by Mary Glucksman

Bill Plympton

"Make it funny and make it cheap," is Bill Plympton’s advice to students hoping to follow in his footsteps as an independent animator and cartoonist. Plympton, who once turned down a million-dollar Disney contract when he found out the studio would own every last sketch he scribbled once he signed, says his films cost about $1,000 a minute to produce. He’s set to unveil his latest feature, Mutant Aliens, in the midnight section at Sundance next month. That one’s already making money back through sales of a graphic novel version Plympton finished first to use as storyboards. It’s also making waves at atomfilms.com, where a new episode in a 50-part serial about the making of the movie pops up every week or so. "It’s almost like going to school – you see it being made," says Plympton, who’s hatching plans to wire a webcam over his drawing table on his next feature.

Mutant Aliens, a sci-fi comedy about an astronaut presumed lost after a sabotaged mission and the space natives he sends to earth to seek revenge, is Plympton’s fourth animated feature – if you count the shorts compilation Plymptoons. While the story doesn’t stint on the kind of twisted sex and cartoony violence that stamp most of Plympton’s work, he says the bizarrely bred space creatures have a wacky charm even a teen could love. (He sees action figures.)

The Tune put Plympton on the map in ’92. The first full-length feature to be drawn and colored by a single artist, it also marked the first time Sundance admitted an animated feature to its dramatic competition. October Films was new that year and bought The Tune for its first season. Plympton’s other animated feature, I Married a Strange Person, screened in the 1998 Sundance competition and landed on the first slate from Lions Gate. In between Plympton made two live-action films, J. Lyle and the mockumentary Guns on the Clackamus. He also made Walt Curtis: The Peckerneck Poet, an hour-long doc about the Portland street poet whose novella Mala Noche inspired Gus Van Sant’s first feature.

Mutant Aliens

Plympton never put in time at a traditional animation studio; instead, he honed his drawing skills as a kid growing up in rainy Oregon where it was often way too wet to play outside. He turned to animation while editing his college yearbook – which he wanted to push with a flashy promo. Unfortunately it was shot upside down and therefore useless. Plympton stayed clear of animation for a decade while he forged a reputation as an illustrator, magazine designer and cartoonist, most notably with the longrunning political strip Plympton. "When I got out of art school in the seventies, animation was kind of a dead art form except for Ralph Bakshi," he says. MTV changed that around 1983, and Plympton was an early member of the stable of artists who created MTV’s distinctive logos and promos. He’s since made 25 shorts including the infamous 25 Ways to Quit Smoking, How to Kiss, and ’87 Oscar nominee Your Face.

Mutant Aliens got started in August ’98. Plympton still does all his art by hand and shoots on film; a team of assistants help catalogue and color. "The computer feels cold to me," he says. "You miss the line and the texture of the paint." Though Plympton’s work is wildly popular in France and Spain, he remains something of a cult figure in the U.S. Mutant Aliens could change all that; we'll see next month.

Mutant Aliens premiered in the Sundance 2001 Film Festival. For articles on other Sundance 2001 films, see the Winter 2001 issue and our Additional Online Coverage.

Contact: E-mail Bill Plympton at plymptoons@aol.com.

Check out All-Plympton-All-The-Time at www.awn.com/plympton.

Atomfilms’ series on the making of Mutant Aliens is up at www.atomfilms.com; also catch Plympton shorts at www.plympton.atomfilms.com.

Walt Curtis’ Mala Noche and Other 'Illegal' Adventures (intro by Gus Van Sant) is available in paperback from amazon.com.