A piece of animation history is ready to fetch a fresh audience online, Bill Plympton’s hand-illustrated short Guard Dog bounds onto YouTube. The 2004 dark comedy short was produced at the indie animation icon’s Plymptoons studio, and was inspired by a simple walk in the park.
In the five-minute film, Plympton (Your Face, The Tune, Idiots and Angels) examines why dogs bark at such innocent little creatures as pigeons and squirrels. What are they afraid of? Guard Dog offers a humorous, surreal answer to the age old questions.
Guard Dog was nominated for best animated short at the 2005 Academy Awards. It was also recognized with the Best in Show prize form ASIFA-East, a Special Prize at Hiroshima International Animation Festival, an Audience Award at Uppsala International Short Film Festival, and screened in competition at Tribeca Film Festival, among many others. The short screened in theaters in front of Plympton’s feature film, Hair High, and toured with The Animation Show. In 2015, Guard Dog was inducted into the Academy Film Archive for preservation.
The recognizable mug of the titular dog went on to appear in three more short films — Guide Dog (2006), Hot Dog (2008) and Horn Dog (2009) — and made a cameo in Plympton’s feature films Idios and Angels (2009) and Cheatin’ (2013), as well as the music video for Weird Al Yankovic’s “TMZ” (2011). Plympton has described the Guard Dog as his “Mickey Mouse,” a real slobbery icon of indie animation.
Learn more about Plymptons work and find other films available to watch now at plymptoons.com.
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