Now that you've seen "He's A Good Monkey," find out more about the short's creator, Chris Harding.

How did you come up with characters and the idea for “He’s A Good Monkey”?

The characters in He's a Good Monkey really came from my own behavior. I think a lot of people can relate to having a conflict between reason and impulse, between what you want to do in the moment and what you really should be doing. For some reason a monkey and a robot seemed like the way to represent that. (although I drew the characters before I figured out what they represented)

Will there be more “He’s A Good Monkey” shorts?

I doubt there will be any more He's a Good Monkey shorts specifically. But I do plan to work with very similar themes in the near future, in a different form.

What kind of production process (software, type of computer, light box, etc.) did you use to make your short?

Here's the process on He's a Good Monkey: I drew everything on vellum and scanned it in. Everything was colored in Photoshop and then the animation was done in Macromedia Director and then combined with the live-action video in After Effects (a very archaic process that I don't use anymore).

What are some of your favorite animated shorts?

Some of my favorite animated shorts off the top of my head (I'm sure I'll forget some great ones...):

Pretty much anything by Don Hertzfeldt
"Gerald McBoing-Boing" from Bobe Cannon and Bill Hurtz at UPA
"Toot, Whistle, Plunk, Boom" directed by Ward Kimball for Disney
"Thank You Masked Man" by Lenny Bruce, animated by Jeff Hale
The evolution sequence from "Alegro Non Troppo" by Bruno Bozzetto
"Moving Images of Machines" by Jeremy Solterbeck
"Your Face" and "25 Ways to Quit Smoking" by Bill Plympton
"The Family Dog" episode of Amazing Stories, directed by Brad Bird
"Nibbles" directed by Chris Hinton for Acme Filmworks
I also love many of the shorts directed by Chuck Jones through the years

Why did you want to work in animation?

I didn't set out to work in animation originally. I was a greeting card illustrator and newspaper cartoonist. But I wanted control over timing more than I could get in a comic strip. I was always struggling with trying to simulate the passage of time and comic pauses in my strip, and that is really hard in 4 panels. Luckily, computers came along right around the time I was getting interested in this stuff, and that's allowed me to blunder through teaching myself a little bit about animation. I also got a gig at this time at Hallmark, making e-cards. This tought me a lot, believe it or not, about just putting something together that moves. That's where Good Monkey came from.

I really don't particularly enjoy the grueling process of animating something, but I have fallen completely in love with the art form and I just want to keep studying it and making films until I can't pick up a pencil anymore.

How long did it take you to make “He’s A Good Monkey”?

He's a Good Monkey took 2 months to make, and most of that was done at night after work.

Do you have any another animated shorts in the works beside “He’s a Good Monkey”?

He's a good Monkey was my first short, and since then I've done a couple others. The most recent completed short, "Learn Self Defense," is touring festivals right now. I'm working on a couple other projects but I can't talk about them until things are more settled. I plan to do many more if I can.

I see on your website that you love the desert, so why are you in Kansas?

I do love the desert. I grew up in Tucson, Arizona. I really miss the climate there very much, especially as it starts to get cold here in Kansas City. I moved here for my job at Hallmark. Then I met my wife here and we bought a house and all that. So here we are. It's a great place to live, other than the horrible, horrible winters. I like the idea of living away from the industry of animation. I can explore a lot more without having to make a living at it for the time being.