Meet Edie Harper

We were lucky to catch up with Edie Harper recently and have shared our conversation below.

Edie, so good to have you with us today. We’ve always been impressed with folks who have a very clear sense of purpose and so maybe we can jump right in and talk about how you found your purpose?

I can’t remember a time in my life when I wasn’t yearning to do something creative. One of my earliest memories is using up all the paper in my house and drawing dozens of characters, then covering my wall in them and keeping them up for inspiration to make more. I regularly hot glued together hand puppets while they were still on my hand so I could properly fit them. I was given chalk, clay, colored pencils, felt and yarn, and I would feel completely unproductive and unfulfilled if I wasn’t making something, regardless of what or how. Even with art and creating being what makes up the majority of my upbringing and childhood memories, I can’t say I always knew it was my purpose. In recent years, as I have been studying animation at California Institute of the Arts, I have truly realized that art, particularly animation, is what I am meant to do on this earth. Like every kid, I had thoughts like, “What if I was a veterinarian?”, “What if I became a scientist?”, and many other wide varieties of career paths that would cross my mind. Usually, I’d only think of other paths briefly, and would move on and back to art. When I started art school, there was a nagging worry that art would become a sort of homework, something I HAD to do to survive, and not something I was doing purely out of passion and interest. I was afraid I’d burn myself out and come to realize that a path in art wasn’t what I was destined for. In my almost four years of studying animation, I have realized that I do in fact need to make art to survive, but in a way that I wasn’t expecting. I’ve learned that I can’t possibly see myself doing anything else with my life, that I will never be burnt out because no matter why I’m making art, for a client, for myself, for an assignment, I feel fulfilled by the mere fact that I’m creating something, contributing color, entertainment and life to the world. It is my purpose to animate, paint, make puppets, and to do art in all forms, because without it I can never feel truly fulfilled.

Thanks, so before we move on maybe you can share a bit more about yourself?

I’m an animator and artist, and right now my one true love is stop motion. There is something I love so much about being able to not only make a character tangible and real, but bringing them to life through animation. It’s like an advanced version of playing with toys. Puppets in general are something I’ve always had a deep love and admiration for, and I love to incorporate hand puppets, wire puppets, clay and paper puppets into almost every film or art piece I make. I feel that I gravitate very naturally towards a combination of horror and comedy work, most of my artistic inspirations coming from a mix of those genres. I regularly consume horror and thriller films and shows, and love especially when in older films there are practical effects and stop motion. I feel that stop motion is the absolute perfect method for these genres, there is something uncanny and funny about a three dimensional cartoon puppet, and somewhat creepy at the same time. I am currently working on my senior thesis film, which to summarize very roughly is about a hunter hellbent on killing a living star. It’ll be a culmination of all my favorite mediums, with stop motion and hand puppet sequences, comedy, gore, and strange characters. I’m super excited to be at a school that supports all of my creative endeavors, and to be surrounded by insanely talented peers that collaborate with me and make my work the best it can be!

If you had to pick three qualities that are most important to develop, which three would you say matter most?

Three extremely important things I’ve learned about in my artistic journey, especially since attending CalArts, are how to not let fear compromise your vision, how to enjoy every step of the artistic process and avoid burnout, and how to effectively give and receive feedback. First off, in my first year of college, I was overwhelmed with a fear that I would grow to not enjoy art, and that what I was making was always going to be sub par compared to my peers. I let this feeling bog me down for a while, and when it came time to make my first year short I felt completely lost. I saw other animators and artists making technically proficient masterpieces way above my level, saw people with deep and raw emotional stories, and felt that my vision was shallow and imperfect. I restricted myself to digital animation, which I have never been as fond of compared to stop motion, and as I was making the film I felt exhausted and angry, nothing was turning out as planned, and it was my own fault for limiting my scope out of fear that anything else wouldn’t be good enough to even show my friends. The school year was almost over, and I was hating what I was making, when I remembered back to a time when I was applying to colleges and majors outside of my interests for the same reasons I was using mediums I wasn’t comfortable with: fear that what I really wanted to do wasn’t good enough. All along I had wanted to make puppets, to play and explore, to animate freely and just have fun. So I scrapped everything I had with less than a month until the film deadline, and made what I had been envisioning from the start. To my surprise, I was far less stressed than when I had much more time, and the month I spent reworking and making my film was ten times more exciting and rewarding than any of the processes I had been following before. By not letting fear compromise my vision, I made something that was a little messier, but had far more heart and passion in it, and reminded me why I wanted to be an animator, and why I loved creating. The second skill I learned much earlier on in my journey, which was how to enjoy every part of the artistic process. Every creative has parts of even their favorite artistic practices that aren’t their favorite. For me it’s making clothes for my puppets or storyboarding my films, for others it could be anything from sketching on a canvas to composing sheet music. What I like to do is see every single step in my artistic process as a new project in itself. I’m making a storyboard, and to make it more fun and exciting, I think of it as a small project, a stepping stone leading to the next project. That way I always have something new to look forward to, even if I’m using the exact same plot and characters. Making puppets, compositing, editing, writing a script, they’re all extremely different. If I treat each part of a film or project like its own little project, I never feel burnt out because I’m always making something new! The third thing I’ve learned, mostly in the past few years, is the importance of giving meaningful and insightful feedback on projects, and more importantly how to receive it and utilize it in your work. I have my amazing classmates, peers and family to thank for helping me learn this skill, since working with them has truly made my work stronger and more exciting than if I went in on it completely alone. When giving feedback I’ve learned the importance of asking someone what questions THEY have about a project, and when on the other end, thinking of questions I have unanswered about my own work. By posing specific questions, I’ve learned how to get the feedback I’m looking for, as well as give it to others, because when the one making the project is the one asking, there is zero compromise on their vision, and it is much easier to get a thoughtful and honest response. When I receive feedback like “it looks cool”, or “you should/shouldn’t do it that way” with no follow up, I usually end up feeling like my project hasn’t moved forward and I have nothing new to think about. But when someone asks me what I want out of my project, how I’m trying to convey a message, or what questions I have about my own work, I feel like I have a lot of new avenues to explore, and I can open up my mind to ways of thinking about my work that only my peers could’ve shared with me. All of this to say, if you’re just starting out on your artistic journey, don’t compromise your vision for anyone, find a way to have fun in everything you do because trust me, there is a way, and know that collaboration with friends and family is one of the most useful skills and resources any artist can have!

Alright, so before we go we want to ask you to take a moment to reflect and share what you think you would do if you somehow knew you only had a decade of life left?

If I had a decade left, and somehow had millions of dollars as well, I’d find a quiet and peaceful place surrounded by nature and community, and build my own art studio where all of my friends could be together and spend our time creating just for us. Of course I’d do what I imagine most people would do with a clearly limited time, travel, spend time with the ones I love and enjoy every day as much as possible. More realistically, I would simply just keep making things. I would never feel the need to limit myself, and use all of my time to hone in on my passion, creating the most ambitious projects I could think of, and helping others create their own. If all I was limited by was time, which in a way everyone already is, I would more or less keep doing what I’m doing, what I feel it is my purpose to do, which is to make art and contribute something to the world, which in recent years has been pushing creative paths to the wayside. Creativity is one of the most important assets humans have, and if I only had ten years to live, I would lose all fear of making things that are imperfect, messy and even just plain bad, because making anything at all is better than making nothing. I already like to live every day, make every project like it could be my last, which might be a bit cliche, but in doing so I find that there is something inspiring and exciting about every day, every new piece I make, and every piece my friends and colleagues make. You truly never know how much time you have left, so I say why not spend it creating?

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