directed by Bob Sabiston

For four years Flat Black Films has been producing animation which breaks with tradition in cartoon animation. Our films do not have a single style or coherent character designs. Instead, the artists on our films are encouraged to use their own personal style in producing individual scenes. It works because the artists are all working from a common video source. Thus, our films are not animated in the truest sense of the word. They are composites of wildly different, reimagined video scenes drawn in cartoon style. The technique is a variant of rotoscoping: hand-tracing a video image frame-by-frame.

Ryan is a particularly appropriate subject for our animation technique. The dreamlike and fractured nature of our images match the subject matter of his dialog very well. Ryan is a remarkable and engaging kid--we feel fortunate to have met and been able to film him. His mother initially invited us to do the interview--she told us that her son was autistic and obsessed with cartoon animation. It was her feeling that seeing himself animated would have a profound effect on him.

One afternoon in December 1998 we went to Ryan's house to meet and film him. At first he would not consent to being interviewed. Two strangers with a camera probably made him nervous. He disappeared into the back of the house for a while, and we chatted with his mother and sister. Eventually he reappeared and announced that he was going to 7-11, a convenience store around the corner from his house. We asked if we could accompany him, and he said ok. The whole incident was spontaneous--yet the situation perfectly suited our needs and seemed to relax Ryan enough to talk to us at length.

Ryan likes the film but is not particularly enthusiastic about it. He is, on the other hand, very happy with the idea of himself as a movie star. He very much wants to make a lot of money so that he can take trips to Universal Studios theme park in Florida. When I first showed him the tape, he watched it three times in a row, with his face inches from the screen. Then he handed it back to me and pronounced it "pretty all right". He didn't show any interest in keeping the tape however.

Snack and Drink tied with the Pixar film "A Bug's Life" for second place at Prix Ars Electronica 99 and was accepted to the SIGGRAPH 99 Computer Animation Festival. It was part of ResFest 1999, the Aspen Shorts Festival 1999, and the 2000 Hamburg Short Film Festival. It is included in the New York Museum of Modern Art's permanent video collection.

Ryan also has a part in the animated feature "Waking Life", directed by Richard Linklater, animated by Flat Black Films, and released by Twentieth Century Fox.

Snack and Drink
Directed by: Bob Sabiston
Produced by: Tommy Pallotta
Starring: Ryan Power
Animation: Bob Sabiston
Jennifer Drummond
Constance Wood
Mike Layne
Shannon Pearson
John Paul
Kimberlee Hewitt