This paper sustains animation by foregrounding the somatic dimensions of a digital animation practice, framing them as acts of embodied play and resistance. Drawing on Vilém Flusser’s philosophy of communication (2014), Pierre Hébert’s opening of black boxes (2005), and Maxine Sheets-Johnstone’s phenomenology of animate life (2011), I argue for the enduring relevance of the animator’s body in a creative practice often overshadowed by technological narratives. By countering deterministic views that reduce digital animation to ‘code’, I highlight the essential role of human gestures in CGI animation—precisely the fingers that stir the digital. My short film WAVES (completed in December 2024) serves as a case study, by alluding to the animator’s physical engagement with the tools of her practice. The film uses both keyframed 3D animation as well as motion capture, and invites discussion on gestures as makers of meaning, and on the alienation of the mocap actor in the process of humanising the digital character. While WAVES communicates without spoken dialogue, relying instead on the languages of movement and music, this paper articulates and disseminates the often silent labour of the animator’s practice—work commonly unseen by audiences and critics. Through a Practice-as-Research methodology where I animate as a researcher and research as an animator, I pay attention to pipelines, experiments, and ephemeral exchanges that underpin the final work. These ‘in-between’ moments illuminate a practice in active dialogue with theory, where ‘doing-in-thinking’ and ‘thinking-in-doing’ glean knowledge through gesture. Reflecting on the somatic dimensions of my tool-handling, I contest the reductive framing of CGI animation as mere simulation or codework, and the binary of analogue versus digital. By likening the tactile manipulation of peripherals, such as the keyboard and mouse, to the act of playing musical instruments, I position the animator as a screen-facing performer whose gestures energise screen spaces.