How One Upstate NY Animator Is Shining A New Light On The Capital Region

Back in college, my roommate convinced me to watch this weird Netflix show, The Midnight Gospel. The joint project of Adventure Time creator Pendleton Ward and podcast host Duncan Trussell is a trippy, thoughtful, and incredibly emotional look at the human condition.

The show's main draw is its creation. Podcast clips were taken from Trussell, and animated by Ward to create an odd blend of fantasy and reality, and now, one Upstate New York filmmaker is taking this idea to a local scale.

Introducing: Evens Angulo-Duvil

Born in Rome, Italy with a Haitian upbringing, Evens Angulo-Duvil had already seen a breadth of experiences at a young age. Perhaps that's what propelled him to become an animator. He had dabbled in art from a young age, but his degree at SUNY Fredonia in Animation and Illustration helped him go pro.

Despite being born in Italy, Angulo-Duvil is an Upstate New Yorker through and through. From his childhood to the present day, he's used his talents to capture the feeling of Upstate, but his latest project, and directorial debut, aims to do something greater.

The Aura of Upstate

Angulo-Duvil's magnum-opus (to this point at least) is a short film titled "The Aura of Upstate". Taking lessons he learned from Trussell and Ward's "Midnight Gospel", he's attempted to capture the spirit of Upstate New York through the same method.

Over the course of the year, he's interviewed locals from the Capital Region, from bars to skate shops and everything in between. He's taken the best clips from these interviews, and animated over them to create a cohesive project that tells the story of the Capital Region from none other than the real people that inhabit it.

The film premiered at KBK Studios on July 26th, 2025, and will continue to show across the Capital Region through the year.