Bill Plympton

Bill Blympton was born in Portland, Oregon in 1946, where he learnt to draw and his imagination grew. He studied at Portland State University and, as a member of the film society there he made is first attempt at animation. He has done a lot of design and illustration work but animation has always been an obsession of his. 

Fig. 1 A Self Portrait of Plympton

Plympton describes himself as 'really terrible at writing dialogue' (Plympton, 2015), he also believes that 'it's more poetic to tell a story through visuals and music, the head gestures, the eyes, the hands, the things like that.' (Plypmton, 2015). For these reasons his films are often free of dialogue. 

Fig. 2 The Tune

Plympton did a lot of commercial work and some very well received short films before building up to a full length animated film 'The Tune' (1992). Plympton hand draws all of his animations and this film took 30,000 cels to create. He has received several life time achievement awards from different organisations including SITGES Film Festival and Action on Film International Film Festival. 

Bibliography

http://www.plymptoons.com/about/

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/brandon-judell/post_9287_b_7057028.html

http://www.npr.org/2015/04/11/398766702/inside-the-wild-and-hand-drawn-world-of-bill-plympton

Illustration List

Fig. 1

http://images.huffingtonpost.com/2015-04-13-1428956363-6078313-BillPlympton_selfportrait_2007.jpg

Fig. 2

http://anination.free.fr/images/affiches/thetune.jpg