Disney's new animated film, Zootopia 2, is a marvel of computer animation. Bright, colorful and imaginative, it took more than two years and cost over $150 million to make. If you last all the way through the credits at the end, you'll see names of thousands of contributors performing tasks that didn't exist a few years ago. It's difficult to identify the fingerprints of any individual contributor on the finished product.
Zootopia 2 represented a massive gamble of shareholder capital. It required review and approval by dozens of check points along the way, from the bankers and lawyers to the accounting department and the marketing department. The gamble paid off; the movie is a Christmas season smash hit, already rocketing past a box office gross of a billion dollars.
If a creator had approached management with a proposal for a movie called "Santa: The Fascist Years," the bankers would've thrown him into the Sarlacc pit.
That's why, when it came time for Bill Plympton to create Santa: The Fascist Years it was just Plympton and a pencil.
The 2008 movie reveals the secret files regarding Santa's stint with fascism in the 1930s and 40s. It's weird, clever, funny and a good demonstration of why Plympton turned down a lucrative offer to work for Disney many years ago.
The number of pencil drawings Plympton makes for his hand drawn movies is nothing short of astonishing. But what's even more impressive is that Plympton's affection for drawing seems to remain undiminished. You can tell from his originals that he still enjoys drawing each individual picture.
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| Santa's attack was called the "Blitzenkrieg" |
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| A repentant Santa at the Nuremberg trials |
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| From another movie, Cheatin' |
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| From another movie, Idiots and Angels |
If Plympton hadn't come up with the idea of Santa's fascist period, nobody else would've thought of it. And if Plympton hadn't picked up a pencil, nobody would've ever seen it.
What's nice about Plympton is that even with the funny, inflatable-cartoony forms you can see little details (in clothing folds, anatomy and shadow fall etc) which indicate that he knows what the subtleties of good draughstmanship are, and has probably studied the greats. Unlike (sorry to say) your previous post which showcases clunky mannerism.
ReplyDeleteWhat a great idea !
ReplyDeleteLaurence John-- I hadn't thought of it before, but Plympton and Szyk both share a major characteristic: an indomitable will to create what they are determined to create, despite all the obstacles life throws at them. The entire business model for modern cinema seems wedged against Plympton, yet he and his pencil continue to make movie after movie. He sells the drawings from his last movie to fund his next one. (Irving Stone once wrote that, given an artist's life of deprivation, resistance and frustration, the only artists who belong on this earth are the ones whom god himself can't get off until they've said everything they need to say.)
ReplyDeleteAs for Szyk, his mannerisms may seem stiff to you, but I'd urge you to compare them to the tradition of Persian miniatures or medieval illuminated manuscripts. Their beauty is not in their naturalistic figures or action poses or the nuances of their facial expressions; in fact, given the Islamic prohibition against images of the human figure and the emphasis on beautiful geometric patterns, figures tend to be designed with the aesthetic of Persian rugs.
In Szyk's tradition, hands are prominently displayed. Poses are formal. Perspective tends to be flat. Many of his pictures are so tiny it would be impossible to fit much nuance into the figures. But that's one reason why I urged people to see Szyk's miniatures in person.
With Szyk's work, I often wish there was less drawing. With Plympton's I wish there was more.
ReplyDeleteKev Ferrara-- I understand your point about Plympton, but I had to laugh. I first met Plympton at Comic-Con in San Diego where he was sitting behind a table stacked with mountains of his drawings from previous movies, which he was selling to fund his next movie. He had a pencil in his hand and was drawing all the while. He noticed me selecting some drawings and offered to draw my portrait for an additional $25 while I was looking. I gladly accepted. If there was another minute in the day for Plympton to do more drawing, I don't know where it would be.
ReplyDeleteDisney certainly wouldn't bankroll an idea like Santa's stint with fascism but they were OK with Snow White's recent stint with communism. And what a sneezy box office cold that cost them.
ReplyDeleteLiking the Plympton drawings - any chance of you posting up that portrait he did of you David?
Disney certainly wouldn't bankroll an idea like Santa's stint with fascism but they were OK with Snow White's recent stint with communism. And what a sneezy box office cold that cost them.
ReplyDeleteLiking the Plympton drawings - any chance of you posting up that portrait he did of you David?