Join us for a discussion and Q&A with renowned animators for a discussion on creativity, art, and why hand-drawn animation still matters.

Bill Plympton is considered the King of Indie Animation, and is the first person to hand draw an entire animated feature film. Bill moved to New York City from Portland, Oregon in 1968 and began his career creating cartoons for publications such as The New York Times, The New Yorker, National Lampoon, Playboy and Screw. In 1987, he was nominated for an Oscar® for his animated short Your Face. In 2005, Bill received another Oscar® nomination, this time for his short Guard Dog. Push Comes to Shove won the prestigious Cannes 1991 Prix du Jury; and in 2001, another short film, Eat, won the Grand Prize for Short Films in Cannes Critics’ Week. Since 1991, he’s made eleven feature films. Eight of them, The Tune, Mondo Plympton, I Married A Strange Person, Mutant Aliens, Hair High, Idiots and Angels, Cheatin’, Revengeance, and Slide are all animated features. Bill also animated eight opening “couch gags” for FOX-TV’s “The Simpsons” and he won the National Cartoonist Society Lifetime Achievement Award. Bill’s new film, Slide, brings together many facets of his early life: growing up in the logging forests of Oregon, his father’s love of country music (Hank Williams, Patsy Cline), his love and affection for cowboy culture and mythology, and his ambition to be a slide guitarist, playing local bars in New York with his celebrated musical partner, Maureen McElheron. This hand-drawn, hand-made ballpoint pen and colored pencil creation is undoubtedly the masterpiece of his long and celebrated career. It’s been said that Mister Plympton is the GOAT of Indie Animation.  

Joining Bill on the panel are Chris Wedge*, co-founder of Blue Sky Studios and director of Ice Age, Robots, Epic and Monster Trucks; and animator Matt Osborne*.   Moderated by Vanessa Smith.

* scheduled to appear

A wine and cheese reception precedes the program.

Vanessa Hedwig Smith is a painter, filmmaker, and writer who has lived and worked in India, Nepal, England, and the US. She has worked as a producer and director on: feature length films; documentaries; music videos; and shorts. Smith’s written work has been published in Poetry Apocalypse, On the Seawall, Silent Auctions Magazine, Chronogram, Quarantine Diaries, Topical, and The Search for Reality.  Her first chapbook, Room Tone, is being published by Finishing Line Press.  Her work can be seen at vanessahsmithpictures.com