Department of Theater Associate Professor Colette Searls and independent animator Lynn Tomlinson will present their collaborative research uniting Searls’ work in live performance puppetry with Tomlinson’s painterly clay-on-glass animation. The team is working with UMBC’s Imaging Research Center to create a prototype app that animates characters directly through an iPad touch-screen interface. Their prototype digital puppet will be used as a tool to create a short film about a crab that collects sea trash entitled “Hoarder Crab.”

Colette Searls is a stage director with a particular interest in visual theatre and puppetry. At UMBC, Professor Searls has taught acting, directed a mixture of classical and contemporary works, and created award-winning original puppet plays. She has received grants from the Jim Henson Foundation and Puppeteers of America for her original work in found-object puppetry aimed at adult audiences, provided puppetry coaching for professional theatre companies, published and lectured internationally on her digital puppetry research, and served on the UNIMA-USA board of trustees. In 2013, she received a grant to work with award-winning animator Lynn Tomlinson and a team of programmers to create a new digital puppetry app for artists.

Lynn Tomlinson investigates expanded animation projects as a scholar, curator, and artist, reflecting her interest in hybrid art forms and interdisciplinary practices. Current projects include digital puppetry, full-dome experimentation, projection mapping, and interdisciplinary collaborations in performing and media arts. Her clay-on-glass animated shorts have been official selections in festivals internationally and have aired on children’s public television, MTV, and Sesame Street. Her half-hour PBS documentary and her artistic direction of folkvine.org both involved using animation techniques in non-fiction forms. Her current work explores environmental change, the subjectivity of objects, and the poetics of scale. She also develops community-based art projects and has led a series of workshops using animation and technology to engage and empower girls and young women. Her work is profiled in The Animation Bible.