Movies - The Works

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	Movies - The Works

The Works was to be the first entirely 3D computer animated film, created by the Computer Graphics Lab, but was never completed. The name was inspired by the original meaning of the word "robot", which means "work" in Czech. It was started in 1979, some say 1978, and was worked on to 1986. It was supposed to be around 90 minutes long, but only a few minutes was actually made. These sequences of film were on the other hand very impressive considered the time they were created. A trailer of the movie was shown on SIGGRAPH in 1982. The project also resulted in famous computer animations such as "3DV", "Sunstone", "Inside a Quark" and some segments of the short movie "The Magic Egg" from 1984.

The story, which was written by Lance Williams, was never clearly defined but centred around "Clyde," a robot drone. A female robot called "T-Square" was meant to be the heroine of the story and Dick Lundin's famous giant Ant was supposed to be one of the enemies. It was planned to use around 25 robots in total. The story was laid to somewhere in the future where a last World War had lead to an advanced computer network who now dominated and controlled the world.

The founder of NYIT (New York Institute of Technology), the entrepreneur and eccentric millionaire Dr. Alexander Schure, had long had a big interest in animation. He was a great admirer of Walt Disney and had a dream of making animated features like those made in the glory days of Disney. He already had a traditional animation facility at NYIT when he established the new Computer Graphics Lab. CGL (Computer Graphics Lab) at NYIT soon hired the biggest talents in the computer graphics field. After a visit to the University of Utah and seeing the potential in the computer technology there, like the computer program named Sketchpad created by Ivan Sutherland, he told his people to get him one of everything they had in the research center for computer graphics at Utah. At first, one of CGL's main goals was traditional 2D animation and inventing tools to assist the animators in their work. Schure hoped it would be possible to develop computer technology that would make the animation process cheaper and faster. An early version of the CAPS system later used by Disney animators were among the tools they created. Soon the main focus became 3D computer graphics, and when Lance Williams presented his story and the idea about making it as a 3D computer animated feature, which Schure found interest in and accepted (probably because he too dreamt about a computer animated feature and had this in mind when he created CGL), it was this movie project that became the main centre of the action and progress at NYIT. For many of the individuals involved, it became a primary and personal goal to create a CGI feature.

Just the thought of creating something completely new that had never been done before was exciting enough, yet the original and main reason for doing so was to demonstrate the potential and possibilities of what computer animation could do for the entertainment industry. The visual effects and parts of the editing in the movie and TV medium could be greatly improved if they succeeded, and the effects could be done faster, better and cheaper compared to more conventional techniques. Even a new animation genre would be created. But first they had to show the world what could be done with the help of computers. The project was as not only about the movie, but also about computer graphics research and science, which was necessary because none of the movie-making equipment needed existed at the time they started. Thanks to all the money and seemingly unlimited resources Schure invested in it, the staff was pretty free to do whatever they wanted and to use their talents and creativity in ways that would have been impossible in a Hollywood movie. They designed, developed and evolved the technology and equipment they needed. The money spent on this kind of freedom paid off, a huge number of new tools and techniques were made and stuff never seen before, and the workers spent the most of their waking hours in the lab. Because the movie was not some sort of Hollywood production but was intended as a way to introduce a new and groundbreaking technology into the world of movie-making and entertainment, it didn't have any budget or a release date (or a release year). The story itself was nothing more than an idea with some theory behind it. Even then, it was impossible to turn the story into a computer-animated movie without building all the technology they needed from scratch. From this starting point, more and more new layers to the story and technology were added in the following years, causing it grow bigger, larger and more complex than the years before. Collective feedback processes inspired the crew to constantly experiment and try something fresh. The different elements influenced each other, the centre of all the work improved and evolved as new stuff was added and the whole thing was starting to take form and the progress continued as the shape of the project became clearer and more visible. Everything seemed to go in the right direction.

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