You might not recognize the name Bill Plympton, but you'd recognize his work instantly—that shifting, restlessly alive colored-pencil animation that tends toward outrageous gore and sex played for laughs. If you've watched MTV, you know this guy's work. He's probably most famous for his brief interstitial work for that network, but his best short films are those that sprouted from his own fertile imagination. This disc collects some of each type—unfortunately, weighted toward the former.

Plympton has a unique visual style that he admits springs from laziness—he repeats his animated images in groups of four simply to save time and effort. The happy result is an image that boasts a nervously alive quality that's somehow perfectly suited to the subject matter. Plympton dabbles gleefully in the grotesque, hacking his way through flesh with wild abandon, squishing faces, splaying bodies, emitting screams, and piling on other cartoon violence—all under the moderation of a brilliant deadpan pace or narration. This DVD package shows the progression of his career from its beginnings through the early 90s, but seems cut short. Where's the material from the past decade?

The DVD starts things off with 5 early shorts that are interesting from a historical perspective, I suppose, but they're very rough and probably should have been relegated to the early films section in the Special Features menu. Things start getting interesting with 1987's Drawing Lesson #2, about a drawn line that becomes its own character. He's a whiny, lovesick black line, pining for the lost woman he loves.

His breakthrough short film, Your Face, remains one of his best, focusing on a man's head as it sings a hilariously sappy love song while the face twists and twirls in upon itself, and metamorphoses into uproarious shapes and segments. I've seen this film many times and never tire of it. It's still Plympton's signature piece.

After things take an alarming downturn with a failed TV pilot, Love in the Fast Lane—a minimalist few minutes of misery—Plympton really starts his career moving with One of Those Days, an 8-minute laugh-fest about one man's worst day ever. The 6-minute follow-up, How to Kiss, is a series of outrageous and gory animated smooches complete with deadpan instructional narration.

Next is the 5-minute 25 Ways to Quit Smoking, another of Plympton's finest. Again, we're treated to lots of gore and exaggerated comic scenarios, narrated in straightforward fashion by a calm male voice. The disparate elements seem to come together most smoothly here. He's really firing on all cylinders.

But then, Plympton tries his hand at a Peter Himmelman music video, the ho-hum 245 Days, which could have used a larger budget and perhaps more time. Plympton followed this work with a long series of TV commercials and other work-for-hire, a somewhat depressing collection of animations that only made me wish Plympton had had more freedom to create his own material. The disc ends with a 6-minute film called Plymptoons, a collection of gag shorts straight from Plympton's imagination. These range from mildly amusing to side-splitting, but they seem inevitably disjointed.

When this DVD presentation came to an end, I felt somewhat disappointed. To the best of my knowledge, I had seen all these films before, and I'd been hoping for new material. What has Plympton been doing for the past 10 years? I know there are more Plympton shorts out there that are more deserving of inclusion here than his early rough work. Where are those? At any rate, there are at least four films here that I will rewatch.

Oddly, the option to select a specific toon to view is buried in the Special Features menu.

IndieDVD presents Plymptoons in a full-frame transfer of the short films' original 1.33:1 aspect ratio. The quality ranges from poor to good, never achieving fine, thanks to the unfortunate quality of most of the source elements.

The sound is centered at the screen. Levels are generally too high and tend a bit toward distortion.

The disc opens with an 8-minute interview/introduction by Troma president Lloyd Kaufman, who seems to have his own agenda going into the interview. Nevertheless, this is a mildly entertaining intro.

Chief among the special features on Plymptoons is an engaging director commentary from Bill Plympton. He speaks rather briefly about each film as they run in an uninterrupted stream. The bad news is that Plympton is obviously reading from a script and sounds a bit non-spontaneous and stilted. The good news is that his script provides some interesting information about his inspirations and history and techniques. Plympton has lots to say about some of these shorts, and very little to say about others. I wish that once Plympton finished reading his notes about each film, he would have continued commentating off the cuff. But no, when he's done with each mini-script, he simply shuts up and lets the short play itself out at full volume.

Next up is a rarities section. First in here is an early movie, a very amateur 1-minute live-action silent horror exercise. Second is house of weirdness, a decidedly weird live-action commercial in the Troma vein. Third is a Screw interview, a somewhat vulgar 4-minute segment of a video interview by Al Goldstein, who also has his own agenda going into the interview. However, this interview contains tantalizing clips of more adult material by Plympton. Finally, a 9-minute Splat interview is more satisfying as a whole, and more slickly arranged. It provides an entertaining first-person look at Plympton's inspirations and ideas. This interview also shows glimpses of shorts that aren't available on this disc, leaving me to wonder when I can see this great material.

Next, you can watch Bill draw in a 3-minute silent piece that slowly builds speed until you're watching his drawings zip into existence at a frantic pace.

Under the slideshow, you can click through numerous stills of the original art that inspired some of the films including edgy, hilarious stills from something called Famous Last Sights. This also includes many unused—and hilarious—ideas from 25 Ways to Quit Smoking.

Finally, you get an IndieDVD trailer and a Troma trailer, both compilations from multiple films.

Plympton talks a lot in the special features about feature films he's working on. Where are those? When might we see them? His own imaginative shorts are much more accomplished and interesting than his work-for-hire, so I'm looking forward to those extended Plympton projects.

Perhaps my expectations were too high when I heard that this DVD was forthcoming. I had visions of a complete collection of Bill Plympton animation that would include his classics as well as his more mature material. I also imagined cleaned-up prints and cool supplements. Instead of a DVD I can truly treasure, what I have here is essentially my old VHS tape ported to DVD. Which is fine. Admittedly, this is a fun collection that contains most of the Plympton classics.