Hello, you’ve made it to my about page! I’m Joël Gibbs, a Senior Creative Director with over 20 years in the animation industry, based in Nashville, TN.
There’s always a story to tell — whether it’s an emotionally driven character on an adventure, or a high-tech product in all its intricacy and craftsmanship. I work with clients to find that story, then figure out the best way to put it in front of the world.
A master’s in fine arts and multimedia from the University of Rennes led me first into compositing, then into the 2.5D world — Lightwave, Softimage, Maya, and now C4D — building concepts, lighting, and style frames. I’m a hands-on director, often bookending a project myself: deep in storyboards at the start, back at the keyboard and stylus for compositing and finishing at the end.
None of that is much fun alone, though. A project comes alive when the right team is in the room, each person pointed at the same story from their own corner of the production. When everyone gets it, the whole is always more than the sum of its parts.
I was born and raised in Saint-Nazaire, France. Somewhere in there, two very different loves took hold: art and soccer. These days home is just outside Nashville, out in the country, where my wife and I are raising three teenagers. We love the outdoors, though most weekends we end up on a soccer field instead — I played for twenty years before switching to coaching about fifteen years ago, and I haven’t stopped since, U5 to U17. When we’re not on a field, you’ll usually find the five of us on the couch together, working through a movie or a series.
There’s one more story I like to tell: an ancient one that still rings true — my failures and mistakes, forgiven and forgotten. Jesus, God made flesh, came to this earth for me, with good news: I’m loved, and I’m forgiven. It’s still the greatest story of hope there is, one worth telling over and over.