Bill Plympton at his drawing board.

Bill Plympton may be the best-known practitioner of do-it-yourself animation, with an array of features and shorts made completely outside the usual funding and distribution routes. His unique, homemade visual style is instantly recognizable and brings him regular commercial assignments. (The GEICO TV spots of hapless boobs springing booby traps upon themselves were dreamed up by the insurance company’s ad agency specifically for him to animate.)

As someone not particularly dependent on major-league financing, Plympton is hard-pressed to think of an occasion where a studio or distributor has taken issue with his work. “For some reason no one wants to get involved in the early stages of my films. Maybe I’m too independent, or too profane. My films are generally picked up for distribution after they’ve been seen at festivals. The only pre-sales I’ve made were with E.D. Distribution in France and they’re very supportive; they’ve never commented editorially and only ask for things like M&E tracks for dubbing.

“I’ve been very lucky dealing with ad agencies in that they know what they want. Their storyboards are fairly precise and I just follow them as closely as I can. It’s never been a problem.”

Nathan Graf knows that you guy footing the bill is the guy you need to please. Courtesy of Noodlesoup Prods.

Except with Blockbuster. The video rental colossus had issues with four shots in Plympton’s 1997 feature I Married a Strange Person, an over-the-top sex and violence spoof. Blockbuster used its muscle to have the film’s home video distributor excise the offending scenes — not just from copies purchased by the chain, but from the duplication master itself. “They took out all the sex shots — not the violent stuff, and it’s a very violent film. But when the film came out on DVD they put the shots back in. I don’t know if I understand the logic of that.”

One could be forgiven for assuming that Plympton is a rebel who most enjoys thumbing his nose at the rules and regulations of the mainstream animation world. “No, I would gladly work within the Hollywood structure if I can get the right money. In fact, I’m surprised no one from Disney, Pixar or DreamWorks has called me to direct anything. I guess they’re afraid I’m too outrageous, or too much of — I don’t know, a maverick. But I’m not, I would love to work within the system. Maybe after they read this someone will call me.”

If Danny Antonucci offers potential advertising clients a ‘my way or the highway’ deal, Noodlesoup Prods. takes the opposite approach. “We can’t afford to lose any clients,” says Nathan Graf, the company’s coo/managing director. “We grumble and groan but we have to get it done and do it their way — that’s the nature of the beast.” The three-year-old company, founded by Disney veteran Jeffrey Nodelman performs service work for major studios and networks, creates and develops its own original properties and produces animated TV commercials.

An original Noodlesoup project, Fresh Spins, an animated musical video series for 2-6 year olds is being produced with The Johnson Group.

Graf boasts of the variety of work the shop has taken on (including an anime segment for the Alias DVD release and animated segments for the Broadway musical Avenue Q), all backed up by a staff willing to work 24/7. “We have a lot of experience in producing on ridiculous time lines. We had to create two minutes of opening animation for two feature films, Duplex and My Baby’s Daddy; we had to do it from scratch in five weeks and deliver a traditionally animated, full-quality product at the same time. Our producer and director happened to be on cruise ships on opposite sides of the world — at one point we were setting up cell phone conference calls at 3:00 am. On another occasion we turned around a 25-second piece of animation for an Earthlink ad that will run theatrically with the trailer for The Bourne Supremacy in 10 days.”

Nathan freely acknowledges that advertising projects are an “advertising projects are very client-service oriented, but the budgets make them a lot more fun. One way we try to nip conflicts in the bud in our service work is to come up with accurate, realistic budgets before production starts. We work with several overseas partners to keep costs down. People come to us and say ‘I need 13 episodes in full animation for $100,000 each.’ There’s a lot of cursing and swearing but we do our best to oblige them.”