Bill Plympton

Early life

Plympton was born in Portland, Oregon, the son of Wilda Jean (Jerman) and Donald F. Plympton, and was raised on a farm in nearby Oregon City, with five siblings. From 1964 to 1968, he studied Graphic Design at Portland State University, where he was a member of the film society and worked on the yearbook. In 1968, he transferred to the School of Visual Arts in New York City, where he majored in cartooning. He graduated from SVA in 1969.

Career

Plympton's illustrations and cartoons have been published in The New York Times and the weekly newspaper The Village Voice, as well as in the magazines Vogue, Rolling Stone, Vanity Fair, Penthouse, and National Lampoon. His political cartoon strip Plympton, which began in 1975 in the Soho Weekly News, eventually was syndicated and appeared in over 20 newspapers. His distinctive style is easily recognized.

As of 2012, Plympton had created over 40 animated short films and six animated features. He has also published a comic book, The Sleazy Cartoons of Bill Plympton.

Plympton, together with other independent New York City animators, has released two DVDs of animated shorts, both titled Avoid Eye Contact. His work also appeared on the 1992–1993 Fox comedy series The Edge; on MTV during the late 1980s; and on MTV's animated series Liquid Television in the early 1990s. In 1995, he contributed animation and graphics to a computer game collection, Take Your Best Shot.

From 2001 to 2003, he teamed with Don Hertzfeldt for the touring "The Don and Bill Show", which played throughout the United States. In 2005, Plympton animated a music video for Kanye West's "Heard 'Em Say". The following year, he created the music video for "Weird Al" Yankovic's "Don't Download This Song".

The actress Martha Plimpton, a distant relative of his, served as associate producer on Plympton's animated feature Hair High (2004), doing much of the casting. The movie's voice cast included her father Keith Carradine and her uncle David Carradine. Plympton contributed animation in the History Channel series, 10 Days That Unexpectedly Changed America, to illustrate the events of Shays' Rebellion.

His films The Fan and the Flower, Eat, Your Face, Guard Dog, and Santa: The Fascist Years were included in the Animation Show of Shows.

Plympton's 2008 80-minute feature, Idiots and Angels presented by Terry Gilliam, had no dialogue. The film premiered at the Tribeca Film Festival on 26 April 2008, and won a Special Distinction prize in the feature film category at the Annecy International Animated Film Festival 2008.

In 2011, Alexia Anastasio completed a documentary on Plympton's life, Adventures In Plymptoons!, released in September 2012 direct-to-DVD and on video-on-demand.

In 2011, Plympton collaborated with child film critic Perry Chen on Ingrid Pitt: Beyond the Forest, a 2011 short animated film directed by Kevin Sean Michaels, about actress and Holocaust survivor Ingrid Pitt.

Bill Plympton animated the opening couch gag for the Simpsons episodes "Beware My Cheating Bart" in 2012, "Black Eyed, Please" in 2013, "Married to the Blob" in 2014, and "22 for 30" in 2017.

Plympton directed the segment "On Eating and Drinking" in the 2014 animated film "The Prophet", adapted from Kahlil Gibran's book The Prophet.

A collection of more than 180 Plympton items is held at the Academy Film Archive.

Personal life

On December 23, 2011, Plympton married animator/artist/illustrator Sandrine Flament at his sister's house in Oregon. Their son, Lucas, was born in September 2012.

Awards

Animated features

Documentaries

Live-action features

Animated shorts

Source unless otherwise noted: Title, Year, Running Time in Minutes and Seconds

Compilations (DVD)

Music videos