Celebrating the Side-Splitting Hilarity of Animator Don Hertzfeldt
We take a look at some tattoos that take us back to the funniest scenes from the animation giant’s career.
I am very proud to say that in my four years of college, I only wet my pants once. It was freshman year. I had just entered my dorm room after a day of skipping class to get high at a friend’s place and my roommate, Babak, immediately said, “Oh my god, you have to see this cartoon!”
We sat down in front of his computer and he showed me what was, at the point in my life, one of the funniest fucking things I had ever laid eyes on — Don Hertzfeldt’s short animated film Rejected. And I laughed so hard just a little bit of urine escaped the confines of my body.
If you haven’t ever seen Rejected, scope it out right now. It holds up incredibly well all these years later and still gets laughs out of me after countless viewings. There’s just something about this particular brand of silly irreverence that trips my trigger.
The genius behind it, Don Hertzfeldt, is responsible for a litany of critically acclaimed short-form animated entertainment. He has been nominated for two Oscars (including one for Rejected), and he has won over 250 awards, including two Sundance Grand Jury Prizes.
Hertzfeldt was born in 1976 in Fremont, California. He was interested in art at an early age, and by the time he was 15, Hertzfeldt was already making short animated films with a VHS camera. He attended film school at the University of California during which time he was able to find international distribution for his student films. With success at such a young age, he has never held a job outside of being an animator, allowing him to devote his life to delivering laughs around the globe.
With his impressive and hilarious filmography, there are some touching tattoo tributes to this titan of the animated world. Each one brings a smile to my face, and some of these stills are enough to get a chuckle out of me. Here are just a handful of tattoos that stand as monuments to Hertzfeldt’s hilarity.
If you haven’t yet, we implore you to check out more of Hertzfeldt’s gut-busting work. You probably wouldn’t get why people would want such silly tattoos if you haven’t seen any of his films. But if you have, you totally get it.
