Ranking All Twelve of Lee Hardcastle’s Gobbly Heads

After completing two out of my three main animations for the year, and after blogging about my progress with said animations, I am now taking a bit of a breather and discussing a subject that is of interest but that doesn’t have anything to do with my work personally.

And what better subject than yet another one of my favorite animators, Lee Hardcastle! Lee Hardcastle’s delightfully edgy claymations have been shown extensively on Adult Swim, and he even has a YouTube channel boasting around 1,280,000 subscribers (at the time of this writing.) What is phenomenal about his work is that it is playful and colorful, and yet it has a crazy and bizarre quality that can be over the top at times. Watching his claymations is always a thrilling roller coaster ride of an experience. You never know what’s coming!

His best work, in my opinion, is the Adult Swim bumper series known as the Gobbly Heads. The Gobbly Heads made their earliest appearance on YouTube individually on March 10, 2015, with a full length compilation uploaded by the official Adult Swim channel on June 21 of this year. They are very short (each around seven seconds long,) animations of grotesque heads behaving in strange and unsettling ways.

For today’s entry, I wanted to explore these bumpers in greater depth by ranking each one from not-as-good to best. These are all great in their own ways, (which is why I did not say worst to best,) but there is definitely a tier that I can see, so let’s dive right in!

12.) Gobbly Heads v9: You can only tell that this is a claymation if you look closely, which is not easy to do because the little sperm flits rapidly past the screen. If you have it on pause, it’s a lot easier, but shouldn’t these be easily identifiable as claymations right from the get go?

Even though I’m not crazy about this one, I still give him props for the amazing visual effects that he added to make it look like it’s being viewed through a microscope.

11.) Gobbly Heads v7: What’s great about this one is its color scheme, and I also really like that the cat unexpectedly coughs up a hairball at the end. My only qualm is that I wish it weren’t parodying Hello Kitty, which, in my view, is not a terribly original presentation. We know he can do a lot of really unique stuff, so seeing him piggyback off something he didn’t create is a bit disappointing.

10: Gobbly Heads v12: I love how Hardcastle drew his own matchbox design for this bumper. Very ingenious! The only thing I wish were different, however, is that it doesn’t have much clay action, except at the tip of the match. All in all, this is a solid concept, greatly enhanced by his highly original matchbox design. (Adult Swim: if you’re reading this, maybe you could start a brand of household matches with this design on it!)

9.) Gobbly Heads v3: Knock knock! Who’s there? A freaky purple cube! AAAHHH!! Run for your lives! This thing is gonna burst.

I literally can’t think of anything else to say, except that this is a real winner! And they only keep getting better from here.

8.) Gobbly Heads v4: What more original, bizarre, wacky concept than a disembodied, green head (presumably diseased,) eating drips from a leaky sewer pipe! This one is also different from most of the Gobbly Heads in that it has a very dark and unsettling use of lighting that automatically paints the subject matter as more sinister than it would otherwise appear.

7.) Gobbly Heads v2: Judging from the fly, the grass, and the color of the head, it’s probably safe to say that this head was pooped out by a dog. But why is it so scared of the fly? Is dog poop really so fly-phobic??

Yet another fine example of what can come from the brilliantly twisted mind of Lee Hardcastle!

6.) Gobbly Heads v10: He strains, his eyes blink, and then poof! Out of nowhere, a candle lights up on top of him! And he is happy. How did Hardcastle do this one? The flame is such an unexpected and out-of-place element that it leaves you scratching your head in sheer amazement!

Lee Hardcastle is a wizard!

5.) Gobbly Heads v8: Ahhhh… Nothing like a nice, big bucket of fried - WAIT A SECOND! What the hell is that??? The surprise element in this Hardcastle claymation is unlike most of the Gobbly Heads in that it really sucker punches you when you are not expecting it. The clay action is not seen for the entire duration of the animation except at the critical moment when he savagely snaps you out of your delicious fried chicken reverie. Timing is everything in an animation such as this, and Harcastle nailed it!!

4.) Gobbly Heads v1: The same surprise element can also be seen here, although it’s a lot less brutal than the fried chicken animation above in a couple of key respects: first off, the tiles in the background are all made of clay, so you can tell right from the get go that this is going to be a claymation. Secondly, nothing moves, so you kind of expect something is going to happen. But it’s still a grotesque, and in many ways nightmare inducing, surprise element because, although you know something’s coming, you can’t possibly predict or prepare yourself for the disgusting blob that splatters into view.

3.) Gobbly Heads v11: What on earth are those two screaming about?? Why screaming? Why not smiling or laughing or kissing? This random animation is another prime example of the delightfully silly and bizarre ideas that emanate from the depths of Lee Hardcastle’s mind, and I can’t help but wonder where he gets such ideas in the first place.

2.) Gobbly Heads v5: I mostly like this one for its bright use of color, but the flower that gets killed by the head’s halitosis at the end is another wonderful example of the surprise element in these animations. You just don’t know what’s coming!

1.) Gobbly Heads v6: This one is similar to the fried chicken animation in that it has a startling surprise element that pulls you out of a foodie daydream. But apart from this, there’s also a technical element to it that is similar to what we saw in the candle animation. How does he make an egg look so convincingly like its being cooked when it’s not even a real egg?? I guess we’ll never know, and frankly we don’t want to! If we knew the secrets of Lee Hardcastle’s wizardry, the magic would be utterly and hopelessly lost.

Which of Hardcastle’s Gobbly Heads did you like the best? Sound off in the comments!