The always very excellent Bat Segundo podcast has a whole raft of recent interviews up online with a variety of writers, artists and other creative folk, including, I can’t help but notice, the veteran animator Bill Plympton. The interview takes in Laurel and Hardy (never a bad thing in my book), sawing people in half with chainsaws (everyone needs a hobby), avoiding dialogue to make animation works more attractive to international distributors and audiences, how to try and earn money in animation, turning down a big offer from Disney and Bill’s trademark use of frequently shifting unusual perspectives in his animations among other things:
“Well, the magic of animation is that the camera can go anywhere you want. And it’s harder to do that with live action. Although it’s easier now with digital technology. Digital effects. But with animation, you can put the camera anywhere. And that’s part of the fun of it. You’re seeing something that is maybe cliched or boring from a different angle. It makes it exciting. It makes it interesting. And so I wanted to see an event from one person’s POV and see the worst day ever — what it would be — if you lived that life. If you were actually in that person’s place. So it’s very autobiographical in that sense.
But I like to do that a lot. I did another film called “Draw,” where it’s a cliche of two cowboys in a mainstream Texas town. And they draw their guns. Only this is a POV of a bullet. And so again, it’s a kind of cliched, boring situation. But when you see it from the eye of a bullet that is traveling through space, going through someone’s heart, it gives it a whole new perspective. And I love that kind of thing that you can do with animation: change the perspective, change the viewpoint in each shot. And that’s the reason why I love animation,” Bill Plympton speaking to the Bat Segundo show.
(scene from Idiots and Angels, Bill’s new animated film, borrowed from the official site and (c) Bill Plympton)
You should go and have a listen because Bill is one of the more unusual animators we have and his work is always intriguing to experience. Bill’s latest work, Idiots and Angels, will premiere at the famous Tribeca Film Festival in New York, which runs in Manhattan from April 23rd to May 4th and will receive its European debut at the prestigious Annecy Animation Festival which is held from June 9th to 15th; for more details check out Bill’s site.
Among the many other recent guests there is one which I think will appeal to my fellow geeks, an interview with Michio Kaku – you may not place the name right away but I’m sure many of you have seen the good doctor on the BBC where he has fronted some fascinating science programmes, including one into the nature of time and a more recent one which was almost science fiction in the way it looked at probable developments in real-life science, always presented by him in a very accessible manner. You can hear his interview here on the Bat Segundo site, discussing the hydrogen bomb, military funding for science, being asked to comment on future possible technologies and just how likely is it that one day someone could build a phaser or a Death Star.
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