„MOUSE“ is an animated film written, designed and directed by Wojtek Wawszczyk, whose previous productions include award-winning shorts: „Headless“ and „MTV:Forest“ (directed by Piotr Karwas). Wojtek completed a Master of Arts Degree at Polish National Film School and „MOUSE“ was his graduation project, produced as a co-production between Polish Film School and Filmakademie Baden – Wuerttemberg in Ludwigsburg (D).
The film tells a story of a man who’s not accepted by the community of people living in a town he had just moved to. Each person’s personality is represented by an animal. A little mouse owned by the main character seems to be no match to other – bigger, stronger and more beautiful – creatures in town. He blames his loneliness on mouse and decides to hide the mouse in the box. In his garage he creates something so ridiculously spectacular that it sure would bring the attention of all people from the town – it’s a sculpture of a strange animal with features of different animals – an artificial hybrid of his neighbors’ pets. Everyone in the town likes the sculpture – but again not the main character, he never stopped being a mouse inside.
The production took about one year (with long breaks in-between) and was the first Wojtek film animated entirely in 3D (created with softimage|3D, rendered with Mental Ray). All the textures were drawn and painted.
„MOUSE“ has been screened at many animation festivals around the world: Annecy, ITF Stuttgart, London Effects and Animation Festival, Cracow Film Festival, Hiroshima, SIGGRAPH. At OFAFA Festival 2002 (in Cracow, Poland) the film was awarded the Special Prize for Excellent Artistic Values.