Artist Research: Bill Plympton

Bill Plympton is vastly known as ‘the King of Indie Animation’. Born on April 30th, 1946 in Portland, Oregon, growing up in a large household consisting of three boys and three girls. Plympton spent most his childhood days honing in on his art skill, even through high school being part of the art club and creating posters for various different activities. Plympton then furthered his education at Portland State University, where he attempted his first animation for the year book, which didn’t go to plan as he shot the animation upside down, making it of no use to anyone. Plympton fascinated by animation even sent Walt Disney some of his cartoons ask for an opportunity to work for them. At only age 14, Plympton received a letter back, the Walt Disney company said that he was far too young, though his art indicated a lot of promise.

During the time of the Vietnam war, Plympton went away to help serve in the national guard from 1967 (age 21) to 1972 (age 26). During this time in 1968, Plympton moved to the city of New York and studied at the School of Visual Arts, then spending 15 years of his life to be an illustrator and cartoonist. Plympton’s work has seen the pages of The New York Times, Vogue, House Beautiful, The Village Voice, Screw, and Vanity Fair. While his cartoon also made an appearance in magazines such as Viva, Penthouse, Rolling Stone, National Lampoon, and Glamour. Plympton also designed magazines like; Cineaste, Filmmakers Newsletter, and Film Society Review. Plympton then went into political cartoon strips creating ‘Plympton’, in 1975, and by 1981 his cartoons were featured in over twenty papers by Universal Press Syndicate.

Suddenly in 1983, Plympton got a request from Android Sister Valeria Wasilewski to direct and animate a film around the song ‘Boomtown’ by Jules Feiffer. Which then lead Plympton onto his next animation “Drawing Lesson # 2” which was running slow during production, causing Plympton to start another animation “Your Face”. (see fig 1)

Figure 1 Your Face by Bill Plympton 1987 [Still]

This was the first time that Plympton had witnessed the reaction from his audience, as his work had only ever been seen in magazines. The animation consisted of a man’s face being squashed, stretched, and manipulated in very strange ways, that left the audience in fits of laughter.

Plympton started receiving recognition, he had clients such as Trivial Pursuit, Nutrasweet, Taco Bell, AT&T, Nike, Geico, United Airlines and Mercedes-Benz. With his work also making appearance on TV showing on MTV and being showcased at popular animation festivals globally. After receiving praise from his short films, consisting of the like of ‘How to Kiss’, ‘One of Those Days’, ’25 Ways to Quit Smoking’ and ‘Plymptoons’, Plympton wanted to move on to the next big thing, feature animated film.

Plympton created ‘The Tune’ in 1992 financed and created entirely by himself, and released shorts in order to both promote and raise money for the film, after succeeding in his dream of being a film animator Plypton then went to create a variety of live action and animated movies, that are still loved and supported to this day with a loyal following.