Bill Plympton's HairHigh

[CartoonLarry]

I thought this would be a great source of inspiration for some of you that animate. I know I find his work very inspiring.
Bill Plympton animating on a cam online.
http://www.hairhigh.com

I hope one day to be as focused as him.

[Coffee Cat]

Yes, his style is great. What a great use of semi-lip synch and lower frame rates. All the buzz that circled South Park and Beavis and Butthead as adult-oriented humorous crude animation was a joke. Plympton shows you how to give animation a "rough" look without it being crude artistically.

His Plympton Diaries on the mutantaliensmovie.com site too, are very inspirational despite being outdated now, since he's now doing high hair and all, etc.

Its great that a talent like him is able to work independent full time. Thats what I'd like to one day do as well. The struggle is getting there. Having to work fulltime or freelance, and also try to squeeze in independent work on top of just plain living and life duties such as family is a real hard task.... but if you can do it it really really pays off big.

Michel Gange said that he was at one point working a fulll time job AND working an additional 40 hours per week on his independent stuff prior to being a successful independent artist.

[CartoonLarry]

I forgot about the diaries. Yes, they are great.
I thought it was interesting how he does his backgrounds.
I was surprised to see that they were painting cels. I thought everyone did ink and paint digitally.

I try to keep myself focused, but sometimes I become weak and stray.
Do you have anything that has helped you? Any suggestions?

[Coffee Cat]

Plympton paints his cels, or so I've heard, because for him it is cheaper (I think mainly because, while digital paint is cehaper in process, shooting cels on film and getting film prints is easier and cheaper than outputing digitally-painted frames to film and then printing copies), and also people like the novelty of purchasing cels once the film is done, which raises a tad more cash, as opposed to the not-so-novel computer print outs (the purchasing wouldn't be as big because the prints wouldn't be unique art, nor the actual photographed art that created the film).

As far as ideas. My main procrastination is always WHICH idea of mine to I take and actually push through ALL the way. I come up with some many, but then when its time to flesh them out and do one of them, I can't pick which one, and they all begin to look like nothing.... The best thing, therefore, is just to grab one, or even ask someone else which concept they like the best, whatever, and then just DO IT. Once you get one done, and have gone all the way through, its alot less daunting to do more and more and more of them. I've not done features like Plympton.... that might be a bit different, since the undertaking and expense of production is so much larger - you'd want to KNOW you're set on doing that idea.

He's cool though. The Tune. I married a strange person. Mutant Aliens. And now Hair High. That'll be four features drawn exclusively by ONE man!!!! Incredible.