“Beavis and Butt-Head” Animator Had Left the Industry, but Came Back After She ‘Fell in Love’ with ‘Disgusting’ Characters (Exclusive)

Angela AndaloroWed, July 29, 2026 at 8:29 PM UTC

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Beavis and Butt-Head, 1993Credit: Yvonne Hemsey/Getty -

Beavis and Butt-Head aired on MTV from 1993 to 1997

Work by animators for the series, which was integral to MTV’s early success, is included in The Museum of Modern Art’s newest exhibit, It’s Alive! A Century of Animation from the Collection

PEOPLE spoke with Yvette Kaplan and J.J. Sedelmaier about their experience working on the series

Beavis and Butt-Headwas a major success for MTV.

The animated series, created by Mike Judge, became one of the channel’s earliest hits, despite the fact that many didn’t know what to make of the crudely depicted duo and their snotty, sloppy sense of humor.

PEOPLE caught up with two of the animators who worked on the show, Yvette Kaplan and J.J. Sedelmaier, as their work is honored as part of The Museum of Modern Art’s newest exhibit, It’s Alive! A Century of Animation from the Collection.

For Kaplan, Beavis and Butt-Head was a relaunch into the world of animation after time away raising her young family.

“I had my son in 1984, and I retired from animation at that point. I left animation because it was dead in New York. It was dead. Maybe these things were happening, but I didn’t know of any of them. And I said, ‘I’m retiring,’ when I had my son. But then I got pulled back in,” she explained.

Beavis and Butt-Head drawing by Mike Judge, 1993Credit: Courtesy J. J. Sedelmaier

“When Tony Eastman called, I knew I’d do anything for Tony. Tony was my fairy godfather, really, everyone’s. He was the whole industry’s fairy godfather. He was the most generous soul. And he wanted me to animate on this pilot, Doug for Nickelodeon, and I didn’t know what the hell he was talking about because I never heard the word pilot before,” she laughs.

Eastman informed her Nickelodeon was interested in having her direct for Doug if the series was greenlit, something Kaplan admits she didn’t really understand the scope of.

“Nobody ever directed me in animation. That’s the way it was for my early career. I was given a storyboard and [told to] do it. Sometimes I wasn’t even given that. So okay, Doug becomes a show. I’m at Doug happily working with a sweet kid. And then Tony comes into the studio. Tony was the supervising director the first season,” she recalled.

“And that’s when he was on Beavis and Butt-Head,” Sedelmaier noted, as she confirmed, “He was doing the two at the same time.”

Beavis and Butt-HeadCredit: MTV

Kaplan remembers Eastman calling her over and showing her a storyboard, which would be her first introduction to the titular characters.

“He said, ‘I got to show you something. I got to show you this thing I’m working on.’ And he shows me this storyboard, because he was the storyboard artist on almost all the early Beavis episodes, and he showed me this thing with these two ugly-looking things with their noses running into their tacos or burritos or whatever they were eating,” she recalled.

Kaplan continued, “I was like, ‘Oh, that’s disgusting.’ And he said, ‘I’m doing this for J.J.; he might want you to come in and direct.’ I said, ‘I don’t know. We’ll see.’ ”

When Doug went on hiatus and the call came in from Sedelmaier, the last pieces came together. He credits Kaplan with, “Completely transforming the entire production and the entire studio.”

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“When you came in, we were in such flux. We weren’t getting scripts. We weren’t getting model sheets. And once Yvette came in, she was this tuckpointing grout that just pulled everything together and finally they weren’t mad at us anymore. It was just fantastic,” he explained.

Mike Judge and Yvette Kaplan work on 1997’s ‘Beavis and Butt-Head Do America’Credit: Getty

Kaplan said the turn of events “changed my life, really,” recalling what it was like to watch Judge’s short, “Frog Baseball,” which featured Beavis and Butt-Head.

“J.J. puts it on and walks away and I totally fell in love. I thought it was the most innocent thing I ever saw, really. I just loved them. The pastel that was colored with crayon or colored pencil, pastel backgrounds and they were so funny. I couldn’t hate them. I loved them,” she shared.

Kaplan remembers a time when she had to animate a scene where a character drank beer while smoking a cigarette and needed help getting the timing right. She called Judge himself to work it out.

“I called him and I said, ‘Mike, I’m ready to direct this scene where Tom drinks a cup of beer and smokes a cigarette.’ And he said, ‘Okay.’ Anyone else would’ve said, ‘Just do it.’ Because I said, ‘I want to hear what you think, what this is supposed to look like to you, what’s supposed to feel like, the timing,’ ” she recalled. “But he said, ‘Okay, I’m going to do it now.’ And he says, ‘I’m holding the cigarette. Lift, lift, lift, lift, lift. Down, down, down, down, down. Beer. Lift, lift, lift, lift, lift. Down, down, down, down, down.’ I said, ‘Got it.’ ”

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For Sedelmaier, “The hardest thing about Beavis was unlearning all the little tricks that all of us learned in animation, especially hands.”

“When they played guitar, they were drawn like da Vinci. When they were walking, they were like thalidomide appendages just dragging along,” he laughed.

‘Beavis and Butt-Head Do America’, 1997Credit: Paramount Pictures/MTV Networks/Getty

Kaplan, who would go on to serve as a director on a number of in-development projects for MTV, including Daria, credits that exchange with Judge for instilling in her what good work could do.

“He just trusted me from that moment, at least for those at that time. For seven years it was a beautiful relationship and I loved him dearly. I still do. And those years at MTV were the happiest of my career,” she says.

Sedelmaier notes the significance of the show for animation, as well as MTV, saying, “It was the last thing that the industry needed to say, ‘Hey, animation could be anything. I don’t know what preconceived notion is, doesn’t matter.’ Later, you had South Park. Later on, you had The Simpsons, but it began there.”

It’s Alive! A Century of Animation from the Collection opens on August 1, 2026,

on People

Original Article on Source

Source: “AOL Entertainment”