Being sketchy

When Disney came to him with a hefty billion-dollar contract offer of working and directing movies for them,Bill Plympton was overwhelmed.The reason was ,quite presumably, more than the pool of money! " I love Disney,I grew up watching Disney cartoons", he was saying,like millions of mesmerised others. But the cost was too high for him too.Each and every art work that he would create would be copyrighted by Disney."What if I tell somebody some jokes?", Bill himself answered it with a wry smile- that too would be the property of Disney! And that was enough for this OSCAR nominated, independent ,'sleazy'-as he prefers to call his cartoons- Oregon born animator not to fall for this alluring 'rendezvous'! We,the little bugs of animation world might wonder what would have happened if the two completely different institutions of animation world-Disney and 'Bill Plympton' ,with an yawning gap between them-came together! But from Bill it was a big 'No'!
Although he is an independent animator,Bill Plympton is a grim jawed executioner when it comes to making aesthetic and technical decisions in his films.He singles out every reason that makes his film expensive and hard to sell. According to him a short film has to be 'short',it has to be 'funny' to watch and it has to be 'cheap' to produce because it has to sell. The " Plympton's Dogma"- as he terms it! And to achieve this he uses several techniques.He shows his films to people before releasing them and if some of the parts aren't quite impressive to the viewer, chances are there that he would probably remove that gag from his scenes. Very conflicting,as it may appear for a path breaking animator like Bill Plympton,but there is no room for self indulgence in his process of film making! Ne needs money to make the next film-one of many compromising things that an independent film maker has to suffer from. On the other hand he denies the fact that an animation film has to be very wishy-washy and full of pretty images.He defies the so called animation world's secret that animation is for kids and therefore there should be animation for adults.So they also should have scenes with suppressed libido, depiction of sex,violence and blood spilling and that too with an overwhelming sublimity.Even I was perplexed when I first saw his film "Guard Dog".His latest film 'Idiots and Angels' has all of these classic Bill Plympton visual imageries.Then he also admits that he doesn't always create gory films.His film 'The Fan and The Flower' is about a love between a ceiling fan and a flower,created with beautiful compositions in black and white in every frame.He says he loves shadows and loves to play with it. I think, the 'shadow' in his films is sometimes psychological too.
As far as his technique is concerned,he prefers to animate with as little frames as possible.For example he would generally use 3 frames for a side to side hop of his 'dog' (he showed that to us by drawing on paper). As we notice,colors that he uses are pretty subdued and subtle.He tries to keep it 'earthy'.Before start animating he goes through some pencil test of his shots.He fixes the camera angle,decides what color should it be and also tweaks the animation.

We were almost at the end of his lecture the 3rd floor lounge of Starz Animation studio.There were some exhibits- his sketches and books of illustration.They were for sale also. He earns money from selling these materials and merchandise too.And who doesn't know the cliche- 'Money matters'!

Picture Courtesy: Simon Chang of Starz Animation