Plympton described working with West as being quite different than that of Weird Al Yankovic. He imparted, "I have to be honest with you. Weird Al doesn’t have a big budget for his music videos. He kind of just said, 'Here’s a song. Send me the film when you’re done.' Whereas Kanye was very hands-on." West flew over to Plympton's home studio for a couple of days to watch the cartoonist, looking over his shoulder as he was drawing and providing critique. The cartoonist recalled, " actually looked over my shoulder while I drew his caricature, his character, and he was very critical about it, which is his right. I’m drawing him, he’s paying me money and he paid me a lot more than Weird Al, so I was happy to change it." Plympton claims that West is "a real showman," even compared to Weird Al. He continued, "And he was always curious. He would call me from all over the place: 'Oh Bill, I'm watching "Married a Strange Person" right now. How did you do this and that?'" As the deadline neared, Plympton and hi associates Biljana, Lisa and Kerry worked through the weekend. West then came by and fine-tuned every piece of art. The live-action scenes of West and Levine performing during the animation were co-directed with Joe DeMaio. Plympton revealed that West wanted to close the music video with a scene at the end where his character went to the pearly gates of heaven, only to be rejected. The animator had to inform West that they only had one day left to go, and getting the pearly gates just right would be almost impossible, which he fortunately understood. In the end, they just barely made it in time for the given deadline. Plympton finished the replacement video just two hours before they needed to deliver it to MTV, and West paid the director out of pocket. As a show of generosity, West insisted that Plympton put an animated credit with his name at the end of the music video. At the official release party for the video, West called the director, "The Michael Jordan of Animation."