Your Face

This cartoonist is absolutely brilliant. His work is more fun than nitrous oxide and more beautifully disturbing than the root canal that comes with it. This piece is a must-see for anybody pursuing a career in the animation/cartoon field, and probably also for anybody who ever liked looking at stuff.

This short, nominated for an Academy Award, is visually exceptional and conceptually wonderful. From what I've seen of his work, it's also one of the most conventionally "normal" pieces he's done! It's a kick to watch. Plympton is an acquired taste and I seem to have done so. If you like good animation that messes with the boundaries and sometimes colors outside the lines, try Plympton. By all means, catch this one! Most recommended.

There is no story in this animated short: just wild and crazy contortions drawn on a face who is singing a song about "your face." As he sings, almost every conceivable oddity occurs, such as facial parts changing position, head being twisted, cut, pulled inside-out, being chopped into pieces and reforming and so many things you can't describe.

This really is a three-minute piece showing the imagination of the artist. It kept me riveted to my seat, wondering what crazy thing will I see in the next few seconds. Basic, but fascinating material. It was up for an Academy Award.

You can see it on the DVD called "Plympton: The Complete Early Works Of Bill Plympton."

The beauty of "Your Face" is in the way Plympton got a very simple idea--How many ways can you morph a face?--and then elegantly and effectively hand-illustrated the frames to bring that creative idea to rampaging life on the screen.

It took the short animation scene (via the old Tournee) by storm; an immediate fave of one and all!

One of the wonders of it, as the piece proceeds, is seeing Plympton's knack for imagining and capturing the "dynamics"--a surprisingly close approximation of the behaviors of the physical system he's "modeling".

And it all couldn't have happened to a nicer guy: Met Plympton in Angouleme in 2000, and he was a pleasure to chat with about his latest (at the time) project.

This is really simple to describe. We have a central figure whose face changes over a hundred times. The faces are creative as well as photographic. The have been done with drawings and then integrated. Quite remarkable. Apparently the song we here has some significance.