'Koen Kalkoen'.
Wilbert Plijnaar began his career drawing for the Dutch Donald Duck weekly in 1972. He wrote and illustrated several stories with characters like 'Gus Goose', 'The Big Bad Wolf' and 'Little Hiawatha', and also illustrated several covers. In the mid-1970s, he and his writing partner Jan van Die took up scripting the 'Sjors en Sjimmie' comic for Eppo magazine. Together with artist Robert van der Kroft, they restyled this classic comic by introducing modern themes and focusing on short gags instead of long stories.
In addition, Plijnaar contributed several other comics to Eppo magazine, such as 'Ko en Oom Jo' and 'Koen Kalkoen' and devised concepts for some series executed by other artists such as 'Max Laadvermogen' and 'De Asjemaar Bekend Band'. Plijnaar and Van Die also wrote the script for the comic album 'Omni' (1987), which was drawn by Jan Bosschaert.
Plijnaar's Orange comic.
In 1988 Eppo magazine was renamed Sjors en Sjimmie Stripblad and started publishing longer stories of the title comic. Because of the extra workload, the writing chores of the 'Sjors and Sjimmie' comic were divided amongst numerous co-writers and the artwork handled by Hein Haakman and Spanish studios like Comicup, Bonnet and Comicon, all under the editorial supervision of the Wiroja's, as Plijnaar, Van Die and Van der Kroft are often referred to. At the same time they produced 'Claire', a new weekly series for the Belgian women's magazine Flair. In 2001 Plijnaar eventually handed over his writing duties on this comic to Evert Geradts.
Segment of one of Wilbert's scripts for 'Claire'
During the 1980s through mid-1990s Wilbert Plijnaar also contributed as background artist, concept developer and director in the animation department of the Dutch Comic House. He was additionally responsible for the 'Hannibal' comic strips that appeared on the school milk cartons.
In 1995, Plijnaar was invited by Warner Bros. to move to Los Angeles to work as animation storyboard artist. Over the years, he has contributed to several successful feature films, such as 'Quest for Camelot' (1998), 'Osmosis Jones' (Warner Bros, 2001), 'Ice Age' 1 (2002) and 2 (2009) (20th Century Fox/Blue Sky), 'Jimmy Neutron Boy Genius' (2001) (Paramount/Nickelodeon), 'Shrek II' (2004) and 'Over the Hedge' (2006) (both Dreamworks).
During 4-5 and 6 November 1988, during the Stripdagen in Den Haag (The Hague) Plijnaar, Van Die and Van der Kroft won the Jaarprijs voor Bijzondere Verdiensten (nowadays the P. Hans Frankfurtherprijs) and during the Stripdagen in Breda, on 21-22 October 1995, Plijnaar, Van der Kroft and Jan van Die were awarded the Stripschapprijs.
