progress so far

This is the first portion of my animation, before the character starts dancing...

more defined plans...

After ironing out my ideas more thoroughly, I have decided to make a few changes to this story/idea. The piece has a new working title, which is "MimeMan", and a bit of a modified character. The main character, the male doll, is now a mime on a shelf in a store. No one seems to take any interest in mime dolls, and he's been on the shelf for a while, even after having his price marked down. His shelf location puts him right next to a tv, and, at night, he turns the tv so he can watch. While flipping channels one night, he comes across a tv show with dancers doing a hip-hop, robot style of dance. Being bored, and confined to his "glass box", he decides that he will try to do this kind of dance. After a few attemps he seems to have it down. Now he can use this new talent to try to sell himself and get off the shelf. Does he want to be more human, or do humans want to be more like him?...

Artist's Statement

“Jabba Jabba” is an animation that seeks to explore the relationship between humans and both natural and unnatural human movement. It is a short narrative piece that questions the similarities and differences between these two types of movement. The story begins with a doll sitting alone on a shelf, discontent with his existence and his inability to perform human tasks. He tries to be human-like, but falls short because of his rigid build and his minimal joints. While sitting on his shelf, he sees a television show where people are performing a modern style of dancing that is unlike anything he’s seen before. The dancers are called the JabbaWockeeZ, and they combine popping and locking, miming, and break dancing to create their own unique style of dance. When the doll sees these movements, he feels that this is something he will be able to do. After finding that this is so, he is forced to look at which role he is trying to convey, either the human or the more robotic. The piece looks at relationships between humans and technology and humans and movement.
This animation will be a mostly stop-motion piece with various other video and imaging elements added in. The dolls rigid movements will be exaggerated with the stop-motion technique. The piece will be created using iStopMotion, Adobe Photoshop CS3, and Adobe After Effects.