Bill Plympton: Renowned Animator Did it His Way

Jeff Baker - Portland Oregonian

Bill Plympton was at Comic-Con, the huge comic and entertainment festival in San Diego, with his friend Ralph Bakshi a few years ago. They were having a few drinks, and Bakshi, the director of "Fritz the Cat" and many other movies, helped them crash an industry party. More drinks were consumed, and Bakshi, who had just published a book of his work, introduced Plympton to his editor, who said Plympton certainly should have a book of his own.

"And that's how that happened," Plympton said, laughing.

Plympton's new book "Independently Animated: The Life and Art of the King of Indie Animation," is a treasure trove of his artwork, from his days at Portland State University to his careers as a magazine illustrator and political cartoonist to his many animated features and short films. The introduction is by director Terry Gilliam and the book tells the inspiring story of how a kid from Oregon City built a life making movies his way.

"It's funny. I didn't see a movie in a cinema until I was 11 or 12. I didn't go to an art museum or a music club until I was in college," Plympton said from his office in Manhattan. "There was a cultural thing going on in Portland in the '60s, but I was sheltered from it until I got to Portland State. I was out in the woods."

Plympton was drawing from the time he was 3 or 4 years old, on paper, on walls, on anything that wasn't moving. His parents encouraged him and bought him paint sets and easels and counted themselves lucky that he was so easy to baby-sit. His father worked for Oregon Mutual Savings Bank and, according to his son, was "a very funny guy, the life of the party. I saw how people wanted to be around him and it really showed me the power of humor. I don't have that gift of being charismatic so I try to carry on his legacy through cartoons."

Early influences were obvious: "Disney on TV, and Bugs Bunny and Daffy Duck. I thought they were the funniest things I'd ever seen. I wanted to do cartoons that moved."

The 14-year-old Plympton wrote Walt Disney asking for a job as an animator. Years later, after Plympton's animated short "Your Face" was nominated for an Oscar, Disney offered him a job that Plympton turned down because he wanted to remain independent.

In between, he did political cartoons for newspapers, including The Oregonian, and a comic strip. The success of "Your Face" changed Plympton's life and allowed him to give up print and go into animation for good. He's famous in the business for hand-drawing everything in his movies and is outspoken in his disdain for computer animation.

"It's very machine-like," Plympton said. "It's just cold. I know people like it, but I think they like to see the human element, the little mistakes. ... My stuff is very old school. It's so old school it'll be totally new again pretty soon."

One motivation for writing "Independently Animated" was to show today's talented young animators that it's possible to have a successful career without selling your soul. Plympton has done lots of commercial work and is happy to do it -- he was big on MTV before it went to wall-to-wall reality shows -- but has managed to make features, both animated and live, outside the studio system.

His most recent animated film, "Idiots and Angels," came out in 2008, and he's halfway through a new one called "Cheatin.'" He has fond memories of "Guns on the Clackamas," a live-action movie he shot on the river near his childhood home in 1993, and is proud that it's now out on DVD.

"That's one of my favorite films," he said. "It didn't do as well as I thought it would, but I liked it. Everybody thought of me as just an animator."

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