In Bob Sabiston and David Atherton's film "God's Little Monkey", an angry little girl (two-dimensional) lives in a threatening mechanized world (three-dimensional).

"God's Little Monkey" is the first section of an independent animated film that I have been working on in my spare time. I started this project more than two years ago. In fact I remember that in 1991, when I last attended Prix Ars Electronica, I was playing with ideas for a story revolving around the character of a morose and angry little girl. Those ideas have evolved into this film. My purpose in producing this animation has more to do with creating a mood, a character, and an environment than to enact an efficient narrative. This is due to accident as much as to choice. The character of this little girl has always been very clear in my mind, as has her mechanized world. However, I have never known quite what to do with her. I began this film in the fall of 1992 with the simple intention of fleshing out the character, using a few introductory scenes. "God's Little Monkey" is the result of that exploratory effort.

Perhaps I should explain why it took two years to create only two minutes of film. Starting in September of 1992, I spent two months doing a "trial" version of the animation. I did enough work to convince me that it was worth pursuing as a more serious project. I didn't have anything better to do, either. I spent the first six months of 1993 working on a finished version of the opening "machine" sequence. At the end of that period, I was fairly disgusted with the amount of time it had taken me to do just one finished scene. I did not even like what I had done. I abandoned the project until January of 1994, after I had had a chance to move to Austin, Texas, and work up some more enthusiasm for the damned thing. From January to May I produced the scenes involving the little girl, mostly by reworking and polishing up a lot of the rough work from the year before. I felt that the collection of scenes I had assembled were strong enough to stand on their own, and so I submitted that work to SIGGRAPH '94 as a "work-in-progress." The same version has been accepted at Prix Ars Electronica for 1995. I am happy with the way it turned out; sometimes it seems as though I don't really need toadd anything else to it. Nevertheless, I have continued on with pretty much thesame approach to the rest of the film, if only for the lack of a more compellingmotive. Perhaps, given the character I have chosen to work with, that is anappropriate attitude to take, ­ ha ha!

I think that the idea for this animation, the mood of it at least, came from alot of the music I was listening to around the time I finished school. "Tunic (song for Karen)" by Sonic Youth, "Wings of Joy" by the Cranes, and the second half of "Ritual de lo Habitual" by Jane's Addiction all had an effect on the way I thought about this film. I also listened to a lot of "death metal" when I was sketching out plans for the opening machine sequence ­ the kind where the vocalsare just an unintelligible low growling noise. I knew exactly what I wanted for that scene: a wild, thrashing jungle of machinery ­ organic and industrial at the same time. I don't think that this is what I ended up with; the final animationis somewhat "cleaner" and more mechanical than I originally planned. There aren't enough cables whipping around. But it still seems pretty threatening to me, thankfully.

Technique and style-wise, this work is similar to much of the other animation I have produced. I like to combine hand-drawn, traditionally animated characters with three-dimensional computer-animated backgrounds. I use a software system written by myself and other students of the MIT Media Lab. It facilitates this particular type of two-and-three-dimensional animation. At no point in the animation process are traditional media involved; I do not use pencil, paper, acetate cels or paint. I do draw the character animation frame-by-frame; however, those frames are drawn directly on the computer using a graphics tablet. The software cannot interpolate these drawings ­ I wish! Inbetweens are done by hand.

Sometimes people fail to see the advantage of using a computer to do character animation, if you cannot get the computer to do any of the grunt work for you.The advantage lies in the complexity of interaction one can achieve between 2-Dand 3-D objects. Some of the scenes in "God's Little Monkey" illustrate this interaction. For example, as the little girl walks down the stairwell to sit at the kitchen table and eat, three-dimensional objects pass in front of and behind her. I think that these shots place the two-dimensional character very believably within a three-dimensional space. You can still tell what is hand-drawn and what is not, but this level of registration at least ensures that the characterdoesn't look "slapped" on.

As I continue to work in this same style, I am always trying to reduce the disparity between the flat and the solid. I would like to reach a point where it is not so obvious what has been drawn by hand, and what has been rendered by the computer. I like that weird space in between. For example, I texture-map three-dimensional objects with images specifically designed for them, sometimes with regard to the angle from which they will be seen. Most of the things that look like shadows are just black marks drawn on the floor. Lately I prefer the backgrounds to have something of a storybook feel. I usually try to give the characters at least two levels of shading ­ highlights and shadows. These factors contribute to a certain "look" that I am trying to create ­ kind of a moving three-dimensional illustration.