HOWIE SHIA is a Toronto-based illustrator, animator, and composer. He is a co-founder of PPF House where he has created both independent work and commercial animation, illustration and music for the likes of UN-Habitat, the YMCA, Nike, the National Film Board of Canada, and various independent musicians and theatre groups. Winner of the 2000 Vtape Video Art Award and nominated for a Chalmers documentarian award that same year, Shia’s work has since screened at festivals and galleries around the world, including the Art Gallery of Ontario (Toronto), the Palm Springs and LA Short Film Festivals, Telluride, and the Lux Theatre in London, England. In 2006, Howie directed and animated Flutter, an NFB/PPF House co-production which won the Tokyo International Anime Fair’s Open Entries Grand Prix, as well as Best Short Film at Montreal’s Fantasia Genre Film Festival.

Shia is co-creator of Portfolio Entertainment’s animated comedy, Chinatown Cops, and creator of the kids’ action series HOOD, currently in development with Teletoon and Disney’s Jetix Europe. A frequent contributor of set and prop designs to various acclaimed Toronto theatre groups, Howie believes strongly that arm wrestling is an endless source of comedy.