High Quality Content by WIKIPEDIA articles! Count Ul de Rico, AKA Ulderico Gropplero di Troppenburg (1944 - ), is an Italian-born artist and author of illustrated children's books, most notably The Rainbow Goblins (1978) and its sequel The White Goblin. (1996) He was also a major contributor to the children's fantasy film The NeverEnding Story (1984), based on the book of the same name by Michael Ende. Ul de Rico was born in 1944 in Udine, Italy. He lived in Munich for many years, studying at the Munich Academy. He studied painting under Professor Franz Nagel and, under the tutelage of Professor Rudolf Heinrich, received his diploma in stage and costume design. He now lives in France. In 1977, Ul de Rico illustrated The Ring of the Nibelung: Wagner's epic drama, an interpretation of the extraordinary 15-hour epic Opera series composed by Richard Wagner over the course of 26 years. de Rico's story was a simplified, truncated version of the full play cycle, which took several creative liberties, the most noticeable of which was the use of the 3 Norns as narrators throughout the story, rather than merely for Götterdämmerung, as in the original.