Eagle Scout Bill Morrison started his career in "The Motor City" as a technical illustrator, but what he really wanted to do was draw cartoons. Soon, Bill decided he had drawn his last diesel fuel pump and he moved to southern California with his wife and two cats. He began working immediately in motion picture advertising, which eventually led to the opportunity to draw and paint a long run of movie posters for Walt Disney. Included among them are The Little Mermaid, Bambi, Peter Pan, and The Jungle Book.
In 1990, Bill was recruited by Twentieth Century Fox's licensing and merchandising department to draw The Simpsons for nearly all of the T-Shirts, video games, posters, toy packaging, etc. which was the fuel of 90's Simpsonmania, and he occasionally had time to create designs for the TV show itself. He also contributed greatly to Matt Groening's publishing endeavors with artwork for Simpson's books and calendars. When Matt decided to start a comic book company, Bill was hired on as art director of Bongo Comics and drew the very first Simpson comic story. He received an Eisner Award for his contributions to Simpson's #1 and has had a hand in every Bongo Comic to date, either in its writing, penciling, inking or supervising.
In 1997, Matt Groening went into pre-production on his new show, Futurama, Bill helped out with the character design, and when the show went into full production, he was brought on board as art director, while continuing to guide Groening's comic book empire.
In addition to his work on The Simpsons, Bill has written and drawn his own comic book series, the four-time Eisner Award-nominated Roswell, Little Green Man. He also co-created a comic book about a support group for super heroes called Heroes Anonymous with Disney's Fillmore creator Scott M. Gimple.
Most recently, Bill has returned to work on the classic Disney characters with a series of limited edition animation art cells.
We aren't quite ready to show you the portrait yet, but here's an early sketch:
We also have a keyed drawing of the portrait showing what some of the elements are.
Here's a look at the Centennial Portrait in the pencil drawing stages.
The finished product (note that the complete mural is obviously higher resolution and does not include the copyright notice shown in this format).
Wondering what all those images are and what they mean? Wonder no longer!
We have a printable key to the mural
We alwo have an interactive key to the mural (requires Microsoft Power Point viewer).