Bill Morrison's work has no doubt been enjoyed by millions of people. Lending his talent to Disney early in his career, Bill illustrated all new posters for reissued Disney animated classics such as Cinderella (1987), Bambi (1988), Peter Pan (1989), and The Jungle Book (1990) as well as the iconic movie poster for The Little Mermaid (1989). Significant non-Disney projects included movie poster work for House (1986) and The Land Before Time (1988).
However, Bill's work has likely reached an even larger audience on various projects related to The Simpsons. The Simpsons debuted on December 17, 1989, and almost immediately Bill was tapped as the illustrator of choice for the plethora of licensed merchandise illustrations that followed. By February of 1991, the first Simpsons home console video game, The Simpsons: Bart vs. the Space Mutants was released to much public demand, with fabulous Bill Morrison box artwork. 1991 also saw Bill work on illustrations for the iconic multi-player The Simpsons arcade game, The Simpsons: Bart vs the World (NES), The Simpsons: Bart's House of Weirdness (PC), and Bart Simpson's Escape From Camp Deadly (Game Boy). Subsequent years saw Bill continue to produce wonderful The Simpsons illustrations for many video games including The Simpsons: Bartman Meets Radioactive Man (1992), The Simpsons: Bart's Nightmare (1993), The Simpsons: Bart & the Beanstalk (1994), and a host of others for a variety of consoles.
Contemporaneous with his video game work for The Simpsons, Bill was the principal illustrator and Creative Director for various iterations of The Simpsons-related comic books, including Simpsons Illustrated (1991), Simpsons Comics and Stories #1 (March 1993) and finally the entire Bongo Comics line of The Simpsons-related comics (which debuted in November, 1993 and continued through 2018).
All in all, Bill created thousands of The Simpsons drawings for T-shirts, posters, toy packaging, books, calendars, limited edition prints, and nearly all of the packaging illustrations for The Simpsons video games. Much as early Walt Disney merchandise required illustrators to sign the work "Walt Disney," the early The Simpsons illustrations also required the work to be signed "Matt Groening." As a result, we have all probably seen a piece of Bill's The Simpsons art at one time or another that we believed to be Matt's.
In addition to his work on The Simpsons, Bill also worked on subsequent Matt Groening TV shows Futurama and Disenchantment, and provided the wonderful box art to the Futurama video game, for PS2 and Xbox. He also served as executive editor of Mad Magazine in 2018 and 2019. Prior to becoming an illustrator, Bill trained in technical drawing, and his absolute precision and mastery with line brought The Simpsons and his other projects to life, allowing characters to become animated and life-like with just a few expertly-placed and carefully drafted lines.
Having lived in California for much of his adult life, Bill has returned to his native Michigan and enjoys life on the quiet banks of Lake Erie. He is a popular comic book convention guest, regularly meeting and interacting with his fans.
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