[4] Both originally from Alberta, they first met in Vancouver at the Emily Carr College of Art and Design.
[6][7] In 2007, they founded the Bleak Midwinter Film Festival in their home neighbourhood of Inglewood, Calgary.
[8] In 2018, they were recipients of ASIFA’s Winsor McCay Award for their ‘exceptional contribution to the art of animation’.
The animation style used is reminiscent of Caroline Leaf's method of painting on frosted glass, used in her 1976 short film, The Street.
Tilby enjoys using this method because the artist erases the previous work as they go, and it forces her not to dwell on what she has already shot and keep going with the filming.
[24] For Wild Life, Tilby and Forbis were determined to find a technique that did not involve hand painting every frame.
They eventually found that the computer drawing wouldn't work and that only real paint could deliver the desired look.
They were only able to work on Wild Life part-time, due to commercial obligations, and the film is reported to have taken them from six to over seven years, from concept to completion.
[27] They enlisted local Maya artist, William Dyer, to sculpt a virtual topography reminiscent of 1917 Halifax, and Forbis and Tilby created the painted ‘skins’ that covered everything.
Aesthetically, they were aiming to combine that rinky-dink model train set quality with a hand-tinted postcard look.
Using combinations of CG animation, stock footage and hand painted elements, everything was edited together in Adobe AfterEffects.