Mike Judge first became famous for cre­at­ing the crude and crude­ly drawn car­toon series Beav­is and Butt-head (find com­plete episodes online here). The show was about two high school burnouts whose run­ning com­men­tary on the lat­est music videos was so bone­head­ed and bald­ly vul­gar that you couldn’t help but laugh. Pris­sy cul­ture war­riors point­ed to the show as yet anoth­er symp­tom of America’s decline while legions of stoned col­lege stu­dents glee­ful­ly tuned in. In 1998, Judge made the jump to live action fea­tures with Office Space, a hilar­i­ous, if uneven, take on the banal­i­ties of Amer­i­can cor­po­rate cul­ture. It’s one of those movies that no one saw in the the­ater but, thanks to cable, every­one of a cer­tain age can quote. (“If you can come in on Sat­ur­day, that would be great.”) Cur­rent­ly, he is the cre­ator for the hit HBO series Sil­i­con Val­ley.

Judge start­ed in ani­ma­tion after work­ing for a spell as first a com­put­er pro­gram­mer and then a blues bassist. After see­ing an ani­ma­tion cel on dis­play in a local movie the­ater in 1989, he ran out and bought a Bolex 16mm cam­era and start­ed mak­ing movies. Two years lat­er, he was pro­duc­ing odd, thor­ough­ly unpol­ished ani­mat­ed shorts that made the rounds in film fes­ti­vals, even­tu­al­ly launch­ing a career in Hol­ly­wood.

Above is a short about Mil­ton, the neb­bish sta­pler-obsessed cubi­cle dweller who was the gen­e­sis for Office Space. Stephen Root played him in the movie. His boss is the same pas­sive-aggres­sive prick as in the movie though played with less unc­tu­ous zeal as Gary Cole’s per­for­mance. The short proved to be such a suc­cess that MTV’s Liq­uid Tele­vi­sion ordered more.

Next is The Honky Prob­lem, about an emo­tion­al­ly unbal­anced coun­try singer named ‘Inbred Jed.’ He wants you to know that he is real­ly, real­ly, real­ly hap­py to be play­ing at a remote trail­er park­er pop­u­lat­ed by a bunch of char­ac­ters out of a David Lynch movie. In fact, if it weren’t for the jokey voice over at the end, this short is creepy enough to almost pass for an episode of Lynch’s own ani­mat­ed series, Dum­b­land.

And there’s this short also from 1991 called sim­ply Huh?, which pits the shrill against the obliv­i­ous.

You can find more Ani­ma­tions in our col­lec­tion, 4,000+ Free Movies Online: Great Clas­sics, Indies, Noir, West­erns, Doc­u­men­taries & More.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Dum­b­land, David Lynch’s Twist­ed Ani­mat­ed Series (NSFW)

Watch All of Ter­ry Gilliam’s Mon­ty Python Ani­ma­tions in a Row

Tim Burton’s The World of Stain­boy: Watch the Com­plete Ani­mat­ed Series

Jonathan Crow is a Los Ange­les-based writer and film­mak­er whose work has appeared in Yahoo!, The Hol­ly­wood Reporter, and oth­er pub­li­ca­tions. You can fol­low him at @jonccrow.

Before he direct­ed such mind-bend­ing mas­ter­pieces as Time Ban­dits, Brazil and Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, before he became short-hand for a film­mak­er cursed with cos­mi­cal­ly bad luck, before he became the sole Amer­i­can mem­ber of sem­i­nal British com­e­dy group Mon­ty Python, Ter­ry Gilliam made a name for him­self cre­at­ing odd ani­mat­ed bits for the UK series Do Not Adjust Your Set. Gilliam pre­ferred cut-out ani­ma­tion, which involved push­ing bits of paper in front of a cam­era instead of pho­tograph­ing pre-drawn cels. The process allows for more spon­tane­ity than tra­di­tion­al ani­ma­tion along with being com­par­a­tive­ly cheap­er and eas­i­er to do.

Gilliam also pre­ferred to use old pho­tographs and illus­tra­tions to cre­ate sketch­es that were sur­re­al and hilar­i­ous. Think Max Ernst meets Mad Mag­a­zine. For Mon­ty Python’s Fly­ing Cir­cus, he cre­at­ed some of the most mem­o­rable moments of a show chock full of mem­o­rable moments: A pram that devours old ladies, a mas­sive cat that men­aces Lon­don, and a mus­tached police offi­cer who pulls open his shirt to reveal the chest of a shape­ly woman. He also cre­at­ed the show’s most icon­ic image, that giant foot dur­ing the title sequence.

On Bob God­frey’s series Do It Your­self Film Ani­ma­tion Show, Gilliam delved into the nuts and bolts of his tech­nique. You can watch it above. Along the way, he sums up his thoughts on the medi­um:

The whole point of ani­ma­tion to me is to tell a sto­ry, make a joke, express an idea. The tech­nique itself doesn’t real­ly mat­ter. What­ev­er works is the thing to use. That’s why I use cut-out. It’s the eas­i­est form of ani­ma­tion I know.

He also notes that the key to cut-out ani­ma­tion is to know its lim­i­ta­tions. Grace­ful, ele­gant move­ment à la Walt Dis­ney is damned near impos­si­ble. Swift, sud­den move­ments, on the oth­er hand, are much sim­pler. That’s why there are far more behead­ings in his seg­ments than ball­room danc­ing. Watch the whole clip. If you are a hard­core Python enthu­si­ast, as I am, it is plea­sure to watch him work. Below find one of his first ani­mat­ed movies, Sto­ry­time, which includes, among oth­er things, the tale of Don the Cock­roach. Also don’t miss, this video fea­tur­ing All of Ter­ry Gilliam’s Mon­ty Python Ani­ma­tions in a Row.

Relat­ed Con­tent: 

The Best Ani­mat­ed Films of All Time, Accord­ing to Ter­ry Gilliam

Ter­ry Gilliam: The Dif­fer­ence Between Kubrick (Great Film­mak­er) and Spiel­berg (Less So)

The Mir­a­cle of Flight, the Clas­sic Ear­ly Ani­ma­tion by Ter­ry Gilliam

Jonathan Crow is a Los Ange­les-based writer and film­mak­er whose work has appeared in Yahoo!, The Hol­ly­wood Reporter, and oth­er pub­li­ca­tions. You can fol­low him at @jonccrow.