Illustrator / Visual Storyteller for Philosophy YouTube Channel (Distinctive Style)

I'm making animated videos for a channel under my own name, built around ideas from my book on how suffering is constructed — and how it can be taken apart. Long-form (~10 min) with my recorded voiceover, told through illustration. Think the spirit of After Skool: hand-crafted drawing carrying a spoken idea, calm and intelligent, never sensational. But I do not want to copy that style — a big part of this role is helping the channel have a visual identity of its own. Here's the working relationship: I write the script and record the voiceover. You own how it's drawn. You take the ideas — many of them abstract, like the elements of experience, or an emotion dissolving when it's looked at directly — and turn them into a clear, flowing visual sequence that makes the idea land. That means deciding the imagery, the metaphors, the way one drawing becomes the next, the recurring visual motifs that make the channel recognizable. Turning an abstract concept into a simple, resonant image is the hardest and most important thing you'd do here. Two things I'm screening hard for: - You can make abstract ideas visual and clear. Not decoration over narration — imagery that actually carries the meaning. - You have a style of your own. I want a collaborator whose work looks like theirs, so the channel ends up looking like no one else's — not a cheaper version of a channel that already exists. A final editor will handle assembly and polish later; this role is the visual heart of it — concept, style, and illustration. In your application, I'd love: - A portfolio that shows your own visual voice. Personal work is welcome, even encouraged. - One example where you had to draw something abstract or conceptual — and tell me how you arrived at the image. - If you've done any narrative or sequential work (comics, explainer, storyboards, animation), point me to it. Shortlisted illustrators will be paid for a short test: I'll give you one passage of my actual script and my voiceover for it, and ask for a few illustrated frames plus a short note on how you'd visually tell that passage. Paid regardless of whether we continue.