A man and his mouse move into a new town. But can his mouse compete with the town's seemingly more charming pets? A story about staying true to oneself--even when you are surrounded by stronger personalities.

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.

Filmmaker Wojtek Wawszczyk - I was born on August 16th , 1977 in Cieszyn, Poland. I've been drawing comics, writing short stories and composing music since I remember. During my high school time some of my comics were published in local newspapers and magazines. In 1996 I became a student of the Animation Department at the Polish National Film School in Lodz, Poland and I found an animated film to be a perfect medium to express myself. I created few short movies using traditional techniques (cel, cut-out, sand animation) and learned the basics of film directing, editing, cinematography, sound, music, history of art. Besides music for my own first films, I wrote around 40 music soundtracks for other student short films (some of them award-winning).In 1998 I was sent for one-year scholarship to Ludwigsburg, Germany. At Filmakademie Baden – Wuerttemberg I made a short film „Headless” (my first approach to computer animation) which became successful all around the world (winning prizes in Germany, France and Japan).After finishing the next film project, “Mouse” in 2001 I came back to Poland and founded a group of independent animators, Studio Ploi. One of the first productions made by the group was my next short film “Pingwin” in 2002 (inspired by music by Polish jazz band).Currently I work at Digital Domain, Los Angeles as the character animator for the “I, robot” movie. In the meantime I work on the storyboard for my next short film.Filmography:1. "Man Often Feels So Radiated" (1997) - written, designed, animated, directed, sound and music byWojtek Wawszczyk2. "Sorry!" (1998) - written, designed, animated, directed, sound and music by Wojtek Wawszczyk3. "Mtv: Forests" (1999) - written and directed by Piotr Karwas; 2D animation by Wojtek Wawszczyk4. "Headless" (1999) - written, designed, animated and directed by Wojtek Wawszczyk; music by Stefan Ziethen; sound by Ruediger Fleck5. "Mouse" (2001) - written, designed, animated and directed by Wojtek Wawszczyk; music by Stefan Ziethen; sound by Ruediger Fleck; produced by Georg Gruber and Michael Schaeffer6. "Pingwin" (2002) - written, designed, animated and directed by Wojtek Wawszczyk (Studio Ploi); music by Alchemik; produced by Wojtek Wawszczyk and GeorgGruber7. "W" (2003) - written and directed by Kamil Polak; animated by Wojtek Wawszczyk (Studio Ploi)8. "I, Robot" (2004) - directed by Alex Proyas; character animation Wojtek Wawszczyk (Digital Domain)