Early life

Bill 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 and "Married to the Blob" in 2014.

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

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

• 1987 Academy Award nomination for Short Animation: "Your Face"
• 2001 Grand Prize for Short Films, Cannes Film Festival Critics' Week
• 2005 1 Academy Award nomination for Short Animation: "Guard Dog"
• 2005 Life Time Achievement (Time Machine Award) SITGES Film Festival
• 2006 Special Career Award - Fantasporto Film Festival
• 2006 Winsor McCay Award; Annie Awards by ASIFA-Hollywood
• 2008 MoCCA (Museum of Comic and Cartoon Art) - Cartoonist of the Year, MoCCA Art Festival
• 2010 Delray Beach Film Festival for "The Cow Who Wanted To Be a Hamburger"
• 2011 20th Annual Cinema St. Louis Film Festival (traditional name: St. Louis International Film Festival), Lifetime Achievement Award
• 2011 Burbank International Film Festival, Pioneer in Theatrical Animation Award
• 2011 Action On Film International Film Festival, Lifetime Achievement Award

Filmography

Animated features

• The Tune (1992)
• I Married a Strange Person! (1997)
• Mutant Aliens (2001)
• Hair High (2004)
• Idiots and Angels (2008)
• Cheatin' (2014)
• Revengeance (2017)

Documentaries

• Fuck (2005; provided animated sequences)
• Adventures in Plymptoons! by Alexia Anastasio (2011)

Live-action features

• J. Lyle (1993)
• Guns on the Clackamas (1995)
• Walt Curtis, the Peckerneck Poet (1997)
• Hitler's Folly (mockumentary) (scheduled for release June 3, 2016)

Animated shorts

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

• Lucas the Ear of Corn (1977; 4:00)
• Boomtown (1985; 6:00)
• Your Face (1987; 3:10)
• Love in the Fast Lane (1987; 3:00)
• Drawing Lesson #2 (1988; 6:00)
• One of Those Days (1988: 7:50)
• How to Kiss (1989; 6:35)
• 25 Ways to Quit Smoking (1989; 5:00)
• Plymptoons (1990; 6:45)
• Tango Schmango (1990)
• Dig My Do (1990; 4:00)
• The Wise Man (1990: 4:30)
• Push Comes to Shove (1991; 6:30)
• Draw (1993; 2:00)
• Faded Roads (1994; 2:30)
• Nosehair (1994; 7:00)
• How to Make Love to a Woman (1995; 5:00)
• Smell the Flowers (1996; 2:00)
• Boney D (1996; 3:00)
• Plympmania (1996; 8:00)
• Sex & Violence (1997; 8:00)
• The Exciting Life of a Tree (1998; 7:00)
• More Sex & Violence (1998; 7;00)
• Surprise Cinema (1999; 7:00)
• Life (1999, 6:10) (presenter, animator)
• Can't Drag Race with Jesus (2000; 2:00)
• Eat (2001; 9:00)
• Parking (2001; 5:22)
• 12 Tiny Christmas Tales (2001)
• Guard Dog (2004; 5:00)
• The Fan and The Flower (2005; 7:10)
• Guide Dog (2006; 5:45) (sequel to Guard Dog)
• Shuteye Hotel (2007; 7:00)
• Gary Guitar (2007) (episode of Random! Cartoons)
• Hot Dog (2008) (third in the Guard Dog series)
• Santa: The Fascist Years (2009)
• Horn Dog (2009) (fourth in the Guard Dog series)
• The Cow Who Wanted to Be a Hamburger (2010)
• Summer Bummer (2011; 1:49)
• Waiting For Her Sailor (2011; 0:30)
• Tiffany the Whale: Death on the Runway (2012; 8:56)
• The Simpsons couch gags (s23e18 and s24e15)"" (2012)
• Drunker Than a Skunk (2013; 3:30)
• "ABCs of Death 2" (segment-H is for Head Games)
• Footprints (2014; 4:01)
• The Loneliest Stoplight (2015; 6:18)

Compilations (DVD)

• Avoid Eye Contact Vol. 1
• Avoid Eye Contact Vol. 2
• Plymptoons: The Complete Early Works of Bill Plympton (1992)
• Bill Plympton's Dirty Shorts (2006)
• Mondo Plympton (2007)
• Bill Plympton's Dog Days (2009)
• Bill Plympton's Dogs & Cows (2013)

Music videos

• Peter Himmelman - "245 Days" (1990)
• Kanye West - "Heard 'Em Say" (2005)
• "Weird Al" Yankovic - "Don't Download This Song" (2006)
• Parson Brown, "Mexican Standoff" (2008)
• "Weird Al" Yankovic - "TMZ" (2011)
• Cousin Joe Twoshacks (Joe Cartoon) - "Deep End" (2014)

Commercials

• MTV public service announcement "Acid Rain" (1989)
• Trivial Pursuit (3) (1990-91)
• Nutrasweet (1991)
• Soloflex "Transformation" (1992)
• Oregon Lottery "Blackjack" (1992)
• NBC "Peacock Bumper" (1993)
• Taco Bell "Fuddy Duddy" (1993)
• Nik Naks (UK) (1993)
• Microsoft Windows '95 (1995)
• AirTouch Cellular (1996)
• AT&T "Longshot" (1996)
• AT&T Wireless "Map-O-Rama" (1997)
• 7-11/PBS "Head" & "Explore" (1998)
• The Money Store "End of the World" & "Rollercoaster" (1998)
• Geico Direct (6) (1999)
• Wilson Tennis (3) (2002)
• United Airlines "Signature" (2005)

[ Source: Wikipedia ]