In Tune With Her Muse
With her eclectic interests, artist, illustrator, and animator Lane Letourneau ‘17 looks toward a career in film
BY JANA F. BROWN
You never know where the muse might strike, so when Lane Letourneau ’17 saw two foxes playing in a park late at night on a recent trip to the UK, her artistic brain kicked into gear.
The simple observation sparked “Fox Hunt,” a story about sibling dynamics, as Letourneau transformed the foxes into hand-drawn cartoon characters representing herself and her brother, with a narrative reflecting her role as the responsible older sister tasked with following her younger sibling as he sneaks out after dark. The chase takes the sister onto a London sightseeing bus and through the gates of Buckingham Palace.
“That story stemmed from those two foxes,” Letourneau explains. “He breaks out and I have to chase him down and make sure he doesn’t get in trouble from our mother.”
As a story artist, illustrator, and animator, Letourneau’s imaginative themes often explore personal relationships to memory, time, and family. But she also draws inspiration from surrealism, German expressionism, and the intersection of technology and human experience. Her creative process involves extensive note-taking (“If you saw my notebooks, you’d be like, ‘You’re a madwoman’.”) — prompted by everyday moments like watching the foxes at play.
Letourneau has known she was an artist since … forever. “That’s all I’ve ever wanted to do,” she says. Before arriving at St. Paul’s from her home in Idaho, Letourneau was completely self-taught. She soaked in every lesson from the robust SPS art program and was particularly inspired by now-retired teacher Colin Callahan and current arts faculty member Brian Schroyer. During her revisit day, before she was officially enrolled at SPS, she observed Callahan teaching students how to stretch a canvass and was sold on that alone.
“My eyes lit up,” recalls Letourneau, whose late father, Ray Letourneau ’87, introduced her to the School. “I was excited by the possibility of learning traditional mediums.”
During her time at SPS, Letourneau created an independent project about her father’s addiction journey, turning her Hugh Camp Cup speech into an animated sequence. She went on to study fine art with a minor in film at Cornell. Initially focused on painting, Letourneau discovered an affinity for animation and new media art, taking her cues from directors like Tim Burton and Guillermo del Toro, both of whom she admires for their ability to work across animation and live-action projects. Letourneau moved to Los Angeles after college to be in closer proximity to the major animation studios.
While she’s dabbled in several art forms, including mural painting around L.A., creating pitch decks for feature films, storyboarding for commercials, and serving as a sculptor’s assistant, Letourneau’s most significant project ties her to the Yellow Brick Road. She’ll soon be wrapping up a four-year collaboration on a graphic novel with the great-great-grandson of The Wizard of Oz author L. Frank Baum. Letourneau is helping to adapt an unpublished Baum book from 1902 into a young adult graphic novel. As the sole illustrator, she’s been drawing daily, bringing the characters to life.
“It’s this old-timey narrative, filled with fairies, gnomes, elves, and nymphs,” Letourneau explains. “There are battles, love and acceptance, and life lessons. We took the book and stripped it down. Now it’s become more of an homage to the original.”
Expanding from magical creatures to her admitted love of an eclectic mix of puppets and monsters, Letourneau’s next move is enrollment at USC’s School of Cinematic Arts. She believes the three-year immersion will steer her toward directing and writing animated and live-action films in the vein of Burton and del Toro.
“Guillermo del Toro can do Pinocchio, which is the most beautiful hand-done stop-motion animation, and then turn around and do Frankenstein,” she says. “I love the dichotomy of those two mediums.”
Letourneau expects that her fine arts background, along with her ability to notice details (like the frolicking foxes) and turn them into larger moments, will translate well to a future in film.
“I think of every frame as a painting,” she explains. “You only have a split second to get something across to the audience, and I have a unique perspective because I’m so trained visually … I think there’s an interesting way to connect that to live-action filmmaking.”