ART

I have had two C-Sections, in 2021 and 2023. After the second one, once I emerged from the haze and healed a bit, I noticed how my new scar criss-crossed with the original one. The way they intersected created a sweet little spiral, and I thought it could be fun to compose music as an interpretation of the two lines.

In art school I learned about the world of ‘graphic notation,’ which uses alternative visuals to direct music. It can be strict, it can be loose. In my first newsletter I shared how my first animation in 2010 was at attempt at ‘reading’ the huron river as music. (VERY LOOSELY in my case!) Just prior, I overlaid notes on a map of the Peoria River. I was interested in embodied ways of learning information.

Sixteen years later I’m trying this again, with the forms of my scars instead of a river.
As I write this in August, it’s still in-progress. For now, I just have a drawing of my scars that I’ll interpret into music, and a sketch of the pace I’ll read it. It looks so extreme and bumpy because I’ve stretched the look of the scars vertically x3 for my drawing, to really see the variation. (I think you did a beautiful job Dr. Parker!!)

Bonus: my appendicitis from 2024 added a new scar right by the bunch, so I’m including it too!

When I started thinking about - which way does the notation go? I figured left-to-right, but is it my left-to-right, when I’m looking down? Or the Dr. left-to-right of the Dr., composing the music with her scalpel? Maybe I’ll have two versions in the end!

^{animated sketch of Scars in C, my graphic notation from my abdominal scars (Doctor’s POV)}

Audio sample of some rough exploration.. trying to find the tune

HOME

OUR BASEMENT IS FINISHED! Here’s a quick before/ after…

I highly recommend Leslie Simpson to anyone in Southeast Michigan. Imagine a contractor who is more communicative than me, as the client. She was so thorough and imaginative! I haven’t had a painting studio in ten years, so it’s the beginning of a new era. (gulp)

Here’s a little bonus look into a beaded lamp cover I made with my son for our upstairs bathroom. We wanted to cover the IKEA light that was in the bathroom, and it was a fun lil collaboration. At first I was trying to make color-coordinated tiers, and having a 5 year old involved made me loosen up the plan a bit. The spontaneous jumble of colors ended up being my favorite part.

TOOLS

Here’s a tool I’ve been using in my personal work: borrowing the project management I’ve learned at Duolingo.

Creative blocks aren’t always creative problems. Sometimes the artist has the basics of what they need, but the project itself needs more clarity or structure. It can help to step outside the role of artist and look at the work like a small creative team would.

As an Associate Creative Director, my job is to act as a bridge between the problem at hand and the vision that will solve it.

The producer is my partner in bringing the work to life. They get alignment on big-picture goals, help staff projects, coordinate with partners, set timelines, and keep things on track. And of course, the artists make the work! (I’m simplifying a lot!)

In my personal work, I’ve always thought of myself as just an artist. But sometimes I get stuck. I’ve found that the exercise of imagining what a CD and Producer would say can REALLY help identify what “artist me” needs.

• As a CD, I might ask: Do I need more reference? Am I overwhelmed? Would a few timeboxed sketch sprints help? What is the essential thing we’re trying to say?

• As a Producer: Is the brief clear? What goal am I working toward? Can I work backward from there and break the work into smaller pieces?

You don’t need to be a CD or producer to try this. Try stepping outside the artist role to ask what kind of support the work needs next!

And my last tool: Baskets. Somehow I have been sleeping on baskets.

WORDS

”Whether you succeed or not is irrelevant, there is no such thing. Making your unknown known is the important thing.. and keeping the unknown always beyond you.”

Georgia O’Keefe, 1923

MY BRAND NEW PARENTING SENTENCE of the Quarter:
“No, I don’t think peaches have scary dreams.”

You can see more of my work at @collinleix on Instagram or at collinleix.com.

ART

In April, I shared this short on Instagram about rocking my 2 year old in a rocking chair during bedtime.

Any parent knows how many countless hours you spend rocking babies. Rocking. Rocking. Rocking. The day replays behind closed eyes. I started to feel I could ‘see’ our rocking, with animals and thoughts weaving through the visual gesture. This idea came back enough times that I finally animated it. I have a rule with myself, when an animation idea comes back to me repeatedly, I have to make it. I was really honored to see how it seemed to resonate with people in the comments. Maybe it’s because there’s an element to these that feels so private, and we so rarely peek into one another’s in-between moments.

Originally I was going to have a calendar plodding through the scene, because often in these rocking chair moments, I’m thinking of what I need to do next. I thought that would be fun positioned right next to the leftover whimsy of the bedtime stories we had just read. But having my Apple watch break the spell felt like enough real life. The voice was really from my 2 year old daughter, and all the foley was from her rocking chair, sound machine, etc.

Above is a little peek into my (messy) layers in Procreate Dreams. Below shows how I start these out - getting the rhythm feeling right over a simple drawing.

The concept of the apple watch interrupting bedtime also stood out to me, because of an animation I made 8 years ago with our previous studio Gunner. It’s about being in the zone, playing music, and being interrupted by technology. (You can see the full credits and stills here!)

Going back to the Rocking animation, I’ve made color swoop animations like this before, tracing gestures with color. The first one I made when we had no Wifi on a family vacation, and I had to do something purely on my iPad, no switching between programs. Usually I don’t think of myself as a cel artist, (or drawing frame-by-frame) but the restriction was very useful. I was pregnant with my daughter, and made this little lullaby in the musical rhythm of 3/4, similar to how a conductor’s hand would move in the air. Here’s a link to a Behind-the-scenes post of how I made this if you’re interested.

(Also for the technical music people, I was told that 1 should be on the downbeat! :slaps wrist:)

Making this first ‘color swoop’ in 3/4 set myself up for a baby announcement in the time signature 4/4, as we were now a family of 4. (Nerdy, I know!) It was an animation all about the act of soothing. The SFX include her little coos, and the swooshing sound is from me rubbing her back.

Often I try to do the music myself. Not always though - I don’t always have the capacity or ability. Here’s an animation I tried to put a score to and given up on. Recently I found this in a folder called ‘poop’ that I totally forgot about. Wow.

I’m glad I didn’t keep working this one through, because instead I used the far superior music of an artist I love called Vraell. This led to us becoming friends and him scoring an opening title sequence I animated in 2024! Phew.

You may notice this color swoop looks a little different from the others. Usually all the colors are crowded onto one line. This one was from a video of my hand conducting in the air, and each color follows a different finger.

HOME

Our basement renovation is still under way. We’ve had a really wet spring in Michigan and we’ve had to do extra water mitigation, so it’s taking a long time. But compared to my last post, we have walls, heat, and plumbing! Not much has happened in the Art Studio, so I’ll show you the development of our nook area. It’ll have a twin bed that will also be the hangout couch.

Here’s the mood board for the nook:

We chose some built-in cabinets and used the color Crispy Gold. Fun fact: this color is next-door neighbors to Kingdom Gold, which is the least-used Sherwin Williams color. Trying not to overthink that!

TOOLS

A new tool I used this quarter: the Inkle Loom

One perk of working at Duolingo is that there are funded clubs if a few coworkers want to do something together. It could be rock climbing, chess, many different things. I’m in the CRAFT CLUB! (The figure drawing club as well.) We do different workshops around town exploring physical crafts. In the past the group did Stained glass and bookbinding workshops.

In April, we did one for band weaving! It was at Heritage Spinning and Weaving in Lake Orion, MI. (It’s not that far!) In Inkle weaving, the warp (or vertical threads) are very visually dominant, and you can make these bands fairly quickly. They could be camera straps, guitar straps, edges on other garments, even custom shoelaces. My first thought was to make a camera strap for my husband (a photographer) but it was quickly co-opted by our 4-year old.

I’m also trying my hand at weaving tiny tapestries, or weft-faced weaving. The warp, or the vertical strings you see on the left below, get completely covered by the weft, or the horizontal threads moving back and forth. Because the warp is invisible, you can draw your design directly on the threads. This process is a lot slower and denser. I found it absolutely intoxicating to work on a physical project: weaving feels like a productive fidget spinner. In theory this will be a bookmark, once I figure out how to get it off the loom!

WORDS

‘HOW TO BUILD A TREE’ by James A Pearson

Sometimes your next
halting step
is more powerful
than the grandest vision.

All a leaf knows
about building a tree
is to turn towards the light.

MY BRAND NEW PARENTING SENTENCE of the Quarter:
“If it’s making you cry, put it down and stop eating raisins out of it.”

You can see more of my work at @collinleix on Instagram or at collinleix.com.

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What is Tender?

Tender is a place to share my experiences as an animator, artist and parent. I’m really looking forward to getting deeper in Substack and building community here! My posts will always be free.

Each post, I’ll touch on:
ART - Process & behind-the-scenes on animations and other media, plus first dibs on any paintings for sale!
HOME - Could be the home studio I’m building, murals, home decorating, parenting
TOOLS - Things I found useful, that maybe you will too
WORDS - Meaningful words I’d like to share, quotes, poetry, etc.

I liked the word tender as it evokes such contrast of meanings: Sweetness and love, also pain. It speaks to the experience of making work & raising kids at this time in the world.

Why this, why now?

My children are 2 and 4, as I write this. I work fulltime as an Associate Creative Director at the language-learning app Duolingo. Even in this chaos, and even as I emerge from the postpartum & matrescent fog, I’m emerging with a strong need to get my own creative practice going again, with the clear ‘why’ that I never had in my twenties or even thirties.

On to my first entry!

ART

Behind-the-scenes, process, research

Here’s an animation I shared on Instagram recently, Sun Piano!

My process was pretty straightforward, starting in After Effects, then hand drawing splashes + details in Procreate. The music was composed with Synths in Garageband, and I mixed in a few sound recordings I did of water and environmental sounds too.

If you’re curious where this idea came from, here’s a little back story!

My very first animation came from an intersection of music and motion. I was in graduate school for my MFA at the University of Michigan, and was experimenting hard. As a painter and a violinist, I wondered if maybe I could read maps as music. Specifically I looked at the shapes of rivers, and loosely translated them into musical direction on my violin. I had played violin since I was 5, but wasn’t very interested in the symphonies and orchestras I played in. I wanted to play something new!

I used mixing medium as a stop motion cursor that moves across an expressive painting of the Huron River. I didn’t know Photoshop, or After Effects. Instead I brought each frame into iMovie, and one by one, made each frame .1 second. It was my first animation (2009!) and I was thrilled.

Back to the present, did you know Duolingo has a music app? I worked on it for over a year between 2024-2025, first as an animator, then in more of a creative director role. The music app is changing a lot, because Duolingo acquired NextBeat to revamp its whole music course (read more about it here!) But my time there formalized the thinking I’ve always done about where music meets visuals. I was thinking about keyboard designs, assigning color to pitch, weaving characters into the visual interface, and how to give delightful, satisfying feedback to users to help them play better.

During one open-ended brainstorm, I came up with this sketch of planets bouncing out of piano keys. It didn’t work in the music app, but the idea stuck with me. It’s another interplay of landscape & music. I hope to expand on the Sun Piano, and even make an interactive instrument someday.

HOME

Home studio reno, home decoration, kid activities, probably photos of relatable messes

We bought a new house in Ann Arbor, MI, last fall, and we’re renovating the basement to be an art studio for me. It will also have a much needed second full bathroom! My husband was supportive of my whimsy and the bathroom is going to be all Marigold yellow. (He also was supportive of my whimsy when we named our daughter Marigold as well!1)

Anyway, I was in love with this house for many reasons, but partly because of the basement. It has HUGE daylight windows, and I knew it would be for me!

More to come!

TOOLS

Things you may find useful

Are.na
I just signed up for Are.na. I’m late to the party but really enjoying it. Seems to be a really interesting playground for people that like to look at new things. It’s also not trying to sell you things like Pinterest does.

Claude Code
I haven’t used it yet, but I read this NYT Article that put it on my radar. Lately UX/UI and digital interactive gestures have become very interesting to me, and I may try to mock something up. I really truly can’t code, so I will report back.

WORDS

Do your thing. Because I’m telling you, when you’re 90, you’re going to be sad if you didn’t do the thing that’s in your stomach.
- Gary Vaynderchuck

Thanks for being here for my thing.
<3 Collin

p.s. I’d love to be in conversation, please reach out if you’d like!