Interview With Elizabeth Luce, Part 2
Elizabeth Luce is a graphic artist, illustrator and puppet designer. She has a Master of Fine Arts in costume and set design from UCLA and has worked on a variety of film, television and theatre productions. Elizabeth designed puppets for a Children's Fairyland production of The Wizard of Oz and Snapdragon Puppets' Emmy-winning video The Mousecracker. I asked her to share her thoughts on puppet design.
PJ: Whose work has influenced you the most?
EL: There are so many illustrators I admire: Brom, Lisbeth Zwerger, Sulamith Wülfing, Brian Froud, William Joyce. And then there are movies that leave fascinating images in my mind -- Blade Runner, Tim Burton's The Nightmare Before Christmas, Baz Luhrmann's Romeo and Juliet, old art deco sci-fi movies -- as well as wonderful theatre set and costume designs I've had the opportunity to see.
I think the commonality is that all these works create an intricate and believable world, one with depth and endless possibilities. These works are at a level of complexity that I could never achieve, but they provide me an endless source of satisfaction and inspiration.
Interestingly, puppet design more often is about simplification and stylization. You need to extract the essence of the creature or character, stylize the look and yet give it full opportunity to be a dimensional personality that is immediately visually accessible. I very much admire the modular, abstract puppets of Eastern Europe, particularly Hungary and Czechoslovakia. This style is still strong today, but most of my references date from puppet books of the '60s and '70s. I love beautiful craftsmanship in any style, but I also know that the humblest sock can be a brilliant puppet in the hands of a great manipulator -- and with puppets, that's the most important thing of all.
PJ: Whose work has influenced you the most?
EL: There are so many illustrators I admire: Brom, Lisbeth Zwerger, Sulamith Wülfing, Brian Froud, William Joyce. And then there are movies that leave fascinating images in my mind -- Blade Runner, Tim Burton's The Nightmare Before Christmas, Baz Luhrmann's Romeo and Juliet, old art deco sci-fi movies -- as well as wonderful theatre set and costume designs I've had the opportunity to see.
I think the commonality is that all these works create an intricate and believable world, one with depth and endless possibilities. These works are at a level of complexity that I could never achieve, but they provide me an endless source of satisfaction and inspiration.
Interestingly, puppet design more often is about simplification and stylization. You need to extract the essence of the creature or character, stylize the look and yet give it full opportunity to be a dimensional personality that is immediately visually accessible. I very much admire the modular, abstract puppets of Eastern Europe, particularly Hungary and Czechoslovakia. This style is still strong today, but most of my references date from puppet books of the '60s and '70s. I love beautiful craftsmanship in any style, but I also know that the humblest sock can be a brilliant puppet in the hands of a great manipulator -- and with puppets, that's the most important thing of all.
Labels: Elizabeth Luce, interview
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