HeyJaredMidnight Musings
Midnight thoughts and drawings from an artist working in animation. Drawings, words, character designs, animation history, photoshop brush experiments, inspiring quotes, behind the scenes content on personal projects and more
- Indexed issues, last 90 days
- 6
- Latest publication
- Aug 27, 2026
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- Earliest in this view
- Jul 5, 2026
Latest issues
The Ending embedded in plain sight in the character design (opens the original)
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I’ve been wondering whether a character’s ending might already be hiding in their character design.Not as conventional foreshadowing, where a detail predicts what will happen later. More as if the character’s body already contains the way they approach life—the value they protect, the method they use to protect it, and the limitation that method will eventually encounter.Mr. Bean’s tightly buttoned suit presents a respectable, self-contained man, while his darting eyes and meddling hands reveal
Kurnarsky and Miyazaki, my Yin Yang teachers (opens the original)
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<img alt="" class="sizing-normal" height="562" src="https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!xc26!,w_1456,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F9998b402-48f1-40b0-9d5a-29aefa0d1750_749x56
Participating vs Illustrating Story (opens the original)
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One quote completely changed the way I thought about visual development."Drama is anticipation mixed with uncertainty."— William ArcherI first read it in On Filmmaking by Alexander Mackendrick.Like most great quotes, it made sense immediately.But understanding it intellectually didn't really change my work.What changed my work was taking the quote into the design process.Whenever I was assigned a sequence, I started writing two questions before drawing anything.As an audience member, what am I a
Exploring wider lens for compositions and poses (opens the original)
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<img alt="" class="sizing-normal" height="2122" src="https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!KFYt!,w_1456,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F668409b9-86de-4ddd-9cfd-2004ff31a6be_349
More sketches from life .. (opens the original)
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<img alt="" class="sizing-normal" height="3496" src="https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!Vk8d!,w_1456,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fee1e1e73-ee1b-4a61-bba3-f89e22291070_219
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