The year-old animator has given us whole worlds of despair and resignation, often returning to death, decay, failure, and the inevitable end of humanity as the themes that power his wistfully beautiful films. The follow-up, World of Tomorrow Episode Twowas equally crushing and moneg. To celebrate his new-old book, and his influence on 21st-century animation, we interviewed Hertzfeldt in a series of emails, as is his preference. A lot of stuff got cut from the first edition. The book is despairing at times, sometimes hilariously so, if despair can ever be hilarious. But it comes from such a dark place. Was this a particularly difficult period in your life when you made it? No, probably the opposite. I think in general, it usually takes a lot of optimism for me wsw. do anything creative. The human characters in your work are always drawn simply — straight lines for arms and legs, dots for eyes. Did you know early on that you aartists- simple depictions? When I was a kid learning how to d...