Animator: Bill Plympton (1946-)

Bill Plympton is an America animator, using hand-drawn animation techniques to give life to characters.
Plymptons's animations are really stylised in a sketchy style. By the stylisation of the characters and respective world, he tries to create a comedic effect to the story, Although stylised characters are already exaggerated , I perceive Plympton's characters as being a step even further, he over-exaggerates the characters by creating complete perfect caricatures. Plympton's illustrations and cartoons have been published in The New York Times and weekly newspaper The Village Voice, as well as in the magazines Vogue, Rolling Stone, Vanity Fair, Penthouse, and National Lampoon.

As I mentioned before, his animations have an unique style, induced by the sketchy look yet communicative drawings. From coloured Pencils to minimalist line drawings, he approaches animation in many different ways.

Plympton is considered the 1st animator to draw every frame for an animated film. Although he uses less frames per second, as the movement is quite jumpy, this approach really creates an frenetic animation, that jumps from action to action, but that really suits the stylised characters.

Working with him is Signe Baumane, director and animator, who inks and colours each frame.



The Tune was his first animation, and the one, which Bill Plympton fully financed on his own. It features this really exaggerated characters living in these minimalist but yet exaggerated environments. The jumpiness of the animation is visible but it is also essential for this movie as it features a lot of singing and dancing. Bill Plympton, not only change characteristics on the characters but also he applies that to the all world, by over-stretching, over squashing and morphing.

I must admit, that I was not familiar with this animator, but I was stunned in the end , everything was working that really glued me to the screen. The characters were a delight and really an inspiration for my works from this point on.

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