Guard Dog (film)

''Guard Dog'' is a 2004 5-minute animated dark comedy short film that was hand-drawn and produced by independent animator Bill Plympton at his ''Plymptoons'' Studio. In 2005, the film was nominated for Best Animated Short Film at the 77th Academy Awards held in 2005 and produced by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. Also, in 2005, ''Guard Dog'' won ''Best Animated Short'' at Toronto World of Comedy International Film Festival, and won a ''Special Jury Mention'' for ''Animated Stories'' at ANIMA - Córdoba Intl. Animation Festival. This film marked the second Oscar nomination for Plympton, his first being the animated short '' Your Face'' at the 60th Academy Awards.

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 films ''Idiots and Angels'' (2009), '' Cheatin''' (2013) 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.'

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.

''Guard Dog'' was preserved by the Academy Film Archive in 2015.

References

External links

Plymptoons.com

{{Bill Plympton

American animated short films
Films about dogs
2004 films
Films directed by Bill Plympton
2000s American films