The Animator Series #7: Bill Plympton

I’ve always been a fan of the old 90’s MTV blimps with it’s weird [adult Swim] before [Adult Swim] animation. I remember watching a specific one with a man’s face distorting out of wack trying to puff out the MTV logo. That was probably the first cartoon i saw of American independent animator Bill Plympton. Right after i watched his celebrated short film “Your Face” (pictured above), which was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Animated Short Film at the 1987 Oscars. After watching it i became a fan of Plympton’s easy looking sketchy style that works so well in animation.

He works in a very sketchy way, almost as if taking the time to caricature every gesture, and has used that style to produce a lot of celebrated films, shorts, and commercials like “Hair High”, “Guard Dog”, “The Cow Who Wanted to Be a Hamburger”, “Cheatin’” and many more. His work always takes a dark and adult theme accentuated by the quality of the animation, one which every aspiring animator should study from.