Saturday, August 9, 2014

Bill Plympton at the San Diego Comic-Con

Excerpts from a David Apatoff post in Illustration Arts.

From Santa: The Fascist Years (2008)
I encountered Bill Plympton, the famously independent animator and illustrator, sitting at one of the few tables (at Comic-Con) without a ten foot full color banner of semi-nude space nymphettes. If his booth had a Dolby soundtrack, it was out of commission during my visit. If Plympton brought a funny barbarian hat, it was nowhere in sight.

Plympton has become justly famous for his offbeat, highly personal, subversive animation:








There is an excellent book about Plympton's life and career. His description of Disney's lucrative contract offer rivals Faust's meeting with Mephistopheles:

I was hoping that I could work on the Disney projects during the week and during my off-hours and weekends I could work on my own weird offbeat projects. "Sure," the lawyer said. "That's fine, and you have our permission but we'll own whatever you create." 
"What about if I tell someone a funny story?" I rebutted. 
"We own that," he said. 
"What if I have a dream?" 
"That's ours too."

Plympton walked away from a lot of money in order to save his work from the corporate de-flavorizing machine.

 

The full article here.

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