Pregnancy and Puppets: An Introduction

My name is Lindsay and I suppose I would describe myself as a bilateral-thinking creative with a good sense of humor and an undying love of all things Sci-Fi. My BFA is in Graphic Design and Illustration, but I started as a programming major, ended up working as a Financial Analyst, and in my freetime I like to make finger puppets… I realize that’s a lot of seemingly random information to cram into a couple of sentences, but at 30 years old, I’ve gotten tired of telling the same “Who am I?” story over and over again. It’s really long, not that interesting, and it would probably be better tackled in smaller chunks over the course multiple blog posts. So, for now, just fill in the blanks using your own imagination (and maybe share your theories in the comments).

Over the course of my life, creating things seems to be the longest running constant. I’ve written stories, drawn artworks, illustrated comic books, sewn and created costumes and toys, and I’m currently working on making a person for the first time. I’ve always enjoyed working with my hands and had a vague understanding of the futility of life, so making things has always felt like the easiest way for me to leave behind proof that I existed.

I started a youtube channel last year in which I was relearning animation using After Effects. I really enjoyed the project and was quite proud of the work I created. Unfortunately, even such a small project was a lot to handle for a single person doing all of the sound editing, asset creation, animation, and final edits. To make matters worse, I didn’t have a great job at the time so I felt a lot of pressure to gain financial success with the series (something that takes a long time for even the most talented teams of independent animators to accomplish). The straw that finally broke animated camel’s back was a brief period of unemployment. Because every moment I wasn’t applying for jobs felt wasted and every free moment went toward maximum relaxation, I spent 4-6 weeks doing nothing but writing cover letters and playing video games.

Through a series of extremely fortunate events (seriously, I’m pretty sure I rolled a luck of 20), I managed to land a grown-up paying job that has provided me with the financial and scheduling stability to pursue my own interests in my free time. The problem was that this job also removed the financial hunger that had helped to fuel some of my creative fire previously. Up until this point in my adult life, I had been fairly poor and every creative scheme I hatched was connected to a potential to bring in passive income. So, what do you do with your free time when you don’t have to worry about whether it makes you money or not? I didn’t have an answer.

So, naturally, I decided to have a baby.

Okay, okay, so that’s a bit of an oversimplification of the matter, but boredom with life did play a part in the timing of my pregnancy. My partner of 8 years and I had discussed having children off an on for years (including around the time I started animating) and, with my new job, I finally had the income and health insurance to help properly support a little dude. Granted, we thought we would have to try more than once to make it happen, but hey, I guess that means we’re both pretty healthy. So, Little Dude is scheduled for release late next February. While having a tiny human growing inside of me really helped to ease the existential burden of finding a purpose to live, it didn’t solve the mystery of how to productively use my free time to pursue activities I enjoy.

At the time, I played a lot of Overwatch, so I thought maybe I’d try to get into professional gaming… hahaha, I suck. But, I have an alright personality, so I thought I’d try streaming video games… I’m a camera-shy introvert, so this became pretty exhausting pretty fast. I recently purchased a Cricut paper cutting machine and tried my hand at home-made greeting cards… I mean, the idea isn't completely dead, but it’s definitely fallen off because I would get seasonal card ideas too late in the game. Maybe app development would be a worthwhile endeavor… Nope, it turns out that I still hate coding. Then I got really depressed and just started playing video games all weekend because it seemed healthier than sleeping all day.

Well, over the Thanksgiving break, I found myself playing Sims 4 for the second day in a row. My Sim family’s mom no longer needed to keep doing freelance programming work because the dad’s income was more than enough to support the family of 5. So now what was she supposed to do? And just like that, my digital escape became a reflection of my real life problems. I’m not sure how it happened, but my mind returned to an abandoned idea for my YouTube channel: Finger Puppet Theater (which is an incredibly vanilla placeholder title).

Animating is fun, but I love the tactile sensation of holding something I’ve made in my hands. My partner and I had come up with a few fun spoofs based off of our favorite movies and had planned to act them out using hand-made finger puppets (no pun intended, seriously). I had even gone out and bought a sewing machine when we came up with the idea over a year ago. I made a few demos and started developing a streamlined puppet creation process, but then the job hunt began.

Facing my early-midlife crisis’ reflection through my sad little Sim brought this project back to the forefront of my conscious mind and I began working on it the very next day. I haven’t stayed up until 2:00 am on a Saturday night in a while (because I’m a boring adult), but I was having so much fun that I couldn’t stop. In a period of less than 24 hours, I finally built something I had failed to finish over the course of 8 months: a Caterpillar P-5000 Work Loader for my Ellen Ripley finger puppet.

While it may seem silly or trivial, this was a project I started planning, making, and then abandoned last December. Completing this long-forgotten loose end filled me with so much energy and inspiration that I turned around and wrote 3 more skits based off of the Aliens universe and began planning the next weekend’s creation.

So that should bring you up to speed on the more important things in my life right now. While I haven’t determined a specific narrative for my blog posts, I expect they will revolve around creative projects and me making fun of my own life experiences. If you’ve enjoyed reading this and look forward to my next post, maybe consider giving this newbie a little upvote? I’m also happy to answer any questions you may have or requests for any tutorials in the comments.

Thanks a bunch for reading. Until next time!

#pregnancy #animation #comicbooks #fingerpuppets #Aliens #EllenRipley #introduceyourself