Meet Jessica Lindsay of Bare Tree Media in Chinatown

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

Jessica, can you briefly walk us through your story – how you started and how you got to where you are today.
I started my career in illustration and animation through the Digital Art program at Northeastern University.

At Bare Tree Media as a co-op through Northeastern University my Junior year. I spent my time creating mobile messaging stickers for a variety of brands and businesses. I got to practice my hand at illustration in a variety of styles and strengthen my skills as a 2D animator.

After 6 months of working with the Bare Tree team, I went back to finish my degree in Digital Art and Animation. I had an amazing time finishing up my last year at school working on a short film and still taking on some projects with Bare Tree Media on the side.

After graduation, I immediately joined back up with the Bare Tree full time. It has been a full year and the company has grown so much and I along with it. We moved to a new office, gained a few more co-workers and friends, and expanded our business of stickers to augmented reality (AR) within Snapchat and Facebook.

I was especially excited to move into augmented reality since I focused on 3D animation while in college. Creating AR lenses for Snapchat and Facebook allowed me to improve my modeling, texturing, rigging and 3D animation skills. It is also just so much fun to work and to see something you made in the world around you through your camera. We are going to keep with evolving as new technology is developed and I can’t wait to see what’s next!

Overall, has it been relatively smooth? If not, what were some of the struggles along the way?
I have been very fortunate so far to have not experienced too many road bumps. It was certainly a challenge to balance my last year of college with working part time.

However, I think my biggest challenge is something that many artists and designers experience during their careers. It’s called the imposter syndrome. The times when you just can’t get that one drawing looking right or the colors you choose are all wrong. You feel like you aren’t really qualified for what you are doing. It often comes with comparing yourself to other artists as well. I have often had this experience and I’ve heard many artists talk about feeling it as well. But I’ve come to recognize that in this field there is always something you can learn and improve on as new design/animation trends and techniques come and go. So, you might feel like you don’t have the skills but that might just be because it is true and you need to go out there and learn them.

Please tell us about Bare Tree Media.
We are a small group of artists and developers. We focus on illustrating/animating stickers for popular messaging apps and creating unique, interactive augmented reality effects for Snapchat and Facebook.

I’m definitely most proud of our flexibility and willingness to try new things. Even if we don’t have anyone on our team that is already experienced with something we want to try, we will have the opportunity to learn and expand.

If you had to go back in time and start over, would you have done anything differently?
I think I would have liked to study more animation earlier before college. But unrelated to my career, I also would have tried to speak to my college roommate from Mexico in Spanish more so my high school Spanish wouldn’t have gotten rusty like it has.

Contact Info:

• Website: baretreemedia.com
• Email: info@baretreemedia.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/baretreemedia/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/baretreemedia/
• Twitter: https://twitter.com/BareTreeMedia

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