Strings (1991)/Your Face (1987)/Yes-People (2020)

In Strings, a woman gets ready for her bath while her downstairs neighbor prepares for the arrival of his string quartet. The animation style isn’t really my type of thing as the lines and colors are quite muddied and undefined. The story is cute enough with forced interaction between the two principles coming in the form of a leaky bathtub.

Bill Plympton’s style is really not my thing. I remember similar shorts, maybe even cuts from this one, as interstitials on MTV back in the day. Your Face is comprised of a man singing Your Face is Like a Song while his face morphs and folds in upon itself in different forms. Despite being quite ugly, the morphing is done seamlessly through the song.

The cast of of Yes People is a group of people who live in the same apartment building. The dialogue consists almost entirely of various iterations of the word ‘yes’. The plot, as well as the animation, is exceptionally simple but still rather cute.

Oscar Nominations: Best Short Film, Animated (all three)