Dancing Baby

Examples

Low-resolution 3D baby in a diaper performs the cha-cha dance on a transparent background; silent GIF.

Original Dancing Baby animation

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Credit & details

No visible caption — Low-resolution 3D baby in a diaper performs the cha-cha dance on a transparent background; silent GIF.

Original Dancing Baby production credited to Michael Girard / Robert Lurye and collaborators by family source.

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Dancing baby with dog ears beside a doghouse and bone.

Doggy by Tink

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Credit & details

Cha Cha / DOGGY by Tink

Visible credit DOGGY by Tink; Original Dancing Baby production credited to Michael Girard / Robert Lurye and collaborators by family source.

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The 3D dancing baby wears a white dress with purple trim and a green hair accessory; silent GIF.

Dancing Baby dress remix

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Credit & details

No visible caption — The 3D dancing baby wears a white dress with purple trim and a green hair accessory; silent GIF.

Original Dancing Baby production credited to Michael Girard / Robert Lurye and collaborators by family source.

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About & sources

A 3D baby performs a looping cha-cha dance.

Date

Character Studio sample animation, autumn 1996; email-chain and GIF circulation followed.

History

Michael Girard, Robert Lurye and John Chadwick created the Character Studio demo. In a 2022 CNN interview, Girard identified customer Ron Lussier as a likely early email distributor; John Woodell converted the animation into a GIF. Fan edits paired it with Blue Swede’s Hooked on a Feeling, and it appeared on Ally McBeal. Rob Sheridan describes a separate role: collecting rather than creating the animation. In his retrospective, he dates The Unofficial Dancing Baby Homepage to April 1997, after requests for a file he had found on a newsgroup. Visitors emailed remixes, including the musical Oogachaka version; he also ran a remix contest. A January 1998 Evening Magazine report, later uploaded by Sheridan from a family VHS recording, shows him receiving and selecting new versions. His page was a distribution and remix hub, not the source of the original animation. Participant account: https://www.patreon.com/posts/i-have-to-make-16584611 Contemporary TV report: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jKBY8hc-hD0 The local GIFs are silent.

CNN · creator interviews (2022)
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Dancing Baby representative image