Don Hertzfeldt

I don't know why these things are always framed as a big dumb cage match: Hand-drawn versus computers, film versus digital. We have over 100 years now of amazing film technology to play with, I don't understand why any artists would want to throw any of their tools out of the box. Many people assume that because I shoot on film and animate on paper I must be doing things the hard way, when in fact my last four movies would have been visually impossible to produce digitally. The only thing that matters is what actually winds up on the big screen, not how you got it there. You could make a cartoon in crayons about a red square that falls in unrequited love with a blue circle, and there wouldn’t be a dry eye in the house if you know how to tell a story.

On finally making the leap to digital animation after twenty years of working with pencil and paper, Hertzfeldt joked, "I kind of feel like it’s like a rock band who traditionally was guitar, guitar, guitar and then for their new album, they’re like, we’re going electronic! But [then] they only use Casio keyboards and drum machines... It’s not the cutting edge CG we’re all used to."

...Many people in our industry would see advertising work as "the ultimate goal," which really illustrates the sad state of affairs that’s set up for many young animators. They’re basically being taught that their [own] work has no value. Their personal projects, even when Oscar-nominated and whatnot, are perceived as just a way to attract some empty corporate advertising gig where they can maybe make enough money to fund another personal project that’s maybe dropped on YouTube, loses money, and forgotten about. It’s a terrible cycle. Artists shouldn’t be making art on the side, it should be their job. We need to re-train audiences who’ve grown used to the free YouTube model that shorts are worth paying for.

In January 2018, the film played opening night at the Sundance Film Festival.

World of Tomorrow Episode Two: The Burden of Other People's Thoughts premiered in 2017 and received rare "A+" reviews from Indiewire and Collider, where it was described as "another soulful sci-fi masterpiece." The Daily Beast called it "a must-see animated masterpiece" and "one of the best films of the year."

World of Tomorrow Episode Two premiered in 2017 at Fantastic Fest in Austin and received rare "A+" reviews from Indiewire and Collider, where it was described as "another soulful sci-fi masterpiece." The Daily Beast called it "one of the best films of the year... a must-see animated masterpiece."

Hertzfeldt traveled with the film to theaters on a "winter mini-tour" in December 2017. The screenings opened with a surprise new two-minute cartoon, in which an animated Hertzfeldt introduces the program from the caverns of an alien planet.

In 2016, Rolling Stone ranked World of Tomorrow #10 on its list of the "40 Greatest Animated Movies Ever". Despite its short running time, The A.V. Club called it "possibly the best film of 2015." In 2019, Indiewire ranked World of Tomorrow #17 in its overall list of the "100 Best Movies of the Decade".

In 2016, World of Tomorrow won the animation industry's Annie Award for Best Animated Short Film.

In 2016, World of Tomorrow was nominated for the Academy Award for Animated Short Film at the 88th Academy Awards, Hertzfeldt's second career nomination.

In 2016, Rolling Stone ranked World of Tomorrow # 10 on its list of the "Greatest Animated Movies Ever."

In 2016, World of Tomorrow was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Animated Short Film at the 88th Academy Awards, Hertzfeldt's second nomination.

In 2015, Hertzfeldt released his first digitally animated short film, World of Tomorrow, which was created at the same time as another digital piece, an animated guest appearance on The Simpsons. Both pieces were still hand-drawn by Hertzfeldt, but on a Cintiq tablet instead of paper.

Hertzfeldt described his relaxed writing process in a 2015 Reddit "AMA" session:

In January 2015, Hertzfeldt's first digitally-animated short film, World of Tomorrow, premiered at the Sundance Film Festival and won the Grand Jury Prize, his second. Illustrator Julia Pott performs the voice of the short's lead character, opposite Hertzfeldt's then-four-year-old niece, who was recorded while drawing and playing. Her spontaneous, natural vocal reactions and questions were then edited into the story to create her character.

The film next won Best Animated Short at the SXSW Film Festival. Indiewire called the short film "one of the best films of 2015," and The Dissolve named it "one of the finest achievements in sci-fi in recent memory." The A.V. Club described the film as "visionary" and "possibly the best film of 2015," in spite of its short running time. The Austin Film Critics Association gave Hertzfeldt a Special Honorary Award in recognition of the film.

World of Tomorrow was released on-demand on Vimeo in March 2015, simultaneous with its run in film festivals.

In 2015, Hertzfeldt won the Grand Jury Award for Short Film a second time at the Sundance Film Festival, for World of Tomorrow.

In December 2015, Hertzfeldt received a special award from the Austin Film Critics Association, "in celebration of a career of remarkable short filmmaking and contributions to animation spanning two decades, with 2015's award-winning "World of Tomorrow" being recognized as his best work to date."

From July to August 2015, Don Hertzfeldt ran a Kickstarter campaign to publish his films It's Such a Beautiful Day and The World of Tomorrow for the first time on Blu-ray, to help finance future productions. The campaign raised over $215,000. With rising pledges he remastered additional short films The Meaning of Life, Rejected, Billy's Balloon, Wisdom Teeth, and Lily and Jim and added them to the Blu-ray as well. Also included was an interview, a surprise film, and the first preview of a future project. The disc run was limited, primarily available to Kickstarter supporters and fans who contacted Bitter Films directly.

While at film school, Hertzfeldt was drawn to animation as it was a less expensive form to work in. He could not afford to buy the numerous rolls of 16 mm film required to shoot live action. He has stated, "I think I've always approached animation from a strange angle, a bit like a regular filmmaker who just happens to animate. Editing, writing, sound—those are the things that usually come first in my head. Animation is often just the busy work I need to get through to connect the dots and tell the story."

The popularity of each student short at film and animation festivals—and eventually around the world from screening on MTV and other networks—helped fund the next one, and eventually financed the production of his first film after college.

In 2014, Time Out New York named the film one of the "thirty best animated short films ever made."

In 2014, Time Out New York ranked It's Such a Beautiful Day # 16 on their list of the "100 Best Animated Movies Ever Made." Critic Tom Huddleston described it as "one of the great outsider artworks of the modern era, at once sympathetic and shocking, beautiful and horrifying, angry and hilarious, uplifting and almost unbearably sad."

In 2014, Hertzfeldt wrote, animated, and directed a surreal and futuristic two-minute "couch gag" for the premiere episode of the 26th season of The Simpsons. It was the longest opening gag in the show's history and was described by Spin Magazine as "mind-melting," and "two of the strangest minutes of television ever to air on a major network during prime time."

Hertzfeldt's work commonly features hand-drawn stick figures, in stories of black humor, surrealism, and tragicomedy. Some films contain existential and philosophical themes while others are more straightforwardly slapstick and absurdist. His animation is created traditionally with pen and paper, often with minimal digital aid. Hertzfeldt uses antique 16 mm or 35 mm–film cameras to photograph his drawings and often employs old-fashioned special effect techniques such as multiple exposures, in-camera mattes, and experimental photography. While some of these techniques are as established as an occasional stop-motion animation sequence or a universe of moving stars created by back-lit pin holes, other effects are new innovations on classical methods, as seen with the in-camera compositing of multiple, split-screen windows of action in the Everything Will Be OK films.

In the United Kingdom, the film was ranked # 3 on Time Out London's list of the 10 Best Films of 2013, and # 4 on The London Film Review's list of the same.

In December 2013, Hertzfeldt released a graphic novel, The End of the World, through independent publisher Antibookclub. The 216 page book was described in his blog as containing many years of leftover film ideas, reshaped into an experimental new story. "If the films were albums, I guess these would be the B-sides," he wrote. In 2019, Random House announced they would be printing a new edition of The End of the World in wide release.

In 2013, Hertzfeldt animated a 30-second piece called "Day Sleeper" for the National Film Board of Canada. It was created using their iPad app, a tribute to experimental animator Norman McLaren.

Hertzfeldt has had more films play in competition at the Sundance Film Festival than any other filmmaker, with eight: Rejected, The Meaning of Life, Everything Will Be OK, I Am So Proud of You, Wisdom Teeth, It's Such a Beautiful Day, World of Tomorrow, and World of Tomorrow Episode Two. He returned to the Sundance Film Festival in 2013 to serve on the Short Film Awards Jury.

Hertzfeldt's feature film It's Such a Beautiful Day was listed by many film critics as one of the best films of 2012 and the L.A. Film Critics Association named it runner-up for Best Animated Feature Film of the year. After a limited UK release in 2013, the film was ranked #3 on Time Out London's list of the 10 Best Films of 2013 and #4 on The London Film Review's list of the same. In 2014, Time Out New York ranked It's Such a Beautiful Day #16 on its list of the "100 Best Animated Movies Ever Made," and in 2016, The Film Stage critics ranked the film #1 on their list of "The 50 Best Animated Films of the 21st Century Thus Far." In 2019, The Wrap named It's Such a Beautiful Day the #1 "Best Animated Film of the 2010s." The same year, the Vulture film critics ranked it #12 on their overall list of the "Best Movies of the Decade."

In 2012, Hertzfeldt edited together the three chapters of his short film trilogy to create a seamless new feature film of the story. His first feature film, the movie shares the same title as the third chapter of the story, It's Such a Beautiful Day, and went into limited release in movie theaters during autumn 2012.

It's Such a Beautiful Day was very well received by film critics. The Los Angeles Film Critics Association named it their runner-up for Best Animated Feature Film of the year, behind Frankenweenie. Indiewire ranked Hertzfeldt the 9th best Film Director of the Year in its annual poll (tied with Wes Anderson), and The A.V. Club film critics ranked the film # 8 on their list of the Best Films of 2012. Slate Magazine named "It's Such a Beautiful Day" their pick for Best Animated Feature Film of 2012.

In 2012, Hertzfeldt was ranked #16 in an animation industry and historian survey of the "Top 100 Most Influential People in Animation."

In 2012, Hertzfeldt received the Ted M. Larson memorial award from the Fargo Film Festival, for his "contributions to film culture."

The third and final chapter, It's Such a Beautiful Day, premiered at the 2011 Sundance Film Festival. Hertzfeldt traveled with It's Such a Beautiful Day in 2011 and 2012 on another North American theatrical tour to 30 cities.

In April 2010, at the age of 33, Hertzfeldt received the San Francisco International Film Festival's "Persistence of Vision" Lifetime Achievement Award "for his unique contributions to film and animation," and "for challenging the boundaries of his craft."

In 2009, Hertzfeldt noted, "I don't often make the same sort of movie twice in a row. It's always been whatever's next in my head. From a commercial standpoint I guess I’ve made some pretty inscrutable decisions, like following up 'Rejected' with a sprawling abstract film about human evolution, but it's really just been whichever ideas won't go away at the time. There's always a lot of new things I’d like to try."

In October 2009, Hertzfeldt premiered Wisdom Teeth, an unannounced, new five-minute cartoon at the "Evening with Don Hertzfeldt" screening at the Ottawa Animation Festival. It later screened at the Sundance Film Festival in January 2010 and the Fantasia Film Festival in Montreal, where it was awarded a Special Jury Mention. In 2010, it appeared as part of a series on the Showtime Network called "Short Stories".

In 2009, Rejected was the only short film named one of the "Films of the Decade" by Salon.com. In 2010, it was noted as one of the five "most innovative animated films of the past ten years" by The Huffington Post.

I Am So Proud of You was released as a similar "single" in 2009. It featured a similar 148 page "archive" of production materials, as well as the hidden narration-free feature.

In a March 2009 blog entry, Hertzfeldt compared filmmaking to his love of hiking and exploring new places: something he does just because he "enjoys doing it and will probably always enjoy doing it." He compared doing advertising to being paid to not go explore the woods, but to walk around someone's house eight hours a day wearing a sandwich board with a picture of a product on it. "Money's not the reason I take walks. It doesn't really factor into it. I take walks because I enjoy doing it. It's something I'd do if I was rich, and it's something I'd do if I were poor."

Discussing film and digital technology with The New York Times in 2008, Hertzfeldt noted:

In a March 2008 entry in his blog, Hertzfeldt announced he had decided to leave The Animation Show, after having programmed (and contributing films to) three tours. A fourth season of the program was released in theaters in summer 2008, with no involvement from him.

I Am So Proud of You, the second chapter in the story, was released in autumn 2008. Upon its release, Hertzfeldt traveled with I Am So Proud of You and a selection of his other films to 22 cities on a sold-out American tour (with two stops in the UK and three in Canada). '"An Evening with Don Hertzfeldt" presented a 35mm selection of his work followed by an onstage interview and audience chat with him. I Am So Proud of You also played at film festivals throughout 2009 and won 27 awards.

In 2008, Comedy Central noted his work as having "influenced an entire generation of filmmakers."

The 17-minute animated short was based on the character, Bill, from his webcomic "Temporary Anesthetics". The Boston Globe called the film a "masterpiece" with the Boston Phoenix declaring Hertzfeldt a "genius." The short film was a cover story on the Chicago Reader, receiving four stars from critic J.R. Jones. Variety film critic Robert Koehler named Everything Will Be OK one of the Best Films of 2007.

Everything Will Be OK won the Grand Jury Prize for Short Filmmaking at the 2007 Sundance Film Festival, the Lawrence Kasdan Award for Best Narrative Film at the Ann Arbor Film Festival, the Grand Prize at the London Animation Festival, and 34 other awards.

In 2007, Hertzfeldt's Everything Will Be OK won the Grand Jury Award for Short Film at the Sundance Film Festival, a prize rarely given to an animated film.

In 2007, according to the animation industry website Cartoon Brew, Everything Will Be OK advanced to the final round of voting as a contender for an Academy Award nomination for Best Animated Short, but did not make the ultimate list of five nominees.

In 2007, Hertzfeldt accepted an invitation from the George Eastman House's motion picture archives to indefinitely store and preserve the original film elements and camera negatives to his collected work.

In 2007, Everything Will Be OK was released as another DVD "single". Special features on this release included over a hundred pages of "archival" material (sketches, storyboards, deleted materials), and a hidden feature that played a narration-free version of the film.

Everything Will Be OK was released in 2006 and became Hertzfeldt's most critically successful piece to date, receiving his strongest reviews. The film was described as "probably the best work he's done in his very incredible and consistently amazing young career."

Don Hertzfeldt Volume 2: 2006–2011, a DVD collection of all work from 2006–2011 (including the feature film version of It's Such a Beautiful Day) was released in November 2012. Special features for the release included over 40 minutes of live Q&A material from the touring program, the cartoon Wisdom Teeth, a deleted scene from It's Such a Beautiful Day, and a 24-page booklet. Advance pre-order customers for the release also received a 35 mm–film strip clipped from a release print of It's Such a Beautiful Day, and other free gifts.

Almost four years in the making, Hertzfeldt's twelve-minute The Meaning of Life premiered at the 2005 Sundance Film Festival and toured film and animation festivals in 2005–2006. Though its abstract nature puzzled some critics, it received mostly positive reviews. The Atlanta Journal-Constitution called the film "the closest thing on film yet to Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey."

In 2003, Hertzfeldt created The Animation Show with Beavis and Butt-head creator Mike Judge. It was a biennial North American touring festival that brought independent animated short films to more movie theaters than any distributor in history. The programs were personally curated by Hertzfeldt and Judge. A second Animation Show edition toured throughout 2005, featuring Hertzfeldt's short film The Meaning of Life and new films by animators like Peter Cornwell and Georges Schwizgebel. The third season of The Animation Show began its nationwide release in January 2007, featuring new work by animators Joanna Quinn and Bill Plympton, as well as Hertzfeldt's own Everything Will Be OK.

In 2002, Hertzfeldt joined the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.

In 2001, Hertzfeldt was named by Filmmaker Magazine as one of the "Top 25 Filmmakers to Watch."

Hertzfeldt has been nominated for three Annie Awards for Best Animated Short Film. He lost for Rejected in 2001 and Everything Will Be OK in 2007 and won for World of Tomorrow in 2016.

Bitter Films' first DVD release was a 2001 limited edition DVD "single" of the short Rejected. The DVD included a deleted scene, audio commentary, and a few hidden pages. It is now out of print.

Released in theaters in 2000, the short won 27 awards and was nominated for an Oscar for Best Animated Short Film the following year. It is now considered a cult classic and one of the most influential animated films ever made, especially after it found its way onto the internet in the early 2000s and became a viral sensation. In 2009, it was the only short film named as one of the "Films of the Decade" by Salon. In 2010, it was noted as one of the five "most innovative animated films of the past ten years" by The Huffington Post. Indiewire film critic Eric Kohn named Rejected one of the "10 best films of the 21st century" on his list for the BBC Culture poll in 2016.

Hertzfeldt's work has been credited with being a prominent influence on surrealism and absurdism in animation in the 2000s, including influencing Adult Swim's brand of animated comedy.

In 2000, at the age of 23, Hertzfeldt was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Animated Short Film for his fifth short film, Rejected. He lost to Michaël Dudok de Wit for Father and Daughter.

Hertzfeldt lives in Austin, Texas. He spent many years in Santa Barbara, California after attending college there. He has kept a blog on his website since 1999.

His final student cartoon, Billy's Balloon, is about an inexplicable attack on small children by malevolent balloons. It was nominated for the Short Film Palme d'Or at the 1999 Cannes Film Festival, and won the Grand Jury Award at the 1999 Slamdance Film Festival. In total, it won thirty three awards.

In 1999, at the age of 22, Hertzfeldt was nominated for the Short Film Palme d'Or at the Cannes Film Festival for Billy's Balloon, where he was the youngest director in competition. The same year Billy's Balloon won the Slamdance Film Festival Grand Jury Award.

Hertzfeldt has never held a job other than creating his animated films. His earliest teenage video animations found film festival exposure, and in film school at the University of California, Santa Barbara he was able to find international distribution for each of his 16mm student films. He is a 1998 graduate with a B.A. in Film Studies.

His first dialogue short, Lily and Jim, was released in 1997, and tells the story of a disastrous blind date. Its partially improvised vocal performances helped the short win twenty five awards, including the Grand Prize at the New Orleans Film Festival.

Don Hertzfeldt Volume One: 1995–2005 was released in 2006, collecting the first 10 years of his work. All of the short films were remastered and restored in high definition from their original film negatives. The DVD was made available only to fans via the Bitter Films website, with the first 750 pre-orderers receiving an "exclusive mystery gift" (either a 35 mm–clipping from Rejected that was autographed by Don, or a unique drawing by Don on a post-it note).

The special features for Don Hertzfeldt Volume One: 1995–2005 included a time-lapse documentary of the making of The Meaning of Life called "Watching Grass Grow", The Animation Show Trilogy cartoons, Lily and Jim deleted dialogues and outtakes, Rejected trivia captions, The Meaning of Life special effects audio commentary, an over 140-page "archive" section (of rare footage from Hertzfeldt's earliest cartoons, original pencil tests, deleted sequences, abandoned footage, and sketch to scene comparisons), Lily and Jim audio commentary, Rejected audio commentary, and a retrospective booklet, with liner notes by Hertzfeldt

Hertzfeldt's student films in the 1990s were photographed on 16mm. From 1999 to 2011, Hertzfeldt photographed his films on a 35mm Richardson animation camera stand, believed to be the same camera that photographed many of the Peanuts cartoons in the 1960s and 1970s. Built in the late 1940s, it was reportedly one of the last remaining functioning cameras of its kind left in the world, and Hertzfeldt found it to be a crucial element in the creation of his films and their unique visuals.

Hertzfeldt owns the rights to all of his work and has self-distributed his films under the moniker "Bitter Films" since the 1990s.

Hertzfeldt prefers not to sell his animation artwork. In the late 1990s and early 2000s, his website Bitter Films annually auctioned off artwork instead to raise thousands of dollars for local Santa Barbara charities. Other original drawings have been occasionally given away through the Bitter Films online store through special promotions. Because Hertzfeldt also rarely does signings, his artwork is rare for animation collectors and fans to own.

The sequence depicts Homer accidentally using a time-traveling remote control that regresses him to his original 1987 character model, then propels him into a distant future incarnation of the show called The Sampsans where he and his family have evolved into grotesque, mindless, catchphrase-spouting creatures. Future Homer sadly remembers past futuristic episodes, in which he still had an emotional connection with Marge and the children. Simpsons producer Al Jean called it "crazier than we thought," and "the most insane one we've ever done."

Don Hertzfeldt (born August 1, 1976) is an American animator, writer, and independent filmmaker. He is a two-time Academy Award nominee who is best known for the animated films World of Tomorrow, It's Such a Beautiful Day, Rejected, and World of Tomorrow Episode Two. In 2014, his work appeared on The Simpsons. Eight of his short films have competed at the Sundance Film Festival, a festival record. He is also the only filmmaker to have won the Sundance Film Festival's Grand Jury Prize for Short Film twice.

Hertzfeldt was born on August 1, 1976 in Alameda County, California, the son of an airline pilot and a county library clerk. Some publications have his place of birth as Fremont, California while others name the smaller Castro Valley, California. He is of half Swedish descent. Hertzfeldt attended Mission San Jose High School in Fremont. In his childhood, Hertzfeldt drew homemade comic books and at the age of 15, he began to teach himself animation with a VHS video camera. Two of Hertzfeldt's teenage VHS cartoons can be seen on the "Bitter Films: Volume 1" DVD collection.

Critics were universally positive in their reviews, describing the science fiction film as "one of the most satisfying shorts since Chris Marker's landmark 1962 La Jetee and almost certain to be the highlight of this year's Sundance, full stop," "dazzling, enthralling" and "astonishing."