Bill Plympton’s unique animation style has become a trademark of sorts; characters with outlandish features, larger than life libidos and an all-too recognizable desire to be accepted for who they are, often populate his shorts and feature lengths. In Cheatin’ he presents us with his darkest tale yet, as we meet two lovers, Jake and Ella, who after a chance meeting end up falling in love and getting married, only to have deceit and jealousy tear them apart. Perhaps the crowning jewel in Plympton’s career so far, Cheatin’ more than anything else serves as a plea to help preserve an artform that is vanishing in front of our eyes.

 Plympton proves that hand-drawn animation has the ability to touch our souls in ways that the efficient CGI no longer can. The film received an Annie Award nomination for Best Feature, with Plympton himself being nominated for Best Director. As the film gears up for its theatrical debut we spoke to the iconic animator who gave us insights about his creative process, the films that inspire him, and discussed the current state of animation.

I’m a huge film noir fan, so one of the things I liked the most about Cheatin’ was how dreamlike the imagery was, especially because noir was always said to be the filmmaking style that most borrowed from dreams. You also once said that Hair High came to you in a dream, is this how Cheatin’ came about as well?

 No, Cheatin’ was inspired by a relationship I had about 15 years ago, where I was madly in love, we moved in together and about after a month we wanted to kill each other and yet we still wanted to have sex, so I thought it was interesting that those two emotions were side by side in the same relationship. I didn’t know they could coexist, and so I thought it was an interesting idea for a film, and would have good potential for humor. The greatest thing about movies is to have a conflict and this one is so full of them.

I find it really interesting how you pick specific body parts to highlight the essence of your characters. In Cheatin’ you give Jake very prominent abs, and Ella has a quite unique mouth. How do you determine what will be your characters’ main feature?

That’s a good question, I started out as a caricature artist, so I think if you know how to draw caricature that’s a great art style to know when you do animation. In animation you take a personality or a look and you exaggerate it and that becomes an animated character. For Jake I wanted to make his abs really, really tight (laughs) and also his nose became very phallic throughout the film, and that was an accident really. When I initially did the concept drawings the nose wasn’t as phallic, but the more I drew him subconsciously it just kept coming out, some people notice it and some don’t.

 Going back to dreams for a second, do you think that animation is the best way to portray dreams in art?

Absolutely! In fact there’s a lot of fantasy parts in Cheatin’ like the opera scene where Jake and Ella jump in a slipper, and then the fantasy sequence where Ella dreams about love while sitting on a parkbench. I use that sequence to tell the story of her need for companionship and love, and I think people really respond to that.

You’ve said before that you’re more famous in Europe, do you feel like making films without dialogue like Cheatin’ makes it easier to distribute them worldwide?

I don’t know about that, I think one reason I’m more popular there is that my films talk about topics that are more adult, in the US people feel like animation is a kiddie medium and in Europe they accept animation as also dealing with adult topics. In France they like animation that talks about adult topics, but in America that’s forbidden. That’s what I’m fighting with in Cheatin’, which is why we decided to self-distribute, a distributor friend of mine saw the film and mentioned it had nudity, as if I was insulting someone. It’s really tragic that America is missing out on all these wonderful ideas than can be explained and explored in animation, but they refuse to do that because Disney is so powerful and ever present.

Yeah, even for the live action Cinderella, they went to great lengths to not show Prince Charming’s bulge!

(Laughs) That’s the way to go!

I admire the animation you did for the documentary Fuck and it made me wonder if you were interested in using animation to teach people about sex. Some great animators like Signe Baumane have done it.

Signe’s actually a good friend of mine! And yes, that’s a great idea, I would love to do it, especially if there’s a sense of humor involved, which is what I’ve been doing all my career. When I first moved to New York out of college, most of the work I got was through men’s magazines and that was a great way to tell people about sex, I’d be totally into that.

All of your animated films are genre pictures, Cheatin’ is film noir, Hair High is horror, I Married a Strange Person is a black comedy. Can you talk a bit about your fascination with genre?

I’m a huge fan of film noir and I watch The Movie Channel a lot because they show all these great films from the 30s and 40s, one of my favorites is called Fallen Angel with Linda Darnell, that is a really beautiful noir, what I like about it is all the people are evil, all of them have bad motivations, sexual perversity...that’s interesting to me, I don’t wanna see films about good people doing good things, I’d rather see the underbelly of life, not only is it fascinating, it’s also more educational. I love James M. Cain adaptations like Double Indemnity, Mildred Pierce, The Postman Always Rings Twice, are some of my favorites, Orson Welles’ too, Lady from Shanghai, Touch of Evil...all of them about bad people (laughs) and that’s what I want to do with animation.

Growing up I remember I thought your cartoons on MTV were terrifying....

(Laughs) I’m sorry about that!

It was only after I grew up that I got them, so I was wondering if you’d heard of similar experiences, considering how different your work is than the animation children usually grow up watching?

Not like that, but I do remember people who when they meet me go “oh you’re the guy on MTV who did all the color pencil stuff”, they had a name for me cause they never used my name on the animation, so they called me “the color pencil guy”. I was sad that MTV switched over to live action, I was seen all over the world, I made good money, and I miss working for MTV.

It seems that the more CGI animation tries to replicate reality, the more and more you move further away from that and in fact we see more pencil lines in your current work than before. Like you’re trying to tell us that reality is overrated.

That’s totally true, I love animation because it looks like art you would see in a gallery, that’s what I want, I want an experience where you’re seeing beautiful drawings that are telling a story, to me that’s the formation of a perfect artform. A lot of people respond to this, I just need to get my films out to more people. I’m just a small studio, I just have like 5 people working in my studio, my budgets are usually between 100 to 200 thousand dollars, so it’s a David and Goliath thing, I’m battling these giant machines who spend millions in publicity.

You also had a very successful crowdfunding campaign for Cheatin’.

Yeah, that was a very important part of my success, I ran out of money about halfway through the film, so we went to Kickstarter and we had a huge success. This was why I was able to finish the film on time and on schedule.

You always emphasize how you think nowadays everybody can make a movie.

I do, back in 1991 I did a film called The Tune and I was really naive back then, didn’t know how the system worked, so I just started drawing and it took me about 2 years to draw the film, we sent it to Sundance and it was a semi-success, and lo and behold I realized that no one had ever done that before, to make an independent film by themselves. Now it’s very common and I think that’s healthy and wonderful. I’m old enough to remember in the 50s and 60s how we would get an animated film every 2 or 3 years, usually a Disney film, now we get 20 to 30, and thanks to the digital revolution more people will be able to do this, and I applaud that.

Have you given thought to teaching animation?

It’s funny you say that because a few years ago I was very broke so I set up the Plympton School of Animation and for two semesters it was a huge success, with people flying in from all over the world every week just to take this class (laughs), but I don’t like teaching, it gives me a headache (laughs). I prefer to write books about the secrets of animation.

Cheatin' opens in NY theaters on April 03. The film is also available on Vimeo On Demand exclusively nationwide on April 21.