"We can try to avoid making choices by doing nothing, but even that is a decision."- Gary Collins

My mind keeps going back to abstract animation and Chuck Jones' "The Dot and The Straight Line" and also the shadows in "Humdrum".I love the way character can be brought into anything even a dot and a line. Breathing life into inanimate objects (this is where my scissor, pencil, paintbrush story came from). As Pete Lord from Ardman Animations has said"The important thing is performance... more to do with the acting. Things like performance, timing, sense of comedy, feeling for poses and how to communicate- those are the things that make good animators ". Using stereotypical poses and expressions help the audience engage with your character and give it personality. Without sound, arms and facial expression, bringing life into these ordinary objects will be difficult but as I have learnt the skill is in the mime and body language (as Hages has said "does your animation have the same effect without sound). The magic carpet in Disney's Aladdin is a great example for bringing life and personality into an inanimate object. Although cloth in this case is a little more difficult than what I would be animating. 

 

Even though I believe facial expressions (especially eyebrows) show character very well I want to stick with simple objects and shapes.(make it a little challenging?)

I want to show this with shapes, therefore no facial expressions and also no words just music or sound effects. I also thought of the "Catch Me If You Can" opening title sequence and how that graphic style could be brought into it. So I have been thinking of issues or stories I can portray with shapes. For example, peer pressure between shapes and fitting in. A square amongst a heap of circles. It could be like "The Ugly Duckling" or have a sad ending. A circle and another shape (square?) competing with each other. An irritating little circle annoying a square who eventually gets so mad he scares the circle away. (maybe a jack-in-the-box style) The circle could then go back to annoying the square or another shape.

All my ideas don't have dialogue. That is not on purpose. It has just happened that way. I think I like telling stories without speaking like with dance. This also makes the focus on the animating and can then be universal.