Nephtali A Conversation with Glen

Keane
Its been just under a year since On Animationlast spokewith Glen
Keane[1]. At the time he was promoting his first short film, Duet[2].
This year hes back with another hand drawn short,Nephtali[3], a
blend of hand drawn animation and live-action footage. Nephtali was
created for the Paris Opera to coincidewith thelaunch of their new
digital stage, 3rd Stage.
Glen was personally invited to join a distinguished list of artists and
filmmakers to help launch the 3rd Stage by Benjamin Millepied, the
new Director of Dance for the Paris Opera. Benjamin and Glen first
met while they were both working on projects at Google last year.I
was fortunate enough to steal some of Glens time and gain more
insight into the production of the short.

The audio isnt the best quality due to the long distance call, so Ive
also transcribed the interview below. Thanks to Bonny Bez[4] for his
work cleaning up the audio. It wouldnt have been an option without
him.Enjoy!
Audio Player
Daniel: How did Nephtali get started? What was the original
inspiration behind it?
Glen: As I was working on Duet, Benjamin Millepied was working on
developing a project at Google. He had seen what I was animating, and
we started talking about doing something together. He actually
showed me how to do a pirouette that I used in Duet, and we just
thought it would be wonderful to do something together but wasnt
sure exactly what. So when he became the Director at the Paris Ballet,
he created another stage. They have three stages there. They have the
Bastille Opera, and they have the Garnier Opera, where the Phantom
of the Opera took place. Thats the central location; one of the most

beautiful buildings in Paris. But he wanted to create a virtual stage

called The 3rd Stage, and he invited a number of directors to come to
the Paris ballet and find inspiration and do something that was calling
to you.
He was not trying to impose any kind of creative direction on it other
than that we were passionate about what we were going to do. So Ive
always just been fascinated with dance. It always feels to me that
dance is very much an animatorskind of like another way of
expressing yourself through dance. Most of the time that Ive seen
dance in animation, Ive never felt that it was really living up to the
potential. It feels that we are often way too bound by gravity, and yet
animation doesnt have to be. So I thought I wanted to do something
where I can really let the figure float in the air if it needs to be, and to
really draw some of the fluidity of line that feels bound even by a real
ballerina. The human figure is bound by gravity, and animation can
really set that free.
We have an apartment in Paris, and I would walk to the Opera House.
On my way I was trying to figure out what I was going to do, as I was
going to meet the ballerina, Marion Barbeau. I thought I would just use
some of her choreography. They say that a ballerina may have up to
sixty choreographies in her muscle memory; its just there, and they
can dance it.
I thought Ill use that, and just animate. And then all I could think of
was Ollie Johnston saying to me, Glen, dont animate what the
character is doing, animate what the character is thinking. So I
thought I cant just go in there and draw her moving, I need to really
give her a motivation and a purpose, and tell a little story. By the time
I got there, I had developed a little story, and gave her the motivation

on what these three basics acts to this little story would be. She was
incredible. So anyways thats pretty much how I developed it, and how
the whole thing came to be.
Daniel: Can you talk a bit about creative process from studying
the dancer in the studio in Paris to sitting down and animating
it? Did you use charcoal for the end like you did in Pocahontas?
Glen: Well there was some charcoal drawings at the very beginning
with the deer. The very end of it was actually a graphite pencil. A
Mitsubishi pencil that we found in order to do Duet. Its a 10B. I found
out that its the same pencil that Miyazaki uses, which I didnt know.
When we were searching, we searched all over the world for the best
pencil that had this really wonderful soft feel. So it can look like
charcoal or you can be very accurate. Thats what I did Duet with, and
thats what what Im going to draw with for the rest of my life. Its so
rich and wonderful in its line. I describe the line as having calories to it
its so buttery. You get fat just drawing with it.
Benjamin Millepied and Dimitri Chamblas, who are running the Paris
Ballet, invited me into to sit with some of the rehearsal sessions. As I
was drawing Marion Barbeau and some of the other dancers, just
watching them warm up, and as Im sketching them warming up, Im
warming up myself and realizing how how much dance is very much a
gestural, expressive medium. You are drawing a line of action from
head to toe, and its very expressive. Theres a motion in those lines.
As I worked with them throughout the next week, I found that working
with a dancer is very much like working with an animator. They really
truly were expressing themselves with their body, as opposed to me
with my pencil. And they were really working towards silhouette, and
all of the things that Frank Thomas, Ollie Johnston, Erik Larson were

trying to drill into me, they were doing as well. They were trying to
communicate with attitude, so that somebody in the back of the
theater could read the pose. There was always an anticipation of
movement
Daniel: Clear staging
Glen: Staging, everything was really designed for the audience; just
communicating it clearly. As Eric would always say, Make a positive
statement. And something that I had learned in my first years at
Disney, Ollie would say, Think in terms of golden poses. Even
though youve got 24 frames a second flashing by, its really maybe
only three poses in a ten second scene that really tell the story. Just
think in terms of what are these golden poses? And the more I watched
ballet, I realized thats what theyre all about. Theyre hitting these
golden poses, and they may leap through the air The pose walks in
and its this picture, and a pirouette is basically one pose that is frozen
but is moving, and all of these different attitudes were carefully
choreographed to tell a story in movement. So thats what I worked
with Marion on, in terms of what are those golden poses.

Recently, Ive been working with Benoit Philipon. He is the guy that
was doing the live action. We were talking about actually freezing
those golden poses, and rotating them in space, and I would animate
them moving in dimension. But I found that it was actually hurting the
more important principle, which was communicating an emotion, a
story. So I decided that I wasnt going to freeze those moments. So
theres basically three acts that I worked out with it, and it very much
comes from Psalm 42.
Its a sense of spiritual longing in the first movement, which goes to
conflict and struggle, and then finally a breaking free and a freedom of
expression. Those three emotions are in that Psalm 42. The name
Nephtali comes from when Jacob was blessing his twelve sons, the
twelve tribes of Israel. His son Naphtali, spelled with an a in English.
In French its with an e, so I used the e spelling as it was done in
France. But Jacob says, Naphtali is a doe set free that bears beautiful
bonds. And Id always loved just that image of the power and the
grace of a deer leaping free. And in the end having the fawns as a light
thats fruitfulthese are things that are very personal for me. And
because I was invited in in a similar way I was invited into GoogleTo
be myself, and express something personal.
Thats what Benjamin Millepied was asking me to do. I find it really a
gift for me to come in and not have to sell something or create
something that stockholders will find fitting their guidelines. Instead,
I found I had to complete creative freedom. It was really a wonderful
experience. For me, drawing the figure has always been a joy. When I
started animation, I just wanted to be a sculptor and a painter. So
when I animate Im constantly trying to find a way to draw the figure
in space and turn them around.

Daniel: Its sounds like thats what you were doing when you
were trying to find the golden poses. Youre still experimenting
with drawing in dimension.
Glen: Yeah very much so. Youve seen the Step Into the Page video[5]?
Daniel: Yes
Glen: I mean thats even another step beyond. It actually was funny,
the day after I came back from Paris, after drawing these dancers, I
went up to Google to do the Step Into the Page. And in Paris I was
drawing this dancer who was leaping towards me. I had to draw that
beautiful line of action of the dancer in perspective coming at me. Yet
I knew that from a profile you would have this beautiful line of action
running down the back all the way down to the feet, and thats what I
wanted to draw. But instead I had to do it in perspective, so it was sort
of a frustration, and so the first thing I did when Bruce Skillman, one
of the two guys developing Tilt Brush, gave me the stylus was I just
drew a line going back in space like it was that same dancer.
I stepped around and saw this beautiful profile line and I could start to
draw that dancer. That was really the first drawing that I did in VR. It
was something that I found that I could never do on paper. It was
incredibly liberating and difficult. I do think its going to take time to
master that art of creating in VR. I dont think it just gives itself up
without some real effort of understanding the craft just like animation.
I remember Frank and Ollie telling me it will take you five years to at
least get to a point where you are comfortable animating so that youll
understand what youre doing with it. I hope it doesnt take five years
with this craft, but I dont have any illusions that you just get it
instantaneously.

Daniel: Do you plan on using it for any future shorts once youve
explored it a bit more?
Glen: Well yeah, Im developing a few ideas right now; trying to find
the right partnership. Somebody who wants to collaborate, and do
something that is personal, expressive. I want to do something thats
good. I want to do something that touches people in a meaningful way.
Im not interested in just the technical aspect of an object turning in
space. I want them to have some emotional resonance with the
audience.
Daniel: More than just a gimmick.
Glen: Yeah, much more than that. So I am talking to possible partners
that we can do that with. Right now Im not exactly sure. The thing is
after leaving Disney, I left because I felt like theres something
wonderful out there waiting. I didnt know what it was. Now Im
beginning to discover it. It really is an entirely new era of animation

right now, and its not formed yet. Its very very fluid. Its kind of like
if youre making a sauce and at the beginning its just very liquid, and
youre stirring the spoon, and yourethinking this is never going to
thicken up. And you add some more flour, and pretty soon the gravy
starts to get a little bit thicker, and then you have something
wonderful. I think right now its still thin. Its beginning to thicken.
Its beginning to form into something very personal, expressive, but it
takes an enormous amount of communicating with others which is
why Im actually going out to The Future of Storytelling[6], to touch
bases, to learn, to share. Theres an enormous amount of collaboration
thats happening right now outside of the big studios that I find
incredibly exciting.
Daniel: Would you consider collaborating with another major
artist, or do you want to focus more on personal stories right
now?
Glen: Im open to any kind of collaboration right now, and Im finding
that most of the people who Im rubbing shoulders with are other
artists as well. Maybe its going to be helping somebody else
accomplish a vision that they have. It doesnt have to be mine. Ive
spent my whole career helping directors realize their vision. Since Ive
left Disney, Ive had wonderful opportunities of actually realizing
some of my own, but Im really open for the right marriage of creative
people together. And if it means helping somebody else tell their story
or working with another artist that I am sympatico with then yeah lets
do it. Thats how I feel.
Daniel: In the live action footage we see you directing the
choreography of, Marion Barbeau, the dancer. Did you have an
idea for what you wanted the whole sequence to look like from

the start or was there more of an organic process with both

artists bouncing ideas off of one another?
Glen: Yes and yes. Id never done choreography before, though Ive
certainly thumbnailed so many different moments in animation that I
assumed it was like that. Except that you are working with another
person, a choreographer. I remember one time in Treasure Planet,
John Ripa and I, we animated on the same animation desk at the same
time where Long John Silver is meeting Jim Hawkins. John and I just
choreographed it very much like a dance working around one another.
I would run and animate a little thing, and then he jumped back in
there it wasso collaborative that way. That was probably the closest
Ive had to this experience. I watched Benjamin Millepied, who is a
genius in choreography. He works very intuitively, almost like it was
straight ahead animation, where one pose just leads into the next.
Hes working with a dancer, watching them, and then something
occurs to him, and then he adds on to it. He may have some general
idea, but hes really responding to the spirit of the moment. I watched
him do that and I thought, Okay, I can relate to that. So when I came
in, and I met Marion Barbeau, it was scary and intimidating because I
dont know dance. Heres this ballerina who, her whole life since she
was six years old was working and studying, and Im not going to
presume to know what she knows. But I did know that there are certain
things that she needs. She needed for me to communicate the emotion
that she had to have at the very beginning. I knew that I needed to
have this longing start in one place, and have her move to the next
point on the stage. So I did little thumbnail sketches to show her the
way I thought she should move. And I mostly did them through little
thumbnail drawings, sometimes trying to act them out for her.Then
she would have an idea how to interpret this wind, this wave. In the

middle of Psalm 42 it says,

Deep calls to deep in the roar of your waterfalls;All your waves
and breakers have swept over me.
So I translated all of this in French to her, and the whole time was
speaking to her in French. She understood that turbulent kind of a
feeling. I kept looking for ways that we could get this beautiful arc. I
kept imagining her as if she was a drawing. Even though youre
working with a ballerina, a living person, Im still imagining her as
drawing thats actually moving across a space with a kind of an S
Curve, a French Curve, in the arc of her path of action where she would
fall down onto the ground. And sometimes it would feel a bit clunky,
so I would ask her to do it again but with a little more of a graceful
dissent as she would hit the ground and then rise up. There needed to
be these changes of direction.

Theres basically three pieces of choreography, each one moving in its

own direction, it was very simple that way. So I wrote down words for
her, so that she could understand the one central thought in that, from
desire or longing. French doesnt have a word for longing, so I had to
come up with other ways of translating that. Desire would probably be
the closest. Then there would be this struggle, which was the second
word. In French it was a different word, but it was something like that.
And then, liberty, freedom was the last one. With all of those I did a lot
of little sketches so she understood how I would do this if I was
animating it, and then watching how she interpreted it.
So that was how we were doing it throughout the whole process I was
working closely with Benoit Philippon, who was doing all the liveaction. He was filming the whole process. I needed him to shoot
certain angles because I was going to use that for reference when I
came back to L.A. Then when we got back, I really only had about three
weeks to do all the animation, which is what we did. My son Max, who
was Production Designer for Duet, was also the Production Designer
for Nephtali. He just has a knack of taking the drawings that Im doing
and making them look a hundred times better. Just putting them in
space and dimension.
Daniel: From my perspective, as a fan and an observer, you have
accumulated all of this knowledge and expertise over decades of
creating animation, and now you have your own company, in a
time with all this emerging technology at your fingertips. Its
seems to me that the possibilities of what someone like you can
do are really limitless. I think I speak for everyone when I say
were all waiting in anticipation for what youre going to do next.
What are your long term goals in this business? What do you

hope to achieve by the end of your career?

Glen: Well, I plan on living until Im 120. So in a lot of ways I feel like
Im just beginning my career right now. I can honestly say that I feel
very much the same way I did when I first started. I feel like Im barely
up to the task. When I started it seemed like everyone else knew so
much more than I did, and I was playing catch-up all the time. And I
always looked to past masters of drawing and sculpture as my guide
when I became stuck. I wouldnt look so much at animation as I would
look at Rodin or Degas, and Augustus John, and learn that way. So now
Ive never lost that sense that if one of those artists from 150 years ago
was transported to today and you gave them the tools that we have
today. But didnt show them any of the animation thats been done,
but just show them whats possible. What would they do? What would
they come up with? Thats kind of where Im thinking of myself, in
that sense of, if you could re-invent what youre doing, who you are as
an artist, and look at all of the tools afresh, you probably would never
even come up with the look of Disney now. Thats a look thats there
because of a technical limitation of painting on cells. There would be
an entirely different feeling to the way you draw
And now thinking about VR, maybe theres a way of actually animating
in three dimensional space. This is something Im fascinated with
actually animating around me with drawing in space as if you are
sculpting that figure in space, but its in line. These are things that Im
really fascinated with and theres been a few projects that have been
cooking in my mind for thirty years now. Ive been wanting to do
them, but I never felt like I was ready. Not that I feel like Im ready yet
either. But at some point Ive got to dive in and start, so right now Im
putting my sails up and seeing what fills them, and how I can
accomplish these ideas.

My wifes patience and encouragement along the way means a lot to

me because were in this adventure together. For me to step away from
Disney was also a scary thing to do. Something that I took very
seriously because I felt like I was given so much there by these great
teachers. I felt a responsibility to continue to pass that on. And I
realized that even though you leave Disney, Disney never leaves you.
Youve still got those principles, and Im trying to apply them into
these new frontiers. I kept hearing from Ollie Johnston, he would say,
Glen, youre going to do greater things than us some day. Im
thinking, man, I wish hed never said that. Thats such a burden; I
cant possibly do better than Pinocchio. But now I realize he didnt
mean great in quality like that. He was talking about greater in
application, in influence. In a way, take those same principles and
apply them in a ways that he couldnt even imagine. And I see that
thats exactly whats happening. Anyway, thats where Im at today.

Links
1. http://onanimation.com/2014/12/02/making-duet/
2. http://onanimation.com/2014/06/26/behind-the-scenes-of-duetby-glen-keane/
3. http://onanimation.com/2015/09/15/glen-keane-nephtali/
4. https://twitter.com/bonnybaez
5. http://onanimation.com/2015/09/10/glen-keane-step-into-thepage/
6. http://futureofstorytelling.org/