The Works (film)

The Works is a shelved animated feature film written and directed by Lance Williams, partially produced from 1979 to 1986. If it had been finished, it would have been the first film that was entirely 3D computer-animated. It included contributions from individuals who would go on to work at digital animation pioneers Pixar and DreamWorks Animation.

The film was developed by the staff of the Computer Graphics Lab in association with the New York Institute of Technology in Old Westbury, New York. The title itself was inspired by the original meaning of the word "robot", derived from "robota" (meaning "workforce" or "slaves"), a word found in Czech and many other Slavic languages. It was originally intended to be approximately 90 minutes long although less than 10 minutes are known to have been produced. A trailer for the film was screened at SIGGRAPH in Boston, Massachusetts in 1982. The project also resulted in other early computer animations such as 3DV, Sunstone, Inside a Quark and segments of the short film The Magic Egg from 1984.

The story is set in a future in which the human race has gone extinct on Earth because of The Works, a military supercomputer that then repopulated the entire planet with robots. Only scientist-astronauts survived and over two millennia created a new society on asteroids. One day the androids stationed on the Moon send them an ambassador, Ipso Facto, tasked with recruiting a human so that he can speak with The Works and obtain data about the former terrestrial civilisation. He encounters a boy, Beeper Raxis, who becomes his companion on the adventure.