Evens Angulo-Duvil on The Aura of Upstate, teaching himself animation, and building a studio outside California

The upstate New York animator behind The Aura of Upstate on turning a podcast into an animated show — and making great films with no studio behind him.

Most people I interview are squarely in the mid-Hudson Valley: Poughkeepsie, Newburgh, Kingston, Beacon. Sometimes I range as far as Hudson or Catskill, but the truth is, as someone who grew up in the mid-Hudson Valley, that’s the area where I know the scene best.

When I heard about The Aura of Upstate, I knew I had to talk to its creator, even if he lives in Rensselaer — on paper, part of the Hudson Valley, but considered by some people to be entirely in the Capital Region. (Is there a difference? Does it matter? It’s all along the Hudson River, it counts!)

Evens is an independent filmmaker and animator who’s built The Aura of Upstate into an expansive multimedia project. It started as an interview podcast in which he’d talk to interesting people in Upstate New York, and has morphed into a documentary and an animated short film built around the audio of those interviews.

Even more impressively, production on Season 2 has already started, which will include a whopping 11 more episodes than Season 1.

I hope you enjoy reading this conversation with Evens Angulo-Duvil about indie animation, the challenges and advantages of living upstate, and what it means to be a filmmaker in an increasingly monolithic studio system.

How would you explain the Aura of Upstate to someone who’s not familiar with the project?

It’s a podcast where each guest is a different person from upstate New York — shining a light on the community and the stories that we have within it.

After the podcast session, I take the snippets that moved me the most and put those into an animated film. I’m also doing a documentary following my journey of putting it all together.

You’ve been on PBS, and you’ve had a theater screening. How does it feel to see a passion project get that kind of attention?

It feels amazing. I’ve been chasing this since I was like 10 years old, and I’ve always had such a strong belief in myself — that if I had the opportunity to create a show and build an audience around it, it could be something impactful.

It feels like confirmation for what I always believed.

Have you always known you wanted to be in film?

I just knew I wanted to create my own animated show since, like, age 10 — before I even knew what an animator was.

My dream wasn’t necessarily to work for Disney or Cartoon Network or any of the big studios. I went to college to study animation and illustration, thinking I’d walk into an environment where all the other individuals were as ambitious as I was. That wasn’t really the case.

By the time I graduated I didn’t really have much of a portfolio to offer to studios, because I was so hell-bent on trying to create my own project. But one of my teachers told me another great way to network and get more attention as an animator or filmmaker was to submit to film festivals.

So I started submitting, and it got accepted. Once it got accepted, I felt like I could identify myself as a filmmaker.

It felt really official now.

What’s the best thing about living in this part of New York?

The best thing about it, for sure, is the community — especially after starting The Aura of Upstate and realizing how supportive the community is. You won’t find that in too many other places.

I feel like that’s because we don’t really have too much going for us in the area. So anytime someone has a project or an event going on, people really want to support it.

From the outside looking at it, it seems like we really don’t have a lot going on for us — like we’re not even worth some people’s time. That’s the sense I got in college: a lot of people were from the city, arguing about which borough was better. To them, there’s nothing in upstate New York.

I just wish more people gave upstate New York the chance. We have an underrated nature aspect to us — Kaaterskill Falls, Saratoga State Park, a lot of really cool trails and waterfalls.

Tell me about the future of animation.

Another reason I didn’t go the traditional route of building a portfolio and applying to animation studios is that, hearing about the strikes (like the writers’ strike) happening in California, it always felt like the industry was on fire.

With so many artists losing their job and being pushed out, I felt like it was going to open the doors for a lot of independent studios. It feels like Disney and some of the other bigger studios are trying to create a monolith, and I feel like that destroys diversity and creativity.

But as an independent filmmaker, you aren’t able to devote as much attention to the art portion, because now you have to be more business minded. It becomes more like 90% business and 10% art.

And now with AI coming around, it’s going to end up kicking more people out. That’s going to leave a lot of talented artists having to make their own thing.

What’s next for the Aura of Upstate?

Next up is the AMC theater screening on September 12th, and we’re trying to raise money to help create season two.

We’ve been shooting season two for like the past year. A close high school friend of mine is my cameraman, and we’ve been traveling all over upstate New York interviewing people. I’d like to basically run it back, but instead of five episodes, we’re going to do 16.

What would you say to the next ten-year-old in upstate New York with creative ambitions?

You can do a lot with the limited resources that you have. You don’t need that Hollywood budget or those Hollywood connections — you can create something impactful in your room, just by yourself. That’s how I started.

When you’re very ambitious and you have a clear vision, it can be hard to explain it to people. So rather than trying to explain it to people who most likely will not understand it, you should just go ahead and make it. Then people can see what you’ve been thinking about this whole time.

What would you want to see for upstate New York in the next five years?

We’re approaching a renaissance in upstate New York in terms of the creativity, the music scene, the film scene. I’ve been seeing a lot of projects being shot in Schenectady and nearby, like The Gilded Age.

Hopefully The Aura of Upstate has been inspiring people to continue creating and working on their own projects. I think in five years, upstate New York is going to be seen as a staple for creativity and film.