Carter Janik

ALT Hey, guys! Carter from StudioCRJ here. Now that I’m a little over two months into my current semester at art school, I wanna give you guys some updates since it’s been quite a while since I did so last: 1. I just uploaded a bunch of my previous school animations from the last two months to Twitter, Bluesky, and Instagram! I’ve had a lot of fun learning new things with both traditional and digital animation, and I’m really proud of all the stuff I’ve been able to make (though that hasn’t come without many sleepless nights, which I’d like to work on going forward).

ALT 2. I did post a couple animations at the very beginning of the semester to start, but the reason I didn’t post anything newer until now is because I haven’t been happy with the direction of StudioCRJ’s brand identity and the consistency of my design principles and workflow. It’s taken me a long time—several weeks, in fact—to get it all perfect, but I am much happier with the way everything’s looking and functioning now. Updates can be seen most notably with banners on platforms like YouTube and Twitter. The next order of business now is the long-awaited revamped StudioCRJ website, which has taken me about a year at this point to get to.

ALT 3. SWIMS is still coming!! In conjunction with the brand identity for StudioCRJ, I wanted to refresh the look and feel of SWIMS and its characters for late 2026 (especially to eliminate same face syndrome), and naturally, I’ve also been tweaking the cast itself and everyone’s personalities to my liking. The cast now sits at twenty-two characters—which is a number I used to be reluctant about maintaining* but am now more comfortable with as I’ve gotten older. Hopefully, I can work on a few more SWIMS things in time for something fun coming up in December… * There was a moment in 2024 where I had twenty-four characters in my personal collection, almost immediately regretted it, and then gave away about half of them to my friends. Not sure how I feel about doing that now, but I have been able to get some of those characters back with permission, so that’s good.

ALT 4. I’ve been selected as a featured creator for the first annual NYC Object Show Hangout organized by fellow OSC members Cheesy Mayo 102 and Trash Man! It’s gonna be on December 19, from 12 to 4 p.m., at the SVA Theater. You’ll be able to meet with me and a bunch of other creators, ask us questions, watch screenings of short films, and perhaps get your very first teaser of what SWIMS is gonna be about! Links to buy tickets and submit your own film for the screening are attached to this post. Only 128 tickets remain at the time of this post, so get yours quick!!