PLYMPTOONS: THE COMPLETE WORKS OF BILL PLYMPTON
Editorial Reviews
Amazon.com
Independent animator Bill Plympton first received widespread public attention
when his outré "Your Face" (1987) was nominated for an
Academy Award for Animated Short. His short films--some as brief as 15
seconds--made between 1985 and 1991 showcase his unique talent much more
effectively than his ponderous features, The Tune and I Married a Strange
Person. Plympton's earliest films indicate that he experimented with a
variety of techniques--cutouts, cel animation, stop motion--before finding
his personal style: colored pencil drawings on paper to illustrate bizarre,
metamorphic transitions that build to an absurd climax. Eyes slide up
foreheads, lips elongate, mouths rotate, bodies distort, and heads explode
in loose, scribbly sketches. Plympton is not a great animator: he uses
only four to six drawings per second, less than a Saturday-morning series
(full, Disney-style animation requires 12 to 24 drawings per second),
and his attempts to tell a coherent story through his drawings invariably
fizzle.
But in off-the-wall shorts like "Your Face," "25 Ways to
Quit Smoking," and the 15-second "Plymptoons" made for
MTV, he emerges as an entertaining and highly original filmmaker. Not
rated; suitable for all ages, although bizarre imagery may frighten small
children. --Charles Solomon
review source: www.amazon.com