Bill Plympton

Bill Plympton is an American animator, graphic designer, cartoonist, and filmmaker best known for his animated film ‘short Your Face’. He is 71 years old and was born on 30 April, 1946 in Portland, Oregon, United States. ‘The tune’ was animator Bill Plympton's first full-length feature. Bill is now a retired banker but he grew up in a large family of three girls and three boys. For the six children it was often too wet to play outside. Plympton credits Oregon's rainy weather for promoting his drawing skills and imagination. He went on to Portland State University; he edited the yearbook and was dedicated to the film society. It was for this film society that he first attempted animation; he created a yearbook promo that was accidentally shot upside-down, rendering it totally useless.

Plympton served in the National Guard from 1967 to 1972. In 1968, he moved to New York City and began a year of study at the School of Visual Arts. He dedicated a long contract as an illustrator and cartoonist. He designed the magazines: Filmmakers Newsletter, Film Society Review and Cineaste. His illustrations have made the pages of The New York Times, Vogue, House Beautiful, The Village Voice, Rolling Stone, Screw, and Vanity Fair. His cartoons appeared in magazines such as Viva, Rolling Stone, Penthouse, National Lampoon, and Glamour; and In 1975, in The Soho Weekly News, he began "Plympton," a political cartoon strip. All his life Bill has been captivated by animation. When he was fourteen, he sent Disney some of his cartoons and offered his services as an animator. However, they wrote back and told him that while his drawings were amazing, he was too young. It wasn't until 1983 that he was asked to animate a film. The Android Sister Valeria Wasilewski asked Plympton to work on a film she was producing" Plympton says. "It was a great way to learn how to make a film." In 1992, Bill Plympton made history by drawing an entire film on his own.

Artis’s Style:

Plymton is a DIY animation pioneer. Throughout the ’80s and ’90s, animators knew Plympton as the guy whose colored-pencil cartoons were almost habitually the best things about the shorts festivals that toured theaters. His pieces were notable for their distinctive, instantly recognizable visual style, and for being consistently surprising and absurd. Plympton strongly believed that animation was flexible, and that sanity in cartoons was a waste of the medium’s potential. He put it this way:  (2017 BrainyQuote) "I think it’s part of the responsibility of an artist to shock, to upset, to make people think differently, and to surprise people. And that’s where the good humor is, if there’s a surprise and there’s something unexpected. Something that’s not normal, not in the realm of general living expectations.” His shorts followed a pattern: Each one was either, melting, stretching distorting or transforming the characters’ faces or bodies.

Fig1

This is The Tune, Plympton got the idea of creating his own full-length movie in the 80s when he was assembling his shorts for a retrospective collection, he realized he’d produced more than an hour’s work of animation on his own in just four years. It was the equivalent of a movie, which implied that he could actually create an entire film of his own. He had help of composer Maureen McElheron and the New Yorker cartoonist P.C. Vey to help him write a script, and then he spent the next several years drawing and coloring each image himself. He hired artists to fill in the backgrounds, and had a sound crew, a camera operator, musicians and performers.

Given that, it’s no surprise that The Tune is quite simple, with minimal backgrounds and sketchy drawings. But Plympton’s signature has always been simple, at least until the faces start melting. The film follows an ill-fated person named Del who’s trying to write a song to sell to his business Manager Mr. Mega; in hopes of becoming enough of a success that he can afford to marry the love of his life. Rushing to Mr. Mega’s office with his latest half-completed song, he gets lost and ends up in place called Flooby Nooby, where songs just suddenly happen. The Mayor explains that Del is trying too hard as a composer, and just needs to learn to feel the music. So they wander around Flooby Nooby, listening to the denizens sing in a variety of styles. Eventually,

One of the most striking things about The Tune is its inconsistency. He varied his animation technique from segment to segment to keep himself interested in the project over the years, so over the course of the sad ballad “Home,” for example, he tries a variety of visual experiments, dropping out the color, then dropping out most of a character’s face as they sings, leaving only her lividly textured eyes, nose, and mouth hanging in midair. The film gives a perpetual sense of an artist testing out every style that crossed his mind. Transformation is key to Plympton’s work, and the theme extends to his style as well as his content.

Illustration:

http://www.notesontheroad.com/images/stories/Bill_Plympton/Bill_Plympton_Your_Face.jpg

Bibliography: 

2017 BrainyQuote: (https://film.avclub.com/in-1992-bill-plympton-made-history-by-drawing-an-entir-1798233490)