Guard Dog (film)
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Guard Dog ...
Guard Dog (2004, animation, dark comedy) is a short film (TRT 05:00 min.) which was hand-drawn and produced by Independent Animator Bill Plympton
Bill Plympton
William "Bill" Calvin Plympton is an American animator, former cartoonist, director, screenwriter and producer best known for his 1987 Academy Award-nominated animated short Your Face. and his series of shorts Guard Dog, Guide Dog, Hot Dog and Horn Dog.- Biography :Bill Plympton was born in...
at his Plymptoons Studio. In 2005 the film was nominated for Best Animated Short at the 77th Annual Academy Awards held in 2005 and produced by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences
Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences
The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences is a professional honorary organization dedicated to the advancement of the arts and sciences of motion pictures...
. Also in 2005 Guard Dog won Best Animated Short at Toronto World of Comedy International Film Festival
World of Comedy Film Festival
The World of Comedy Film Festival is an annual film festival held in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. It usually takes place in the last week of February. It features comedies from Canada and all over the world....
, and won a Special Jury Mention for Animated Stories at ANIMA - Córdoba International Animation Festival. This film marked the second Academy Award nomination for Plympton, his first being the animated short Your Face at the 60th Academy Awards
60th Academy Awards
The 60th Academy Awards were presented April 11, 1988 at the Shrine Auditorium, Los Angeles, California. The ceremony was the first to be held there since the 20th Academy Awards...
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The film is a humorous and surreally-violent answer to the question "Why do dogs bark at such innocent creatures as pigeons and squirrels?" and gives the audience a window into the paranoid mind of a loyal guard dog as it imagines farcically depicted dangers, from harmless flora and fauna on a walk through a neighborhood park. Each potential threat, from flower, butterfly, and grasshopper, to bird, squirrel, and rope-jumping girl, is treated to its own improbable and often bloody vignette.
The eponymous Guard Dog has gone on to be featured in three more Bill Plympton short films to date, and appears in cameo in his feature film Idiots and Angels (2009) and the Weird Al Yankovic music video TMZ (2011). The character Guard Dog is referred to by the artist himself, as Plymptoon's 'Mickey Mouse
Mickey Mouse
Mickey Mouse is a cartoon character created in 1928 by Walt Disney and Ub Iwerks at The Walt Disney Studio. Mickey is an anthropomorphic black mouse and typically wears red shorts, large yellow shoes, and white gloves...
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In 2010 Plympton orchestrated the reprise of this short film called "Guard Dog Global Jam" (debuting in 2011) which featured 75 international artists and animators each of whom worked on re-interpreting a fraction of the film's multiple vignettes.