A Lindsey Creates

It’s just around the corner: another week up on Onaway Island with the Brigade for their Leadership Training Conference (LTC)! 🌲✨

Being early risers ourselves, the hubby and I often help lead the “early bird” activities for the LTC campers and leadership. As a little incentive to join in the fun every morning, I created a few water bottle stickers for them to take home at the end of the week, which now serves as the artwork for this animation project!

Continuing to play as a student of life, the universe, and everything with a new drawing experiment: Prompt-fire Comics. 🔥🖌️

The idea is to merge my figure and gesture studies with quick-fire storytelling to build the speed and efficiency I’ll need for more complex hand-drawn animation (and comic creation!) The rules are simple: 3–4 panels, a random prompt, and a timer set for 10–15 minutes.

As per most of my creative expeditions, while the idea is simple, the execution was less straight-forward.

The quest for creative collaboration continues! 🍳✨

This year has been a bit of a whirlwind. I’ve been helping Islands of Brilliance (IOB) develop their first Artist In Residency (AIR) program, and in the process, I've been diving into their Digital Academy series—including the aptly named Collab Quest.

As a mentor for IOB for several years, I’ve always found that I gain so much from every interaction (hopefully as much as I give!). What I find especially inspiring about these workshops is that they truly feel like creative sprints or design intensives. The growth and creativity of every participant is incredible to see, and I’m finding my own work growing in new ways, too.

Another post-sabbatical project! I’m revisiting some of my #MerMay illustrations, this time focusing on digital painting. 🧜‍♀️🎨

My natural tendency is to live in the vector world. I love being able to finely tune every single line to the Nth degree—even down to individual stroke widths. Way back when I was first introduced to graphic design software, I immediately fell in love with Adobe Illustrator. I love the clean look, smooth lines, and sharp geometric shapes vector art produces, and most importantly, the ability to scale and rework a piece while maintaining fidelity. ✨

Playing in Blender some more with this tribute to my favorite coffee in the city, Stone Creek Coffee! ☕️🏙️

The coffee scene in Milwaukee has been growing a lot in recent years, which is pretty perfect for me and the hubby. We love taking walks or bike rides out to all the various coffee shops to reconnect over a cup of coffee. While we’ll sometimes indulge in a latte or seasonal drink, we typically opt for a decaf paired with the more super-charged Nitro cold brew—and for me, Stone Creek’s Jet Black is my favorite in the city! 🥯

Continuing my motion design journey in Blender with this project dedicated to the Boys and Girls Brigade and their Leadership Training Conference (LTC) camp! ⛺️✨ I have the absolute joy of volunteering for a week up on Onaway Island every summer, and this piece was a fun way to bridge the seasons.

In the animation, you'll see our winter snowman (paddle-arms and all!) melt away into the bright, sunny waters of Waupaca’s Chain ‘O Lakes, revealing the LTC letters. It’s a bit of a visual metaphor for the transformation that happens up there every summer. 🛶☀️

Playing with some #BobsBurgers fanart to get back into the swing of things after a mini-sabbatical in Japan. 🎨✈️

Every couple of years, the hubby and I take a 6-week "mini-sabbatical" (heavily inspired by Rolf Potts’ Vagabonding). This year was a return to Japan! It was a total reset—so much so that unfortunately I had found my drawing skills starting to atrophy...

FourthWall Arts and Products

I’ve been on a bit of a journey with my career over the last several years, exploring all different types of work/projects, in hopes of discovering what direction to head towards next, which currently seems to be dipping a toe into the world of print-on-demand. 

I’ve played in a variety of different spaces including storyboarding, 2D game art, and animation, though the one area that I tend to keep returning to is character work and illustration. I love the figure and the expressiveness of gestures and poses, and how every element of a character can tell their story. Here again I wasn’t sure whether to take these interests and apply them towards character design specifically, more focused animation, or things like comic creation and broader storytelling. 

I have so many different character and design ideas, and thought it might be time to finally start up a print-on-demand shop. It’s been a consideration of mine in the past, yet always held back because I didn’t feel as though I had a strong enough brand. I haven’t done much in the way of content creation, YET (at least not consistently), and I don’t have any IPs that I’m associated with, so I wasn’t entirely sure what interest there would really be for my work. While I’m certainly prepared for this to continue to be the case, I wanted to at least give it a try and see if there might not be some market waiting out there after all. 

Before I get too far along with creating ALL the products, I wanted to get some input from the internets and see what more specifically might be of interest. Whether it’s general feedback on the types of clothing or accessories people are most likely to buy, or the designs themselves, I’m very curious to know what demand is out there, so as they say, comment your comments in the comments! :)

And if you like what what you see and are feeling generous (while also encouraging the creation of this shop!), support me with a Kofi:

As we start the new year and think about resolutions and creating new goals, I was reflecting on some of my own goals for the previous year, which was to be a FINISHER! The focus: getting my own on-going projects done and finally over the finish line. While I tend to be really good at the whole starting of projects, it’s the finishing, and more importantly determining what that looks like, that often causes the stumbles. 

The last year was definitely a year for all of us. Personally there were a number of obstacles to overcome when it came to my self-care and needing to recover from a series of injuries that seemed to dominate that first half, and through the challenges, I was eventually able to gather enough momentum to make some good finishing progress!

This project will definitely be familiar. I’ve revisited this artwork several times as it continues to serve as an excellent learning project. What started as a QuarkXpress poster design project for a graphics course way back in the day, has continued to evolve and take on various forms.

I’ve had so many different ideas for the animated version of this project, and while this is a bit simpler than others, I’m actually quite happy with the results. Ultimately this project was meant to help me learn more of the basics of Blender. The aim was to keep the animation simple, sticking with the 2D space and seeing how I might be able to more efficiently use both the camera and modifiers for the bulk of the animation. I was also able to continue playing with the grease pencil tool for the animation of the flamingo itself. 

The biggest obstacle was the timing, or retiming of the animation. I hadn’t originally thought about timing it to any specific music, focusing more on the visuals. Thinking about it more, I really couldn’t have a design so heavily influenced by a piece of music and not actually use it, and so after having so much keyframed already, I got to learn more about Blender’s timeline interface(s). There is so much to learn in Blender, and while it has been quite overwhelming at times, I’ve been enjoying keeping things simple and really digging into some individual aspects of the software. 

Here’s to kicking off the new year with the continued goal of being a starter AND finisher!

For more of my work, follow me on Instagram.

If you like what what you see and are feeling generous, support me with a Kofi:

It has been an intense start to the new year.

I jumped headfirst into the world of indie game development, starting with a volunteer-run organization focused on creating fun, free-to-play games: P1 (Player First).

I've always wanted to participate in a game jam, and P1 seemed like the perfect opportunity. The group was highly organized, fostering an engaged community and a fast-paced, sprint-style development schedule. It was an intense experience, balancing daily meetings with organizers and development teams with actually completing game art. It was a lot to juggle, especially as a volunteer contributor.

My time with P1 was brief, as I joined towards the end of their last sprint. Organization changes had been brewing, and while there's not currently any official oversight with the group, the strong community they built may ensure its future as a hub for collaborative indie game development. I'm hopeful the former P1 will continue to thrive.

Fortunately, before P1 dissolved, I was able to join Heavenly Realm Studios as a 2D artist! This has been an incredible experience, full of challenges and opportunities to develop both my personal and professional goals, including my big objective for this year: FINISH. PROJECTS!!

Right now, my main objective is to restore some work-life balance. This will allow me to revisit some of my own passion projects. I'm determined to complete my Mermay postcard series before this year's Mermay challenge begins. I also want to continue developing my animation projects and circle back to other ideas that got sidelined in the new year shuffle.

Looking forward to sharing more, especially as things continue to progress with Heavenly Realm Studios game!

While I don't like to think that I partake in the whole "New Years resolution" type stuffs, I do often find myself building on that fresh start momentum and start setting new goals at the beginning of the year. My objectives for the coming year are simple: be a finisher! I've discovered I'm really great at starting my own projects, now it's time to start seeing these projects through to the finish line!

Revisiting this little looping animation has turned into an ongoing project mostly due to the various hurdles that come with learning new software. While there are still many things to be learning, and trouble-shooting with Blender, the experience I've gained this last year has really renewed my excitement around exploring the software, making this the perfect project first to reach the finish line.

Keeping each project on my (ever expanding) list a higher priority will certainly be challenging among the other client work, though I'm looking forward to seeing them through to their final stages, and how my skill set continues to grow and develop. Balance will be key, as this type of work keeps me growing and the creativity flowing!

Bit of a throwback today as we close out another year in anticipation of once again starting fresh with the new, I thought I'd share a little holiday themed illustration from way back in 2020 (right).

It's been quite the journey for myself. Over these past several years I've been trying to figure out the next steps, trying to visualize where I'd ultimately like to see my life and career move into next, and while I know I've made some progress, I really don't spend enough time celebrating the wins. If I were one to be making New Years resolutions, that would definitely be top of the list, aiming to be a bit gentler with myself, a little kinder, and a lot more loving overall. Let's all take a moment to celebrate all that was amazing about 2024, and carry that momentum into 2025, celebrating as much as possible and truly enjoying this journey of life.

This little looping animation was something I created using the software of the Adobe Suite: After Effects, and Animate. Now that I'm out from under the Adobe thumb, I thought this could be a fun and simple project to recreate using Blender. As I really should come to expect now with Blender, what appears simple is often anything but...

There truly is always something to be learning in Blender. Even when I think I have a pretty good idea as to how to use a tool, primitive, or simply executing a technique, there is always some nuance that has yet to be discovered. I continue to persist though, and am especially excited to be doing more character work in Blender. Even the simple Snoopy character has been fun playing with, and I'll be curious to see how the rigging and animation part of the project progress.

I have other character modeling (and rigging) projects in mind, and you can find out more and vote on which projects are most interesting to you as donor incentives or shop items on my Ko-Fi page.

Recently I started work with a new collaborator on another game project, this time working on character design. Designing original characters has been something I've been wanting to get into for a while, and while I have enjoyed working on my own projects, I really appreciate this opportunity to work with someone in hopes of bringing their creative vision to life.

The game idea is in early development stages, though there are more solid concepts when it comes to visual direction. Based on some of the elements provided by the developer, I am in the process of creating a few different styles for this magical girl character, starting with some poses and general costuming before re-visualizing in the isometric view of the game.

Ideally, my aim is to get one of these characters into Blender and experiment with some 3D pixel art, eventually moving into rigging for animation.

Always on the look out for new projects, if you'd like to collaborate one something artsy drop me a line, I'd love to hear from you!

First animation I created for a client using Blender, and it was an experience! Definitely a project I'd like to revisit at some point as I had some very different ideas that I was hoping would be relatively simple to execute, though I seemed to have underestimate just how complicated, and frustrating, Blender can be. Fortunately, I was saved with this tutorial by Blender Made Easy, as well as this amazingly free, online video editor, Pikimov (mostly for help getting audio and lightning effects to sync more cleanly).

Recently, I've been continuing my journey with 3D and Blender. Just as I had finally cut the Adobe cord, I was commissioned for some animation work, which I was happy to take, it simply plunged me straight into my own personal deep dive with Blender. It was a fun, and often hair pullingly frustrating experience, though I learned a lot, so much so that I got more and more excited about doing more work in Blender.