Line #91 Creator/BillPlympton


1	[[quoteright:350:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/n1078003225_30190796_6677_8.jpg]]
2	[[caption-width-right:350:Pictured: the artist. Also one of his more normal drawings.]]
3
4	->''"The thing I love about Bill's stuff is that I know it'd make [[WesternAnimation/TheSimpsons Bart Simpson]] laugh his ass off."''
5	-->-- '''Creator/MattGroening'''
6
7	Bill Plympton (born April 30, 1946) is an Acadamy Award-nominated American animator and director whose work is known for being...[[DerangedAnimation somewhat unique]]. His films and shorts have featured everything from outlandish 1950s-style monsters to musicals about sexual fantasies to the truth about Santa's fascist past.
8
9	His animated films are:
10	[[index]]
11
12	* ''WesternAnimation/YourFace'' (1987)
13	* ''25 Ways to Quit Smoking'' (1989)
14	* ''WesternAnimation/TheTune'' (1992)
15	* ''Mondo Plympton'' (1997 shorts compilation)
16	* ''I Married a Strange Person!'' (1997)
17	* ''12 Tiny Christmas Tales'' (2001)
18	* ''Mutant Aliens'' (2001)
19	* ''WesternAnimation/GuardDog'' (2004)
20	* ''WesternAnimation/HairHigh'' (2004)
21	* ''Idiots and Angels'' (2008)
22	* Segment ''H is for Headgame'' in ''Film/ABCsOfDeath2'' (2014)
23	* ''WesternAnimation/{{Cheatin}}'' (2014)
24	* ''Revengeance'' (2016)[[note]]Co-created with Jim Lujan[[/note]]
25
26	[[/index]]
27
28	His live-action features are:
29	* ''J. Lyle'' (1993)
30	* ''Guns on the Clackamas'' (1995)
31	* ''Walt Curtis, the Peckerneck Poet'' (1997)
32	* ''Hitler's Folly'' (2016)
33
34	He also did the videos for [[Music/WeirdAlYankovic Weird Al's]] songs "Don't Download This Song" and "TMZ", and there is currently a documentary [[http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/alexiaanastasio/adventures-in-plymptoons-a-documentary-on-oscar-no being made about him.]] In addition, he has provided CouchGag sequences for eight episodes of ''WesternAnimation/TheSimpsons'' to date, and made animated sequences for the Season 19 DVD menus.
35
36	All of his work up to 2019 is currently owned by Shout! Factory.
37
38	!!Tropes present in his work include:
39
40	* AdolfHitlarious: His live-action mocumentary ''Hitler's Folly'', which presents and AlternateUniverse in which Hitler aspired not to be a dictator, but run an animation empire a la Creator/WaltDisney. There are many, many jokes paralleling Disney's media empire and the Third Reich.
41	* AnimatedShockComedy: ''Very'' fond of senseless violence and throws in ''ToiletHumor'' for the lulz, but shows the sex directly, up to plain porn, rather than just using sex ''jokes''. He was, at one point, dealing with criticisms that all he did was over-the-top sex, violence and vulgarity, which convinced him to do the much more sombre and personal ''Cheatin'.''
42	* AmusingInjuries: He's at least on par with Creator/TexAvery when it comes to mauling his characters. "When Push Comes To Shove" takes this to Eleven, with a brilliant subversion at the end.
43	* AndIMustScream: One short features a couple in a romantic embrace. One of them says, "[[ExactWords I wish this moment could last fore--]]" Several seconds later, his eye--and ''only'' his eye--moves, [[NoFourthWall looking at the camera]] in despair...
44	* AnimatedMusicVideo: Two for Music/WeirdAlYankovic ("Don't Download This Song" and "TMZ") and one for Music/KanyeWest ("Heard 'Em Say"). He also did an entire half-hour featurette set to Jackie Greene's EP ''The Modern Lives, Vol. 1''.
45	** He provided animated sequences for Peter Himmelman's "245 Days", but apparently didn't direct the video.
46	* ArtEvolution:
47	** His earliest films were low-tech even for their day. Backgrounds were often re-drawn on every frame a lá Creator/WinsorMcCay, leading to a number of shorts with characters acting in negative spaces. In the late '80s, he started cutting out his colored-pencil drawings and pasting them onto cels for a much slicker look. This practice continued until the '00s when he began shooting digitally, often alternating between digital ink & paint and digitally composted pencil drawings.
48	** His drawing style also gradually simplified over time, presumably as he's slowed a bit with age, going from exaggerated while still anatomically correct humans to more simplified and "toony" character to NoodlePeople.
49	* ArtStyleDissonance: While he draws most of his shorts and features with a semi-realistic style, Bill's comedy could easily be described as [[JustForFun/XMeetsY Tex Avery filtered through David Cronenberg.]]
50	* BMovie: He likes to homage these
51	* BadSanta: Santa: The Fascist Years
52	* BestialityIsDepraved: Underground animation would be incomplete without this trope, so to say. As usual, mostly played for Teh Lulz. Remarkably this is the only joke that backfires on the Troll of "Surprise Cinema" (see below): He changes out the wife for an octopus, but underestimates the power an ExtremeOmnisexual.
53	** This trope is actually a plot point in ''Mutant Aliens.''
54	%%* BlackAndGrayMorality
55	%%* BlackComedy
56	* BunnyEarsLawyer: For all his demented humor and bizarre films, the guy can ''really'' draw!
57	* CentralTheme: ThePowerOfLove and finding humor in adult situations including sex, violence, jealousy, etc.
58	* ChristmasSpecial: Plympton made one, called ''12 Tiny Christmas Tales'', for Creator/CartoonNetwork in 2001.
59	* ClusterFBomb: "Bird is the Word". A giant VisualPun based on the "naughty finger".
60	* CouchGag: He's done six couch gags for ''WesternAnimation/TheSimpsons'' so far.
61	** [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=EFbdcObHHSU His first one]] is for "Beware My Cheating Bart", and it features the love between Homer and... [[CargoShip his]] [[ItMakesSenseInContext couch.]] It's surprisingly sad.
62	** His second couch gag is for "Black-Eyed, Please", which has the family seemingly prepare to kill eachother in a FilmNoir shootout, only for things to turn out more wholesome when someone turns the lights on.
63	** His third couch gag is for "Married to the Blob", which has Bart picking up the remote and changing the channel, which changes the Simpsons' TV room instead.
64	** His fourth couch gag is for "Lisa the Veterinarian", and it's a short entitled "Roomance", and it features the love between [[CargoShip the couch and the TV]].
65	** His fifth couch gag is for "22 for 30", which at first appears quite crudely drawn, then the camera pans up and it reveals it's being drawn by Maggie, who is being drawn by Lisa, and so on.
66	** [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dbI8kJuSkkY His sixth one]], made for "Three Scenes and a Tag from a Marriage", is a ShotForShotRemake of ''WesternAnimation/YourFace'' but with Homer replacing the original man. [[AdaptationalAlternateEnding It has a happier ending than the original short.]]
67	** His seventh one was for "Manger Things", the show's 700th episode.
68	* DarkerAndEdgier: ''Cheatin''', while still as weird as his other stuff, is noticeably more somber and very light on the jokes in place of a legitimate love story. Apparently, this was because he wanted to prove to critics that he could do films that weren't just slapstick sex and violence.
69	* DerangedAnimation
70	* DomesticOnlyCartoon: Bill Plympton draws everything himself. He has assistants do the coloring and compositing, however.
71	* EarlyInstallmentWeirdness: His first feature, ''The Tune'', lacks much of his trademark political incorrectness in favor of a light fantasy musical with a very sincere romantic subplot, the absolute naughtiest thing about it being a brief (less than two seconds) shot of nudity during the "Dance All Day" sequence. His follow up, ''I Married A Strange Person'', solidified his reputation for adult fare.
72	%%* FilmNoir
73	%%* GreenAesop: "Parking."
74	* HappilyFailedSuicide: Egads, which trope should this be filed under, Plympton screwing with them as usual? A man can't find his keys and hangs himself, and what happens is [[spoiler:his life flashes before his eyes, until he knows where he left the damn keys. Cut the rope, exit happy man.]]
75	%%* HauntedHouse: The "Shuteye Motel". Beware the deadly fanged [[spoiler:pillow]]!
76	%%* HeroicDog: Well, a dog that wants to be one...
77	%%* HeroicSacrifice: "The Fan and the Flower".
78	%%* HighSchoolDance: In ''WesternAnimation/HairHigh''
79	* HumansAreBastards: In his feature films, most characters outside the main protagonists, are pretty despicably unlikable. (The only decent, normal character in Idiots and Angels is the love interest)
80	* LimitedAnimation:
81	** Usually shoots on 4s (that's one new drawing every 4 frames, totaling 6 frames per second) as opposed to 2s or 1s, though it's more an aesthetic choice than a financial one. He ''wants'' you to know that these are drawings.
82	** Though finance does play a part of it as well. His personal dogma is "make it short, make it cheap, and make it funny".
83	** Ironically, Plympton loathes the kind of limited animation used in Creator/HannaBarbera cartoons, mainly because the technique is used not for artistic reasons, but as a blatant and unimaginative cost-cutting shortcut that relies entirely on dialogue at the expense of visual storytelling. In the back of his book "Independently Animated", he dismissed the whole studio's output as being "Slide shows with a voice track".
84	* LIsForDyslexia: Dyslexic ''sex'', to be precise. ItMakesSenseInContext.
85	** [[{{WesternAnimation/Futurama}} Sexlexia?]]
86	%%* NaughtyNuns: In ''WesternAnimation/IMarriedAStrangePerson''
87	%%* OurAngelsAreDifferent
88	* OurMermaidsAreDifferent: One is jobbing as ticket maid at the cinema, and the other...[[ComicSutra "The New Act at Aqua Land"]]...'nuff said.
89	* RealLifeWritesThePlot:
90	** Bill created "25 Ways To Quit Smoking" in an effort to convince his own mother to quit. [[SurprisinglyHappyEnding And it worked]]!
91	** Similarly, ''Shuteye Motel'' was based on his waking up after a night of sleeping on a very, very soft pillow to find it had completely caved in under his head, which gave him the idea for [[spoiler: a pillow that eats heads]].
92	* RuleOfFunny: His own storytelling technique is "Make it short, cheap and funny." So sentiment? GreenAesop's? All incidental.
93	* SeeminglyWholesome50sGirl
94	* SlidingScaleOfIdealismVsCynicism: Quite on the cynical side but his films do acknowledge ThePowerOfLove when the story focuses on them.
95	** His first feature film, ''The Tune'' is mostly the opposite of his other films. This film is colorful, upbeat, and the only little mean character is the film antagonist, Mr. Mega.
96	** Despite how cynical his films can get, all his features have a HappyEnding.
97	* TakeThat: One of the shorts Bill did was a scathing parody of abstract animation called ''Spiral''. Was actually controversial within the independent animation community and angered many abstract animators. One of them, Steven Woloshen, did a film rebutting called, well, ''[[ExactlyWhatItSaysOnTheTin Rebuttal]]''.
98	* TertiarySexualCharacteristics: In "Nosehair". Hairs?? Very simple -- the female hair is curvy, the male one edgy.
99	* TheParanoiac: A canine one in "Guard Dog". It doesn't end well for his master...
100	* ToiletHumor: Loads. Best one: "The building left Elvis!"
101	* {{Troll}}: [[CandidCameraPrank "Surprise Cinema".]] It NOT only hurts when you laugh.

Context Creator / BillPlympton