Connect
To Top

Meet Lindsay Scanlan

Avatar photo

Today we’d like to introduce you to Lindsay Scanlan.

Lindsay, can you briefly walk us through your story – how you started and how you got to where you are today.
I was definitely born to be a creator. I was getting my little meatballs of hands-on crayons and markers before I could even stand. Granted, I think I just wanted to eat them, but the spark of ambition was there nonetheless. My brother and I would make really primitive comic books together by scribbling on copy paper, then stapling it with construction paper. It didn’t matter what the comics were about, we just drew whatever we wanted and stuffed our rooms full of these premature graphic novels that would never even be considered for Eisners, much less a community library. I would sometimes go to the dollar store and buy this very cheap, plastic neon modeling clay in bulk, and I made a bunch of clay pokemon at first, but then I started making my own little monsters and drawing out more and more comics about these characters, and I got DEEP. Well, as deep as a ten-year-old can get with characters. I was giving them backstories, conflicts and resolutions, and I had fun acting them out with my plushies in my room.

My desire to get into animation itself started when I was around six years old. A childhood friend had gifted me a VHS copy of ‘My Neighbor Totoro’ for my birthday, and I watched it in absolute awe. Up until then, the most magical thing I had seen was ‘Toy Story’ (which is an amazing movie don’t get me wrong), but there was something so DIFFERENT about Totoro and the world, and the style and the story that I wanted to be in that world and never leave it. And when I was around ten years old, I began combining my interests of drawing and movies. I made secret flipbooks by drawing on the corners of my books. I made comics for friends. For teachers. For family. In middle school, I took summertime animation classes to learn Macromedia Flash, and I made my first little film ever, about my cat Ginger trying to steal fish. It was BAD but it was mine.

But surprisingly, as much as I LOVED drawing and animation, I was convinced I was going to become a Broadway star all throughout middle school and partly through high school. The high school helped me realize I didn’t have the acting or singing chops, I thought, and while it was a fun hobby, I had an epiphany that maybe, just maybe, the animation was the thing I loved most. And then I decided I was going to move from Portland to Kansas and go to KU in Lawrence because relatives of mine lived there and I liked it. But then I found out KU didn’t even teach animation, and also, what the hell was I thinking, Lawrence??? So I did some actual research on animation schools, and I was settling on two options: Loyola Marymount and CalArts. I toured both (and had a near-death incident on an escalator at LAX beforehand), and decided after over a year of thinking that CalArts was my top goal. I applied four times before I got in. I was this 21-year-old potato grub from Oregon who nobody knew and I was going to school with people I thought everyone knew.

When I got to CalArts, it was as rewardingly brutal as I expected. Surprisingly, I did not pull endless all-nighters, and I did shower regularly, which only made me more susceptible to the computer lab aroma that can only be described as dirty underwear and stress. I made lots of friends, lots of mentors, and lots of memories, and I kept my nose to the grindstone and my spirits high. I did have some serious bouts of stress and exhaustion and I did have a breakdown in my car after my graduation review, but I look back on my days at CalArts with joy and amazement that I got there and where I am now. I’m currently doing lots of animation and boarding and design freelance and it’s such fun, but it will feel great once it’s safe to be in person with people and work on stuff in studios. I can’t wait for it.

Overall, has it been relatively smooth? If not, what were some of the struggles along the way?
Oh, it was definitely not smooth. I had a very hard time making long-lasting friends as a kid, I was weird and awkward and I picked up social cues with the same skill I could pick up a hard-boiled egg with chopsticks: Almost None. I daydreamed in class, and I had a hard time focusing on things that weren’t art or writing. I was constantly getting my hopes up and destroyed. It sucked sometimes.

I attended CSSSA (California State Summer School of the Arts) before my senior year of high school and I was on such a high, I was totally convinced I was gonna get into CalArts on the first try. Surprise surprise, I wasn’t, and I buckled myself down to apply again, taking classes, having mentors, and just doing what I could to get in. I studied for an associate degree at community college. But it’s CalArts. So they weren’t going to care about my journey as much as what I showed for it.

I ended up getting rejected three times, then attended the CalArts summer residency for animation and worked my ass off trying to develop my drawing chops. Gonna be real here, I cried. A lot. And I cried a lot before mailing everything off for what was my fourth application. And I got what I think was hypothermia from doing watercolors out in the December rain.

I was convinced I was going to get rejected again and had readied myself for the fourth copy of a ‘We regret to inform you’ heading line, and fully preparing to work a lifetime at the Oregon Zoo in guest services and only drawing animals on lunch breaks. I got my CalArts acceptance letter on a Friday after wiping down 50+ disgusting baby chairs at the zoo restaurant, and I had a happy breakdown and couldn’t sleep all night.

And with all the amazing experiences I had at CalArts, I did have my share of not so great ones. I had lots of anxiety. Lots of stress. It’s so easy to tell yourself, ‘You can’t compare yourself to others, you are an original!’ and way harder to put it into practice. I was around so many amazing artists and individuals who were sneezing and spitting amazing art everywhere they went in my eyes, and I thought my art looked like cat shit. What helped was that my friends and classmates would come to me for help, for story consultation, for coloring, for editing, for animation… it helped me realize that people were looking to me because they had faith in what I could do.

Covid-19 really did kind of screw with stuff, though. I had put lots of personal depth and time into my thesis film, and I was sad it was not able to be screened at an in-person festival with my friends, and I was even sadder to not walk a stage for graduation. But I have memories of the years, the friends I made, and those can’t be exchanged for anything.

And right now things are still kind of tough. There’s the post-grad slump, and even with a booming animation industry right now, it’s still hard for new grads to find that one big job that’s the resume gold mine. I’m constantly updating my work, talking with friends, and keeping tabs on opportunities and doing some great small jobs, so I’m not too upset.

In the words of Timbuk 3: “Things are going great, and they’re only getting better. I’m doing all right, getting good grades, The future’s so bright, I gotta wear shades.”

We’d love to hear more about your art.
I consider myself a story artist first and foremost, both via comics and boards. I’m doing a bit of an informal comic diary on Instagram and Facebook and just scribbling out my thoughts on things, stories from childhood, and in October, I’m doing drawn retellings of ghost stories from Fort Nisqually for the fun of it. I also have some experience with writing stories, screenwriting, and writing scripts. I’d love to get a foot on that somewhere down the line.

I’m doing freelance animation work right now for lots of different clients, and my work ranges from full-on animated music videos to supervising work on a short. It’s all a lot of fun. Lots of people in different know me as that one artist who draws a lot of opossums, which are my forever favorite animal. One of my designs went viral like two or three years ago, and I still get money from it because it’s a hot seller, and I still get ‘fan mail’ about it from people who watch the opossums in their backyard, it’s really kind of cute.

Aside from the opossums, I think what sets my work apart is a lot of my work is very genuine and personal, and that touches people in away. After my thesis film, ‘Two,’ went public on Vimeo, I got messages from lots of different people who said that my film prompted them to call their siblings and tell them they love them, or that even if they didnt have siblings, they felt that connection. I think that’s what I want all my work to do: Make the audience feel something. Whether they laugh, cry, or both.

What is “success” or “successful” for you?
I see success as little steps along the way. For me, if I’ve accomplished something, then I accomplish something even just marginally bigger within the year, I feel successful. Maybe one more job offer than last time. Yesterday I got asked in for a job interview. Last week, a board test. It’s all adding up, and it’s what tells me, for certain, that I am a good enough person and artist to make it out there.

This time last year, I was living in a less than ideal situation, and now I’m living in a lovely room in a ranch house in Burbank with lots of cats, dogs, chickens and a tortoise. It’s a quaint and dreamy place I can work, and I love it.

Contact Info:

Image Credit:
Photograph by Erin McDermott

Suggest a story: VoyageLA is built on recommendations from the community; it’s how we uncover hidden gems, so if you or someone you know deserves recognition please let us know here.

Related Items

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

More in