During an interview with "Daily Beast", Plympton spoke for the first time about working with Kanye West on the video. Plympton had known that West was a very popular hip-hop artist, but other than that wasn't really aware of how famous he was. He received an unexpected phone call from West in October 2005, a day after attending an exhibition for the art of German illustrator Heinz Edelmann at the School of Visual Arts. West had been the one to contact Plympton, giving him a phone call in the middle of the night. Plympton recalled, "Three or four years ago, called me out of the blue and said, 'I need a music video. Will you do one for me?'" ... "He said, 'Is this Bill Plympton? This is Kanye West. Are you the animator guy? I want to hire you to do my next music video.'" ... I said, "Yeah, sure." According to Plympton, Gondry had spent half a million dollars filming in the closed down Macy's, but it wasn't exactly what West wanted. He didn't care for the video and had to premiere a new version in a week on MTV. West called and asked if he could make a music video in a week for very little money, seeing as Gondry had spent the $500,000 budget on his version. Plympton accepted the request and delivered a storyboard of how he visualized the narrative, which West loved. To visually capture the tone of "Heard 'Em Say," Plympton decided to portray West as a taxicab driver in a fictitious city who picks up troubled passengers and encounters a young boy and his mother. According to Plympton, "The child is meant to represent Kanye as a young boy and the film is about his experiences." The two soon began, after which Plympton discovered that West had been watching his animated comedy film "I Married a Strange Person!" in his spare time while traveling around the country performing at concerts.