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Jean Gillmore began her animation career in the traditional 2-D world, working on network animated television shows (Hanna-Barbera, Marvel Productions) as a show model designer and/or supervisor for several seasons. She made the jump to theatrical animated features in 1989, where she worked 10 years as a staff visual development artist for Walt Disney Feature Animation. Her contributions to the Disney Renaissance era of feature animated films is huge and her credits list is long. If you look behind the animation you will find that most of the characters from that era were designed by Jean Gillmore.
More recent work has seen Jean illustrating books, creating orthographics of characters and costumes for CG direct-to-video projects and even designing a set for a (critically-acclaimed) one-woman theater piece, “The Dance of the Lemons”. Most recently in animation, however, she has worked as a CG COSTUMER for an animated feature development project at Blue Sky Studios on the east coast.
Over her long career, she has also worked in the development of various puppet show costumes and sets, toy design, and with the merchandise/ publishing concerns of retail venues (Walt Disney Consumer Products). Jean works in a variety of media with numerous applications, and is always open to breaking new creative ground.
Enjoy a rare interview with this ecclectic, bright and extremely talented lady.
To see more work by Jean Gillmore please visit her website at: http://www.jeangillmore.com
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Phil Nibbelink has been drawing his whole life. He studied art at Western Washington State University and film in Rome Italy’s Il Instituto di Stato per la Cinematografia. After attending the Disney Animation Program at California Institute of the Arts, Phil joined Disney Studios to animate on The Fox and the Hound, The Black Cauldron and Basil the Great Mouse Detective, Oliver and Company and Roger Rabbit. In 1989 he teamed up with Steven Spielberg to direct American Tail, We’re Back and Casper. Phil went on to start his own company where he wrote, directed and animated 3 features, Puss in Boots, Leif Ericson, and his third feature Romeo & Juliet: Sealed With A Kiss, won him a 1st place and ‘Best-in-Show’ award at the Best-in-the-SouthWest film festival. Phil had too much fun teaming up with his old college roommate David Greenblatt to create the graphic novel Ultima Thula.
Enjoy listening to this great talent discussing about a time when we were Drawn2gether and you can meet him at the CTN Animation Expo (CTN-X) on Nov 20-22, 2009
You can see more of Phil Nibbelink’s work and contact him directly at:
Creative Talent Network and www.philnibbelink.com
A Conversation with Harald Siepermann
“Germans ARE Funny!”
By Rhett Wickham
I have this far reaching, overly academic theory that goes something like this: the European influence on animation is growing increasingly absent in America and as a result, we’re getting less and less visually exciting.
Disney in the late 1930’s and pre-war 1940’s was undeniably under the influence of artists and illustrators like Gustave Tenggren and Kay Nielsen and Ferdinand Horvath, who had a powerful and visible impact on Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, Pinocchio and Fantasia. And, yes, there is a similar influence on live action with the work of directors like Alfred Hitchcock, Fritz Lang, Josef Von Sternberg and James Whale, but I’d argue that no other single studio product exhibited that influence in the same way as Disney’s films from this period.
So it is, or was, that a great wealth of European talent flowed into the industry in the United States after the production of Who Framed Roger Rabbit, and studios like Disney and DreamWorks benefited from the gifts of artists like Darek Gogol, Hans Bacher, Paul and Gaëtan Brizzi, Carlos Grangel and that German guy who worked on Tarzan..oh, come on…you know his name. Hans…no, Heinrich…oh shoot, hang on…HARALD! That’s it. Harald Siepermann! Read more
The Black Hole Memories
From the autobiography of Dorse A. Lanpher
“Flyin’ Chunks and Other Things to Duck”
Copyright © Cinefantastique
In early 1979 I was working at Walt Disney Productions on The Black Hole, a live action film with animated effects. The spectacular success of George Lucas’s brilliant Star Wars inspired Walt Disney Studio’s to do a film which would cash in on that sci fi success. I had just finished working on the hand drawn animated effects for Pete’s Dragon, another live action film. Don Bluth who had directed the 2D animation for Pete’s Dragon was talking about leaving the studio with John Pomeroy and Gary Goldman to do the animated film, The Secret of NIMH. Don had mentioned that he would like for me to join them as special effects supervisor. Even though I was intrigued by Don’s offer I felt I had a professional obligation to finish The Black Hole and was having a good time doing it. Jack Buckley, a long time Disney effects animator, had retired as effects department head and left me in charge as the animation effects department supervisor. Ted Kierscey, an effects animator, was helping me animate the laser blasts, rocket engine exhaust, and various visual effects that at the time, before computers, only 2D animation could accomplish. Don Paul was just out of the Eric Larson animation training group and he was assisting us. There was even some input from Brad Bird, later to become a successful director for Pixar Studios. During a conversation with Brad he revealed his successful directorial future when he expressed some ideas about how I might animate the laser beams when the actors fire their hi tech weapons. The production designer of the film was Peter Ellenshaw. A successful fine artist who was honored as a Disney Legend in 1993. Read more
