamic mushroom toast, recipe.
  I never knew garlic confit was such a death trap, but it is one of the finest things so I throw caution to the wind and make tiny Sunday batches for myself. This closely replicates the delectable mushroom ricotta toast at Dante WV. Confit is key; top with pickled onion and drizzle with olive oil. I use whipped ricotta which is messier and much more fun. Devour the confit within one week.

  

• Balm Amour, lip balm.
  I’m a lip balm addict and this one is truly special. I’ve been following Violette Serrat’s company VIOLETTE_FR since inception, and all of her products are gorgeous. It’s hard to avoid transactionality as a business scales, but somehow she has kept it personal.

In closing, a girl walks home alone late at night

I attend a wedding in New Haven, Connecticut, on Sunday evening. It’s about a two-hour train ride. I have back-to-back meetings on Monday so I take the 9:30pm back, arriving in Harlem close to midnight. After sitting for so long, I want to walk.

In anticipation, I had on sneakers and something with pockets. I place my ID in my left pocket. Keys in my right. I pull on my cardigan. I pull a sleeve over my watch. I palm my phone with my right hand, and pull down the other sleeve.

I start walking briskly down 125th. I walk next to the wall. I stand with my back against a post while waiting for the light to change.

I reach Lenox Avenue. The whites of someone’s eyes glow in my direction. I pass: teenagers with an Insomnia Cookie box. 7th Street Burger with a tiny sterile vestibule. The Whole Foods sign like a church beacon, neon green. A couple with a baby carriage. Two middle-aged women on the corner of Lenox and 127th, chatting in what sounds like Swahili. They lean on their hips, they talk easy. Some people are walking their dogs. I look over my shoulder five times.

Around 133rd street, something rushes out before me. It is a rat the size of a small dog. I have earbuds in—I know, ill-advised—and Rachel Cusk’s sonorous voice says, reality became malleable, was always giving way and changing its rules.

I make it home in about 35 minutes.

Until next time.

Hey, this is the 100th issue of TLB!

To mark the occasion I’m going to talk a little bit about why I write it, and what I think its “value” is for readers and financial investors.

Value is a weird thing to talk about when it comes to newsletters. No one’s asking us to write them; some may not even call it labor. I don’t sell “tips” or “how tos” like on financial or technical newsletters, though I do provide some when it feels organic to do so (e.g., how I shot a film pitch in one week, or how I set up a downshooter for tiny drawings).

I think of TLB as a play by play of what long term commitment looks like. This means that the “value” from reading it might also best be described as something cumulative.

Each issue on its own is a 2-week snapshot. You might see 30 drawings for a film, and out of context, maybe that’s not super exciting. Between projects, there might not be anything resembling production at all.

If you’re on the ride long enough though, you might come to see that these updates—those 30 drawings, a slew of days spent at the river, a bowl of cottage cheese—connect larger points of culmination like words do for a sentence, and eventually, a story. And maybe that’s both interesting and motivating.

The story, speaking of which, so far:

Issue 1 to 26: My animated short Chamoe premiered in the U.S. at BAM. Issues leaned technical, and somewhat more formal, then, but TLB’s structure and ethos remain close to what they were in 2021. TLB was a 2022 Substack Featured Publication.

Issue 27 to 47: As I was exploring ideas for my next film, my father passed away, my mother fell ill, and my relationship of five years dissolved—all around the same time. It was rough. Throughout, I persisted from cul-de-sac to creative cul-de-sac. TLB was a 2023 Substack Featured Publication.

Issue 48 to 58: Finally, a spark. Phonotrope experiments would lead to my next film, 엄마 나라 | MOTHER LAND (trailer).

Issue 59 to 87: Exhibitions, festivals, fellowships. 2024 was a big year: I became a Jerome Hill Artist Fellow (film), a Periplus Fellow (prose), my work went up in a trendy new restaurant near Rockefeller Center in Manhattan. The first essay in my collection was published in The Audacity (read it here, unpaywalled). 엄마 나라 | MOTHER LAND had its world premiere at Brooklyn Film Festival and I was invited to be a guest at Animation Speak/Easy 🤯

Issue 88 to 100: That brings us to today! I continue to navigate how it’s all one thing and am gearing up for my next film. I was also recently nominated for a moonshot opportunity and filmed a professional pitch for the first time.

You may have noticed that throughout all this, I’ve been promoting TLB less and less. (Substack doesn’t seem to like this 😅. What I don’t like is marketing.) I’d rather share art with intention, with those who believe that slow, curiosity- versus profit-driven work is necessary for a healthier world. I also feel safer sharing early work-in-progress with folks who believe in what I do enough to financially invest in it.

These are the main reasons why paywalls go up. Not because I’m selling something.

Ultimately it’s hard to materially articulate why I think doing work like this, consuming and supporting work like this, is “valuable.” It’s hard to materially articulate the “value” of a lot of of things, much like it’s hard to write a formula for a funny joke, or romantic chemistry.

But I hope highlighting process over product, prioritizing transformation over transaction, contribute to the side of the scale across from fast generation and faster consumption. I hope it’s as much pleasure reading my work as it is seeing it come to life in real time.

Thank you all for reading, watching, witnessing, connecting. Deepest gratitude to sustaining Members for putting their bets down on this side of the scale.

100 feels good; here’s to 100 more ❤️

In the studio

I’m working on the end of a primer1, where a strange night landscape turns out to be on the inside as much as it is on the outside.

It’s the most complicated part of the primer, and I’ll be using it to test relatively complex compositions as well as compositing.

Working primarily with pencil and paper, I’m surprised to find that I’m not missing the conveniences of digital animation much. I recently read this interview with Kohana Wilson on EOF, and what she said resonated with me a lot:

Digital animation has a permanence and uncanny quality that I sometimes struggle with, I think because it can feel hard at times to locate the person within it. This isn’t blanketly true, but I prefer working analog in my own animations for this reason.

In particular, I’m having fun “animating blind,” or drawing without playing through to check timing or fluidity as I go. Seeing an animation come together after a long drawing session feels like Christmas to me:

I’ve been going too fast to (over)think, and that hones dexterity and intuition in its own way. I love it. Not getting hung up on “perfection” makes it so much easier to bring a train of thought into the station, make discoveries, build momentum with an idea.

OK, so—compositing2.

I’m going to draw this final scene asynchronously in layers before compositing (instead of using cels3) because I want to continue on paper with graphite. I also want to avoid going crazy trying to animate multiple flows of movement at the same time.

I’m applying what I learned while animating the first segment of the primer, when I wished that I had animated the hand separately from the rest of the scene. Seeing into the future: more flexibility, less frustration.

Here’s what the first layer of the ending (drawn blind!) looked like in the initial pass—not bad:

After playing it through, I revised the rabbit a few times:

It turned out like this:

It has a different feel; I’ll let it sit before I go with a direction. The beauty of compositing is that I can move onto animating other parts of the scene while I wait. I can refine it independently at any time.

The rest of the issue is for Members:

• The primer, end-to-end (about 30s), with sound! It’s astounding how much of a difference music and context make for the story.

• Provisions: a shortlist of good things I’ve been consuming, plus NYC gems.

• A microessay about a neighborhood curiosity in Harlem.

Everyone else, you’re of course welcome to join in! Otherwise bye for now, and thanks again.

✨ Become a Member ✨

Members, take a look at the primer so far, with sound. For the audio, I’m exploring Pansori, an old form of musical storytelling in Korea. It’s usually performed by a vocalist and drummer. I’m currently using a test track:

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I was talking to a friend recently about how “it’s all one thing” is finally becoming a less theoretical part of my studio practice. Working on a project of words alongside a project of pictures feels, for the first time, fluid and organic (ish); I’ve been able to focus more on creative versus operational problems.

Context-switching has been a particular struggle for the past year or so, evident from entries like:

Working on two projects in parallel has been challenging. “It’s all one thing” feels like a koan of some kind; the answer revealing itself in the shifting light if you look at it just so; lost again at the slightest change in attitude or circumstance.

and:

I want get better at understanding (and practicing) another aspect of “it’s all one thing,” which is “it’s all one life.” Disrupting routine can feel terrifying—but I want to be able to make art, anywhere, any time. I don’t want it to feel so rigid; inertial.

and still yet:

There’s a chance that this kind of creative context-switching may ultimately prove unsustainable. At least, not great for the work. There are times when momentum continues to build on, say, animation for a period of time that proves too long for the writing to sit fallow, and vice versa.

“It’s all one thing”—but it’s tricky, you know? Ideas are delicate. They need to be kept warm.

Of course, I could just be overthinking it.

A few weeks ago I caught myself sitting at table, making and shooting drawings, when something sparked in my brain for an essay. I scribbled a note, then went back to the film. A few days later I incorporated the note into an essay, which I revised and submitted last Wednesday. All this time I was drawing images for the film, index cards stacking and unstacking on the dining table next to salad and bread.

It sounds undramatic but this kind of flow has been largely elusive until recently.

So, what changed?

I think it’s me; I have new muscles.

The general shape of my movements have remained the same, but the articulations feel more, I guess, gestural. I draw a line as before, but today it might have a propulsive start and a tapering finish, because I’ve engaged from the shoulder and thrown, instead of dragged a mark uniformly and in terror, across the page.

Only regularity and repetition can do this. This is the formula for change; this is how we evolve.

In the studio

I finalized an essay and submitted it, as I said.

Members, read on for esssay and film bts, plus a microessay on how NYC has changed for me since I transplanted almost a decade ago. Everyone else, thanks so much for reading—hope you enjoyed the opening microessay.

Here is an evolution of a sentence:

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This is a long issue, and one of the few without a paywall as I spin up my animated film. We can thank Members, and the Jerome Hill Foundation, for making this work possible 🙏

I run each biweekly issue on a loose theme that summarizes the preceding two weeks of work. Every TLB issue goes something like this:

• Microessay

• Behind the scenes

• Provisions (inspo/what I consumed)

• Microessay

In this issue I go in-depth on optimizing my downshooting rig (a setup for taking photos of drawings for the film) for a particular resolution (3.5x2 inches).

It’s kind of technical…but not really? Mainly this is a peek into one artist’s life, creative problem-solving, plus reflections on the world we’re making in.

It’s for anyone who’s into process, productivity, making things. Also, NYC, and literature! Feel free to skip around, hit the opening or closing microessay and some Provisions, maybe just the film stuff In the Studio, whatever.

Enjoy.

Want to support what I make?

✨ Become a Member ✨

The first thing I do when I get up these days is put a hand against the window.

When the glass doesn’t feel too warm, especially on the north side, I slide the sash up a little. If what floats in is thermally neutral—however debatably—I do some version of a heel-click and rush to open every other window in my flat.

More often than not, what surges in is angry dragon’s breath. But breath can’t be angry; it doesn’t have feelings; dragons aren’t real. What I mean maybe is that I wish it were angry, that the heat were from reproach or fury; because that would suggest that it’s still alive, whatever “it” is.

Instead it feels like air from something dying, an exhalation of the dead. It scares me.

As the day wears on I hold off as long as I can before turning the air conditioning back on. As soon as I close the windows, I feel cut off; entombed. I’m already thinking about tomorrow, when I might open them again.

Before I shut the last, I listen for birds, or please, cicadas.

They say we’re the last generation to see fireflies. Ironically, due to unexpectedly “ideal” conditions here in NYC—and in a show of defiance, grace, maybe both—they’ve been manifesting in a temporary but spectacular illusion of abundance.

In the studio

I rent a small New York City apartment. The apartment also happens to be my art studio. This means I’m in constant negotiation between eating/resting space and making/writing space.

My reluctance to buy new things, especially overly-specialized tools (there are exceptions), helps a little with turf war tetris: a lot of what I own serves multiple functions. The dining table, as you know, doubles as my work table. Books adorn, press, buttress. Picture frames transform into camera extensions. Kettle bells, when I’m not lifting them, serve as counter balances for downshooting rigs.

I like it this way, mostly. But the situation is heavily biased toward entropy, and clutter drives me crazy.

All this to say,

having a sketchy downshooting setup with multiple moving parts—time-consuming to clean up and recalibrate every time I want to eat—alongside the usual sprawl of paper and paints and ink, was getting annoying.

My first round of experiments say I should continue downshooting, so I thought it was time to invest in a sustainable setup, and to refine technical specifications. After a week of tinkering and no fewer than four iterations, this is where I ended up:

The following are the conclusions and decisions I reached. You can see evolution (e.g., thick to thin line, cleaner border) in the animation test farther down:

1. 3.5x2” drawings on 5x3”, 100 gsm index cards going forward. This gives me a safe area and removes the need to custom cut 🙌

2. Camera (my old iPhone SE) will sit 5” inch from drawings.

3. A 12” setup is ready should I decide to go larger format.

4. 11x14” picture frame on three cradled wooden blocks makes for a simple, lightweight, portable, adjustable, consistently reproducible setup.

5. I finally have the Dragonframe hotkeys I wanted, namely “Insert Camera” and “Return Camera to End” 🔥

6. Masking tape corners work like a charm for registration (aligning drawings) 🎯

7. Glass, plexiglass, or acrylic all work great for stabilizing paper before shooting. Acrylic can look cloudy but it’s actually fine; the matte surface diffuses light, and that’s a plus.

8. While smaller resolutions allow me to finsh drawings faster, the challenge with rendering details may eventually push me to work at a larger one. Everything comes with tradeoffs!

It was a productive week and this is the kind of progress I was aiming for. I’m not mad about it.

The iterations

You saw iteration 1 in the previous issue. In iteration 2, I made the setup portable in order to free up my dining table:

In iteration 3, I made use of a picture frame and cardboard supports, which felt promising:

In iteration 4, I moved the camera closer to the drawing, resulting in a much sharper image:

Compare a shot at 12” (left) to one at 5” (right):

So now I feel pretty dialed in, ready to draw and shoot the final sequence of the primer.

Dragonframe drama 😅

A little side entertainment: during all of this I was having trouble with Dragonframe hotkeys and asked them for help. Their response:

There are no assignable hotkeys for this, as you have seen. We will consider it. However, these are generally uncommonly used in stop motion animation. No one has ever asked for these to be hotkeys in the past.

My response, in part:

I would say that your current communication style is not a good fit for customer service…I think a more useful response would have been along the lines of “How can I help with this problem” and/or “Is there an outcome that would improve the product, make the user experience more delightful” instead of repeating what the user already knows, then implying that their request was irrelevant.

Eventually:

Much gratitude to Dyami, the engineering half of Dragonframe’s founding duo, who pushed a dev build (!) to accommodate my suggestions and requests. A+, in the end 🙏

Elizabeth

I made some drawings in the process of homing in on my downshooting setup. On a whim, I set the animation to a random song. I couldn’t stop watching it on loop.

The lyrics fit: a balmy day, a lost love; how Elizabeth comes into view through a window. Is she on the inside or the outside? Her features shift, subtly; she becomes different people, a stranger altogether—the way old loves do in memory and in life.

Karolina Glusiec says in her essay “Interstellar Bursts and the Non-Spectacular Things” on Mostly Moving:

On that thing that almost everybody has or probably everybody has sometimes stumbled upon within themselves while working on any visual kind of artwork I imagine—the need for making spectacular things.

Spectacular.

Even though we just want to make something simple. Just like that. Just simple. Just a pretty simple thing. Just a ha ha. Ha ha ha ha.

“Oh man what will my family say when they come to my grad show and see these pencil strokes, they would be like: are you joking, is that it? Is that what you’ve been doing in this big school for last two years? You gotta be joking me.”

Spectacular things. The visionary and the universal. The everlasting. The monumental.

There’s always a danger of getting distracted from the main project by an auxiliary exercise; I was tempted to clean this up and develop it, let it continue showing me things. I felt the need to make it spectacular. But this need comes from everywhere. We have to choose.

There are just a few drawings in Elizabeth, on loop for over a minute. I personally find repetition hypnotic and revealing; I could watch something on repeat forever. Try it; what seems like the same picture starts to change, and become new again.

The song, “My Lovely Elizabeth,” is by Sierra Leonean artist S.E. Rogie.

Provisions

The podcast episode On David Foster Wallace from Harper’s Magazine is long but entertaining and dense in just the right way. That is, if you’re into literature, and especially if you’re an OG fan like me of “Shipping Out” (later, “A Supposedly Fun Thing I’ll Never Do Again”), a hilarious essay about a luxury cruise by DFW, may he rest.

Letting Go (part two) by . I always enjoy Edwin’s work, but especially liked reading about “activating” still images through flicker, and working faster than the brain.

Night Club. Animated short, all done straight-ahead. Wow.

I’m investigating cel animation. Lots of opportunities here for rabbitholing! A referenced classic, “Making Cel Cartoons” by Ingo Raschka, looks offlined but I was able to download it from the WayBack machine.

The burger at Nobody Told Me, UWS. I don’t eat a lot of red meat, but when I do, I go where Big Macs go to die. Sometimes I next level it with a dirty vodka martini, and a prelude of oysters.

In closing, firefly

So I was out walking late Wednesday night near a park. I guess you’re always near a park in Manhattan. I looked down, and in the soft darkness saw a spot on my white shirt, just above my navel. I immediately swatted at it with my phone, scraping with the protruding edge of the phone’s protective case. There was an almost imperceptible crackling sound, and to my horror, a streak of green glowed where it had been.

A firefly.

Slowly the luminescence faded into nothing, literally a life’s light going out, and that made me feel even worse.

I stood there disturbed and ashamed. Why had I done that? It was “just an accident,” but why was destruction my first impulse? A magical thing had alighted on me, as if to bless, or even just to be together. And I had destroyed it, like a brute.

My distress might seem overblown, but being wholly responsible for the death of a firefly—something akin to a unicorn in my mind—felt representative of something bigger and darker; of human consequence, and finality.

I couldn’t get the image of what had happened out of my mind. Me, the mariner. To the empty street I said, I’m sorry.

I thought about how that very morning, I had run to the window to put up a hand, something in me appealing—to the universe? the gods? the ancestors?—please let it be cool, let the air be green, and lifting, and in motion. And how, when I’d lifted the sash, what had confronted me was heavy with rebuke.

In a recent Harper’s article “The Reenchanted World,” Knausgård interviews James Bridle, a writer/artist/technologist. They speak at length about wresting free from paralysis about the state of the world, climate, terrors of technology: by making things.

The world is f*cked because we are f*cked. Healing ourselves is part of healing the world.

Digital computers are fundamentally disconnected from the world; they are operating entirely on the abstraction of it…it would definitely be a better and more interesting place if more people were involved in making these things. That’s the fundamental thing: that if more software, more buildings, more social spaces, and more everything were designed by more people, of course it would produce a more interesting and better world! Such an obvious remedy…

After I wrote my first book, New Dark Age, I became quite depressed. More than I realized at the time, probably. One way I got out of that depression was by making things.

Desperately, spectacularly.

Until next time.

It feels like a lifetime happened in the past few weeks.

I spent the first in Martha’s Vineyard with a cohort of writers, coming away with what feels like surprisingly solid relationships for such a short (intense) period of shared time. I spent the following, unexpectedly, in a mad dash to deliver a pitch for my animated film. I also: voted early; attended three shows (long story), and regretfully missed a creative writing MFA residency to which I was an invited auditor. The world is on fire in all the ways that it can be. We’ve had 100º F days in New York City; moving through its streets has felt like swimming in a fever dream at the end of the world.

I’m on a flight to California as I write this, finally able to sit down, and tell you everything.

In the studio

Filming a pitch can be grueling—even with professional help. I’d never done it before, and calling 1.5 days to do post-production “challenging,” would be an understatement.

Most of this issue is about how I pushed through it. I can’t share who I was pitching to, but hope the behind-the-scenes is interesting, and that the takeaways are helpful to those pitching their own projects for grants and fellowships.

Speaking of grants, thanks to the Jerome Hill Artist Foundation for funding this shoot.

Members: find below the story behind everything, what the process of prepping + shooting a film pitch looks like, and a spotlight on the folks who went above and beyond to support me during this period.

I include a one-minute excerpt of my three-minute pitch, a look at the primer (microshort-as-style-guide) so far, and a one-minute blooper reel 😂

Plus, Provisions (inspo), and an update on my essay collection.

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