Career Award: Bill Plympton, Benoît Sokal, Michel Ocelot
Bill Plympton
Animator, Writer, Director
Bill Plympton is considered the King of Indie Animation, and is the first person to hand draw an entire animated feature film. Bill moved to New York City in 1968 and began his career creating cartoons for publications such as New York Times, National Lampoon, Playboy and Screw.
In 1987, he was nominated for an Oscar® for his animated short Your Face. In 2005, Bill received another Oscar® nomination, this time for his short Guard Dog. Push Comes to Shove won the prestigious Cannes 1991 Palme d’Or; and in 2001, another short film, Eat, won the Grand Prize for Short Films in Cannes Critics’ Week.
After producing many shorts that appeared on MTV and Spike and Mike’s, he turned his talent to feature films. Since 1991, he’s made twelve feature films. Eight of them, The Tune, Mondo Plympton, I Married A Strange Person, Mutant Aliens, Hair High, Idiots and Angels, Cheatin’, and Revengeance are all animated features.
Bill Plympton has also collaborated with Madonna, Kanye West and Weird Al Yankovic in a number of music videos and book projects. In 2006, he received the Winsor McCay Lifetime Achievement Award from The Annie Awards.
Benoît Sokal
Cartoonist, Artistic Director Syberia Videogame
Benoît Sokal creates the character of Inspector Canardo. He is one of the first artists to create and supervise the entire production of a video game. In 2002 Microïds publishes his videogame Syberia, crowned “Best adventure game” and he was recognized as “Person of the Year”. The two sequels are a huge success.
Sokal makes a point of using traditional sketch and watercolor methods. Locations, characters, and some of the gameplay mechanics are his strong points. In 2010 he releases the comic book Kraal. In 2014, together with François Schuiten, publishes Aquarica.
Michel Ocelot
Director, Animator
Born on the French Riviera, Michel Ocelot has dedicated his entire career to film animation. All his works have been based on his own scripts and graphics.
Michel Ocelot became known to the general public with the success of his first feature film Kirikou and the Sorceress (1998), followed by Princes and Princesses, Kirikou and the Wild Beasts, and Kirikou and the Men and Women (2012).
His 4th feature film is Azur & Asmar (2007), set on both sides of the Mediterranean. In July 2011, and for the first time in 3D, Tales of the Night was the only French feature film to be selected at the 61st edition of the Berlin Film Festival. He recently completed “Dilili in Paris“, set in the Belle Époque.
