You are now watching: Phil Nibbelink: Going Indie with Animation

A former Disney animator and a director for Steven Spielberg for 10 years, Phil Nibbelink is now making his own films. Phil has presented sessions and workshops at past motion conferences, and he’ll be returning as a presenter for motion09. We talked with him about his films, his process, his favorite tools, and the challenges of creating his animated feature, Romeo and Juliet: Sealed with a Kiss—for which he did 112,000 drawings.

You used Flash for character animation on Romeo and Juliet: Sealed with a Kiss. Why was it the best fit for the project?

When you do an animated film all by yourself, you’ve got to streamline the process and create a system that has fewer steps than a regular production process, which has the benefit of a huge team of people. Obviously, keeping it all digital and getting rid of paper has to be one of those steps. Also, I didn’t do storyboards, I just went straight from a script to animation because I was the writer, director, producer and animator. I didn’t have to impart a vision, so I didn’t need the tools people use to communicate with each other, like layouts, storyboards and workbooks. And then getting to color digitally, it was just faster and simpler to draw directly. Because it’s vector based, Flash allowed me to work with very small file sizes yet still have the high resolution imagery I needed for film. If I worked in, say, Photoshop, I would be stuck with these giant files, and that would slow down the whole process.

When did you start using digital tools?

The Amiga was the first computer that had animation capabilities, it was very animation and video friendly. It’s gone now, defunct. But it had a fantastic program on it called Deluxe Paint. I first started going crazy with Deluxe Paint at the end of Fievel Goes West, we used it for special effects like snow and crowd scenes. That was around the mid ’80s.

It dawned on me very quickly that you could make an entire feature, certainly at video resolution, with Deluxe Paint. In fact, my first two films, Puss in Boots and Leif Erickson were done with Deluxe Paint. But for Romeo and Juliet, I had to switch to Flash to get those giant 2K files that I needed to output.

Flash is scalable, you can go up or down. Everyone always thinks about how it can be scaled down for use on the Internet. But no one ever, at least when I started, had ever gone really, really huge. Film recorders are not chewap and when I bought one, it was a real leap of faith that Flash would be able to project up on a huge screen and still look jaggy-free, no pixels. I was greatly relieved, and in fact, delighted when I saw the results. I was doing these acid tests where I would do a single pixel line and I’d have it rotate slowly. The anti-alias algorithm in Flash is so beautifully done that those pixels just rotate ever so slowly. It was perfect imagery.

It took you five years and 112,000 drawings to do this. That takes some stamina. How did you do it?

It was a labor of love. And it’s my passion. Animation, for me, has always been a great love. I’m happiest when I’m animating and drawing. I was cleaning out my old closet at my folks’ house the other day, and there was a tower of sketch books—they nearly fell down on me. I have sketch books going back to, you know, before Jesus. I’ve been drawing and cartooning my whole life. And that led to flip books, which led to, hey, wouldn’t it be great if I could make a movie of these flip books? I bought a Super 8 camera when I was 13. There was no turning back after that.

Now, five years doing Romeo and Juliet sounds like a long time, but when I think about other long form projects I’ve worked on, it’s not. I worked on Black Cauldron for six years, and Cats for six years. Historically, the timeline of an animated film has always been long.

When you were adapting Romeo and Juliet, how faithful were you to the story?

Well first off, I have four small children, so I couldn’t have a double suicide. I had to make a G-rated version. I also condensed characters. The play runs about three hours and I only had enough money for about eighty minutes (laughs). So I simplified it a lot. I’m sure William Shakespeare is rolling in his grave.

When you create a film on your own, the glory is all yours but the struggle is all yours as well. How much did you miss having things like tech support?

A lot. You do have to solve technical problems yourself because it’s just too expensive to have someone do it for you. So, I just had to wear more hats and learn a lot of things I really didn’t want to learn—like how to deal with film and sound issues. And then when we finished the film, all the printing issues. And all the legal issues. People don’t realize how much happens after a film is done. Everything from copywriting to licensing and merchandising and publicity.

Fortunately, I have a distributor for foreign distribution and another handling domestic, and they’re very helpful—but I ended up cutting the trailers and doing the posters and comic books. Ultimately, Romeo and Juliet has been a six-year project for me. The animation took four years, post took another year, and publicity and promotion took another year on top of that. It’s a never ending story.

What films did you work on when you were at Spielberg’s animation studio?

I co-directed Fievel Goes West, and I was a directing animator on Who Framed Roger Rabbit. I also started on a film called Balto, but got taken off that to work on Cats. I developed Cats for six years but it ultimately got shelved. That can drive you crazy—to work on a film for six years, and then have it go on a shelf.

Was the Cats experience the reason you left London and came back to the US?

No, the whole company got moved. That was at the time when DreamWorks was being formed and Jeffrey Katzenberg had joined Spielberg. They wanted to create a large animation facility in Glendale, CA. So they brought the entire London unit over, and I was part of that big move. Cats got passed from DreamWorks to Universal and ultimately Universal passed on it. That’s when I started my own company.

What have you been working on since you finished Romeo and Juliet?

I’m working on a graphic novel Ultima-Thula, done in Flash, with a view towards selling it to the movies. In Hollywood, more and more movies are originating in graphic novels. As a 200- to 300-page full blown story, a graphic novel translates well into a feature.

If you were to step back and view the evolution of your art, what would it look like, and are you happy with it?

I guess any artist feels that he’s a work in progress—and hopefully evolving towards something better. Never satisfied with yourself and always hoping to, praying to do better work. As I look back, I get frustrated with my own incompetence. I wish that I could be better, and hopefully, each project is a little bit better.

Are you surprised at the direction your career has taken, and are there skills you have now because of it?

Working all alone has forced me to learn everything. I have to buy books on film distribution and film recorder repair and color balancing 35 millimeter motion picture film. For me, learning is really exciting and keeps me going.

Now, there are certainly different ways to measure a person’s life. I had one lawyer say to me, “But think of all the potential income you’ve lost over the years.” So, okay, he’s using income as the sole yardstick—and I probably could be a lot richer. But I’m marching to a different drummer. Fortunately, I have a wife who’s extremely supportive. I don’t think I could have done it if my wife hadn’t been behind me.

And your kids?

They’re my test audience. When I was writing Romeo and Juliet, I would pitch them concepts and if they didn’t like it, I’d come back the next night with a different take on it. I kept pitching it to them until it flowed and made sense and they were listening with their eyes and mouths wide open. And then as I was making it, every day they would come home from school and go, “Daddy, daddy, daddy!” and charge into my studio to see the day’s work. And every day I’d have another four seconds of animation done. I’d run it for them and they’d go, “Ohhh!” The film is definitely kid tested. On a four-second-by-four-second basis.

For more information, visit Phil’s website.
Phil at imdb

Filmography:
Ultima Thula – co-written, illustrated
Romeo and Juliet: Sealed with a Kiss – director, writer, animator
Leif Ericson – director, writer, animator
Puss in Boots – director, writer, animator
Boogie Woogie Whale Sing-a-Long – director, writer, animator
Casper – animation director
We’re Back: A Dinosaur Story – director
American Tail: Fievel Goes West – director
Who Framed Roger Rabbit – directing animator
The Magic Voyage – directing animator
Oliver and Company – story
Basil the Great Mouse Detective – animator
The Black Cauldron – animator, character design
The Fox and the Hound – animator
Cats – story
Wind Catcher – director, writer

speaking at motion09
Phil Nibbelink will be one of the ‘rock stars’ at motion09

10.11 – 10.14 2009 | abq | nm
motion | experience inspiration

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author: Lilian Dregalla
Working Story Creative
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copyright: © 2008 – 09
motion.tv

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