A French Skin Flick That Gets Up Close (NSFW)

It’s almost a guarantee that when you see a student film from the French animation school Supinfocom, it’s going to look beautiful. But few of the school’s films push narrative boundaries or challenge the viewer like J’aurai ta peau (I’ll Have Your Hide). The provocative CG short is based on interviews with people talking about skin and their relationship with their bodies.

Nothing could be more familiar to the average person than one’s own skin, but the extreme close-ups in J’aurai ta peau transform human skin into an exotic, foreign landscape. The atypical marriage of photoreal rendering and abstraction is startling, beautiful and discomforting all at once. Suddenly, we see the commonplace in a new light, and perhaps feel an urge to examine our own skin more closely.

The daring quartet responsible for the short is comprised of Victoria Jardine, Vivien Ebran, Alexis Koch and Nicolas Trotignon. Credit also belongs to Benoit Duvette for sound design that adds a lot. Toolset was Maya, Photoshop, Nuke and Avid.