My parents used to politely request that I refrain from making funny faces at the dinner table. I never was able to, and even now I can't keep a straight face in front of any camera, mirror, store window or mud puddle.

After all, faces are incredible.

To see the insane tapestry of muscles lacing the bones of our skull, check out Artnatomy, a collaboration between two professors from Spain. This Flash animation shows the mechanics of every twitch, tick, wink and knowing look that our faces can muster.

[Thanks to Nellie Durand]

From the creators:

The primary goal is to provide the student and those interested, a convenient refernce tool, facilitating familiarity and experiemntation with the underlying anatomical structures using correct biomechanical representation of the different facial expressions.

Victoria Contreras Flores studied Fine Arts in Spain at the Polytechnic University of Valencia, and is a teacher of figure drawing, illustration and digital tools. She is also founding partner of DES.AR.ME (Artistics Development of Media).

Carlos Plasencia Climent is the author of many texts describing the muscles of the face and facial expression. He is a professor of morphologic anatomy in the Fine Arts Faculty at the Polytechnic University of Valencia.