Hello there Plympton fans,

Last week I visited the “Hi Mom” Festival in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, home of the famous coachless Tar Heels. It was beautiful spring weather and the students packed the place – I showed some of my classic shorts, did some drawing demonstrations and showed clips from my new film, “Hair High”. They seemed to enjoy the show.

“Hi Mom” is a wonderful festival. It showcases short films that have very low budgets and are usually done by first time filmmakers. I don’t know why they chose me, but I’m glad they did. Thank you Jay, Matt and K.D. for a wonderful time. Photo A is Matt Hedt, the organizer. If you’re interested, check out www.himomfilmfest.org.

This week’s cartoon from “Sloppy Seconds” is “The Fireman” – inspired by an incident in ’75. When I lived in the East Village, I noticed an apartment building on fire – I rushed to see if anyone was trapped inside. The door was locked, so I kicked the door in, and after yelling and searching the smoking building, I exited. Everyone on the street thought I was crazy, risking my life like that – “Leave that to the firemen!” they said.

Well, that night, I had a dream about the incident, and the next morning I drew a sketch of my dream – and this is it. I also made it into a painting that was featured in the first New York Erotic Art Show, which I believe was in the late 70’s.

Photo B – this is a shot of part of my crew working on “Hair High”, in descending order, they are: Lori Samsel, Biljana Labovic, Jeung-ah Kim, Andrea Dias Breitman, Celia Bullwinkel and John Holderried We took a quick rest from our feverish art schedule to pose for posterity.

Just last night, I did a show at the Reel Roundtable here in New York City. I showed my new films and did a drawing demonstration (Photo C) at the Gene Frankel Theater. Then, a bunch of animators hung out after at ACME Grill (Photo D) and we talked about art, animation and festivals.

From left to right: Felipe Galindo is a wonderful animator from Mexico, Elanna Allen is a young, up and coming animator, me, Sarah and Pes, the creator of “Roof Sex”, one of my favorites, and Alexis Brodovsky, the creator of the wonderful “Bathtime at Birdwell”.

See you all next week,
Bill Plympton