On Dec. 2, 2002, My Fault-1, a user on the 3D animation forum CGTalk,
sat down with his family to watch a football game. During one commercial break, he flipped channels to The WB, where instead of the usual fare of teen dramas was
Rapsittie Street Kids: Believe in Santa, an animated Christmas movie unlike anything he had ever seen.
The heartwarming story, festive music, and cute animation were nowhere to be found. This was a surreal vision of the Christmas special on par with
Plan 9 from Outer Space or
The Room. In
Rapsittie Street Kids, characters’ bodies had the blocky stature of an upright juice box. Their faces barely registered as human, in a queasy contrast with their realistically flesh-colored lips. The soulless world around them was made of muddy, repeating textures painted onto 3D objects, like the Matrix by way of a GeoCities page.