In this biography
Quick facts
- Born
- 1960
- Birthplace
- Edmonton,Alberta,Canada
- Country
- Canada
- Nationality
- Not independently established
- Known for
- Strings and the co-directed films When the Day Breaks, Wild Life and The Flying Sailor
Why this life matters
Her films connect the details of everyday space with the production choices through which animation can make relationships visible.
Timeline
Key moments
Graduation film
Tables of Content opened a route to NFB production.
Strings
Directed the paint-on-glass short.
Shared direction
Co-directed When the Day Breaks with Amanda Forbis.
The Flying Sailor
Continued the partnership in anotherNFB short.
From literature and visual art to moving images
Wendy Tilby was born in Edmonton in 1960. She studied visual arts and literature at the University of Victoria before an animation course changed her direction. At the Emily Carr Institute of Art and Design she concentrated on film and animation, graduating in 1986. The success of Tables of Content led to work with the National Film Board. Her early interests help make sense of the result: the films attend to how a story is told and to the texture of an image, not just to what happens next. A domestic setting could become a way to explore a relationship through movement, space and sound.
An individually directed film before the partnership
Strings (1991) was directed, written and animated by Tilby. Its wordless encounter between neighbours uses painted glass and stop-action filming. The NFB credits David Verrall as producer and Chris Crilly for music, placing its concentrated visual world within a collaborative production. That earlier film matters when considering her subsequent partnership with Amanda Forbis. The collaboration did not erase individually developed practices or make every earlier title a co-directed work. It brought filmmakers with their own experience into shared projects, and the credits remain the clearest guide to where individual and joint responsibility begins. The distinction preserves both the continuity of Tilby’s interests and the change in production relationships.
A sustained collaboration across different formats
Tilby and Forbis met while studying at Emily Carr and later co-directed When the Day Breaks (1999), Wild Life (2011) and The Flying Sailor (2022). Their own account also describes commissioned illustrations, projections and television advertising. The different formats show a working partnership extending beyond a small list of festival shorts. Intimate observations and larger imaginative transformations could be developed within both personal and commissioned work. Her career offers a useful alternative to an opposition between craft and collaboration: an exacting handmade surface can depend on close cooperation. It also shows why an artist’s biography should distinguish the time at which a partnership formed from the separate education and experiments that made that partnership possible.
Quick answers
Frequently asked questions about Wendy Tilby
- Did Tilby make Strings with Amanda Forbis?
- Strings credits Tilby for direction, script and animation; their later shorts are co-directed.
- What technique does Strings use?
- The NFB identifies painting on glass with stop-action filming.
Keep exploring
Lives connected to this story
- Caroline Leaf
Compare two artists’ different uses of paint-on-glass animation rather than assuming a single shared style.
- Amanda Forbis
Read the career of Tilby’s long-term co-director alongside her earlier individually directed work.
Sources and further reading
Explore the evidence
These references support the biography and offer further reading. Official records, first-person accounts and independent reporting provide different perspectives; image records document attribution and licensing.
