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The Simpsons. Kanye West. Willamette Week. Academy Award-nominated Bill Plympton may be the most important animator and illustrator Portland has ever produced, and he's back in town this week for a pair of events that showcase both aspects of a legendary career. On Saturday, Plympton will speak at Underground USA on the history of Oregon print cartooning. On Sunday, he'll be at the Mission Theater to present a collection of his recent animated shorts.
Plympton is best known for his highly distinctive, enormously influential DIY approach to animation, commissioned by such longtime fans as Matt Groening—he's worked on extended couch gags during The Simpsons' opening credits—and Kanye West, for whom he created West's "Heard 'Em Say" music video/graphic memoir.
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But Plympton, 70, spent his first 25 years as a periodical cartoonist whose drawings appeared in Vogue, Rolling Stone, Vanity Fair and The New York Times, not to mention Willamette Week, the Portland Scribe and The Oregonian.
Though typically regarded as one of the founding fathers of Portland animation, Plympton actually grew up "out in the woods on the Clackamas River" in Oregon City, moving to New York as a freelance caricaturist in 1968. Still, he's returned to the Rose City for a month or two every year since, often teaching classes at Portland State or the Portland Art Museum.
Due in large part to Plympton's own pioneering efforts, animation has never been more popular. "Everybody's interested in animation now," said Plympton. "It's sort of the new hip art form—like rock 'n' roll was back in the '70s and '80s. We're living in what we call the 'Second Golden Age', and it seems to be expanding exponentially every year."
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Despite initial fears that computer-generated imagery would pound the final nail in the professional animator's coffin, Plympton believes technological advancements actually fueled the current diversification of opportunities. "It's really an exciting time," he said. "When I was a kid, we'd be lucky to get an animated feature every two or three years—usually Disney. But now, people can sit down at their iMac and make their own feature-length movie in their apartment by themselves."
"I travel all over the world, and people say, 'Well, we can't make a movie—we don't live in Hollywood, we don't live in America,' and that's ridiculous!," he continued. "You can live in Siberia and make the greatest film ever. There's no limits anymore on how to make a film or who can make a film, and that's something I modestly take credit for. Everybody's doing it. There's just no rules, and I think that's fantastic."
GO: Underground USA is at White Stag Auditorium, 70 NW Couch St., undergroundusa.wordpress.com, on Saturday Oct. 15. $60, $30 students. An Evening With Bill Plympton is at Mission Theater, 1624 NW Glisan St., 503-223-4527, at 8 pm Sunday, Oct. 16. $10.
Willamette Week