In which the noted animator puts us through some strange changes.
At first glance, you wouldn't peg lanky, laconic Bill Plympton as the kind of guy who likes to electrocute people. Or squash them, burn them, and blow them up. But don't let that innocent, boy-next-door look fool you. When it comes to cartoon violence, Bill is an innovator on a par with Tex Avery and Bob Clampett. His characters swallow and inhale each other, and like to bite one another's heads off one chomp at a time.

Storyboard Sketch, Bugs and the mother-in-law in I Married A Strange Person. © Bill Plympton.

Plympton is currently working full-tilt on his new animated feature, I Married A Strange Person, which should be finished in December. He describes it as "Akira meets Pulp Fiction." Judging from the 300 individual sketches push-pinned to the studio wall--the working storyboard for Strange Person--this comedy/thriller will be full of the kind of transformations that have become a Plympton trademark: men turning into lizards, characters tearing themselves to pieces, lawns refusing to be mowed.

Features are supposed to be turned out by big studios, using an army of animators and inbetweeners, not one guy with a little help from his friends. Bill's first feature, The Tune, was something of an independent animation milestone: a 90 minute film animated by one man. Ten colorists are helping on Strange Person, but once again all the animation will come from his hand.

Storyboard Sketch, the hero before he gets "zapped" in I Married A Strange Person. © Bill Plympton.	The outrageous work of Bill Plympton. © Bill Plympton.

While prolific draftsmen animating single-handedly isn't unknown, it's still pretty rare. Animation pioneer Winsor McCay worked that way on such films as Gertie the Dinosaur, before the advent of the studio system. Modern independent animators like Plympton's mentor George Griffin work alone. Animating a feature was a pretty daunting task for the husband-and-wife team of Paul and Sandra Fierlinger, whose hour-long Drawn from Memory was released last fall. For someone working alone it must be doubly hard.