Bill Plympton was born 30th April 1946 in Portland, Orgegon, U.S. and is an American Animator, Graphic Designer, Cartoonist and Film maker. When he was younger, he was raised on a farm, then in 1964 he started to study Graphic Design at Portland State University, here he was a member of the film society and also worked on the yearbook. In 1968 he transferred from there to the School of Visual Arts located in New York City, at which he majored in cartooning, graduating from there in 1969.
He was inspired by Disney when he was young, and grew up dreaming to work for them one day. He would religiously watch The Wonderful World of Disney, and this introduced the animators of Disney, which is exactly what Plympton wanted to do himself. Despite his strong aspirations to work for Disney, after his animated short Your Face became Academy Award-nominated in 1987, Disney offered him a million dollars to animate the genie in Aladdin. Surprisingly he turned them down, but this was because Disney wanted ownership of all Plympton's work, which was something he wasn't prepared to do.
Your Face includes a man sat down, with a close-up portrait shot of his face. It is a short animation, that features the music of a man singing about his lover's face. During this, the man's face continuously distorts and changes, more drastically the longer that it goes on for. His work is very focused on the caricature style, and is the predominant style in this short, although the styles of art even change during the face morphs, even including cubism at one point. It is full of bizarre transformations that follow one another, and just flow naturally despite the fact that the transformations look quite uncomfortable at the same time. The man even turns into an ice cream for example, so realism isn't what he's going for here, although he shows off his skills in the morphing and challenging movements, which have to then merge back into the original face after. The crazy alterations seem to move smoothly and carelessly as they grow back into the original shape, and have no limits when morphing. His animation here is fun to watch, and humorous as we get to see a face doing impossible things, but doing this so fluently and easily. Watching this gives a glimpse of his variety of skill in animating and drawing, tackling outrageous and complex transformations.
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