Sheila Graber

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Sheila Graber (born 1940) is an animator from the United Kingdom.

Raised in South Shields, Tyne and Wear, Graber gained a National Diploma in Fine Art from Sunderland Art College (now part of the University of Sunderland), before going on to train as a teacher in Birmingham. She then entered the teaching profession.

Graber spent 20 years experimenting with various materials, which led to her first animated movie in 1970. Between 1975 and 1980, she created a selection of award-winning shorts shown worldwide. In particular, one on Mondrian was screened in such diverse venues as the Tate Gallery, Mondrian’s own house in Holland, the Open University the and BBC’s Blue Peter. In 1980, newly divorced, she left her role as head of Creative Studies at a large comprehensive school to pursue a career as a full-time professional artist and animator.

From 1980 she began evolving her work in such London Studios as Filmfair and running animation classes in Tunisia and Caracas.

In over 20 years she has travelled from "Plasticine to Pixels" and still maintains that animation (as Disney predicted) is the "Art of the Future... and what’s more, it’s fun!".

After creating over 60 shorts and three series for World TV, she teamed up with fellow director Jen Miller in 1996 to form the company Graber Miller.

She was awarded an Alumni Fellowship from Sunderland University in 1998 for Outstanding services to Education and Art. One of Sheila’s driving forces is to use animation as a means of communication not just for entertainment, but for education and healing too.

Sheila had returned to live in her native South Shields in the 1980s, before moving to the Republic of Ireland in 2004, opening a studio to provide guidance and inspiration to the next generation of animators.

Many of her short films are held in the archive of the IAC film and video institute[1], including a number she made as the introduction for events and conferences hosted by that organisation.

In 2004, she was awarded the annual Lifetime Achievement Award of the North East England branch of the Royal Television Society. She also won the Best Digital Image award at the same ceremony in 2003.

One of her best-known works is the animation of Rudyard Kipling's Just So Stories [2], made in the 1980's.