And I think he had a slip and admitted the animator doesn't actually exist. "A totally new step starting from zero" to me implies LP learned how to do the animations, which is starting at 0. If he hired an animator it wouldn't have started at 0, since the animator would've known how to do everything.
Yup. Not the first time either. He used similar wording in previous posts. The way he talks about this process is so far away from someone who actually has a professional artist creating these animations, it's more than obvious that he's doing it on his own. He's never addressed his "helper" with a name, given any credit to them, is extremely vague about everything surrounding the animations on Patreon and the handful of posts on F95, he keeps talking about it being "a beginning" and how "every start is hard" etc. He's only using this invisible friend to justify and/or blame delays on them.
He keeps contradicting himself with his statements. Sometimes it's just his "helper" creating these animations while his 2nd computer is rendering, other times he talks about how he's had to learn all this new stuff and, for example, how he "has to do it now because it will already be visible in 0.155" (an early statement of L&P during 0.155 development). He's been asking for people's help on F95 to explain how to import assets etc. from DAZ to Blender, he's taken live lessons for Blender animations on Twitch. Even a blind person can see what's really going on.