From Puppets to Projectors: Animation Artist Spotlight
Meet CTC’s newest collaborator, local artist, and skilled puppeteer Liz Howls (@lizhowl).
Expert puppeteer and animation artist for The Best Summer Ever!, Liz Howls, has an appropriate origin story. “At a young age, I was captivated by the imagination of puppetry. My dad brought home a refrigerator box and I cut a hole in it, then started to do puppetry. After seeing a professional show in fifth grade, I went up afterwards and introduced myself as a fellow puppeteer. They invited me to a program in Iowa City, and by the time I was a freshman in high school, I was going on trips to regional shows.”
She was further mentored by the puppeteers and eventually studied art at the University of Minnesota. Since then, Howls has tried her hand at numerous forms of puppetry, sculpting, painting, performing, writing, and drawing. “I like to jump around in terms of form. The visual world very much acts as inspiration for me. I like my work to be visually magical to watch and contain aesthetic surprises,” Howls says. Such surprises are evident in her work with The Best Summer Ever!, which strikes a balance between the play’s fun stories and more contemplative moments. Howls is working with Children’s Theatre Company for the first time through this collaboration.
In the past, she’s worked as a creator, puppeteer, and performer with Open Eye Figure Theatre, but previous coworker and star of The Best Summer Ever! Kevin Kling brought her into the CTC fold to create animations for the show. “Within the last five years, I’ve started getting more into animation and the 2D world — shadow puppetry, which led me into doing papercuts I could do stop action with. When I think of animations, I come at it from the practical world of puppetry — the digital world comes last,” Howls explains.
Throughout the show’s conception, she’s worked with Kling, Composer Victor Zupanc, and Artistic Director/Director Peter Brosius to figure out what the animations should look like. Howls says, “I’ve been working with them to decide the best way to not literally show everything [Kevin] is saying. That’s the best way to complement the show. All of my animations will be silent, and I play around between some shadow work, stop action, and more. Kevin wanted different aesthetics and having the flexibility to jump around is nice.” The animations in The Best Summer Ever! require Howls to make a lot of material and then edit it down. Unlike many of her previous projects, she has the freedom to edit, change, and adapt the animations when needed, rather than hoping things work smoothly during a live show. “Editing lets me be another set of puppeteer hands, but I get to do everything and have the ability to freeze time. That’s what I love about animation — -I don’t have to rehearse for hours and hours!” she laughs.
To create the animations for the show, Howls works out of her home studio. She draws the images out on paper, inks them with pen, then goes in with color (be it paint, crayon, or marker). She says, “I like things to look imperfect, which is why I love to use textures.” After drawing the images, she lays them on a layer of glass that bounces off light, then films them overhead with a stationary camera. The process is simple, yet time intensive, as she must make multiples of the drawings, showing minute changes like facial features or, for instance, a popping balloon.
During the actual performances, Howls’s work will be projected on a stationary screen, with each projection “like a period to the end of the story that gives a little comment,” as Howls poetically explains. She’s working with the technical experts on the production to ensure the right resolution and ratio for her animations and can’t wait for her niece and nephew to see the show. She says, “I’m excited to bring my community over, because a lot of them haven’t seen me do animation. They’ll see me debut my skills. Working with CTC has been great, especially with the technical support. I’m excited to take the live form to the digital world for The Best Summer Ever!”
— Article written by Victoria Rabuse
