With just a click of his mouse, Dana Bressler starts up a 2,600-foot-long piece of mobile mining equipment. With another click he puts in motion a device that squeezes toothpaste from a tube.


The machines arent real yet, just three-dimensional, animated images hes created for clients who will use them to show off their proposed products to their own potential customers, or maybe to investors.


Bressler owns a tiny Spokane business called Mechanical Motion, which produces such animated video clips from drawings and puts them on videotapes, compact discs, and DVDs. His customers, mostly manufacturers, product engineers, and inventors, often use the three- to 12-minute clips as part of presentations, says Bressler.


The use of 3-D adds a different perspective. It adds depth, he says, adding that in some instances Mechanical Motion provides four or five different camera angles in a clip to enhance the animation package.


Bressler says his customers usually send him hard-copy engineering drawings and e-mails, routinely submitting technical drafts of the front, top, and sides of their products. He says he usually never meets his clients face to face.


Typically, their drawings will show me three views of the machine (or invention), and from that I can derive a 3-D model, says the Spokane Community College graduate. He then gives the models life by using animation software to produce video clips that show both what a product looks like and how it will work. Some movie clips are designed as instructional tapes to teach individuals how to operate a machine once its built. Others can be as basic as illustrating how to assemble and disassemble a new kind of collapsible chair.


Potential investors often dont understand what a product will look like from flat drawings alone, Bressler says.


In addition to designing models of large machinery, Bresslers bread and butter, and smaller inventions, he also has created an instructional video for Rahco International Inc., the longtime Spokane industrial manufacturer, that shows how to install a protective barrier for a nuclear waste transfer system, he says.


Launched in 1999, Mechanical Motion still is staffed full time just by Bressler, though it subcontracts with nine artists who are either recent graduates or still students at Eastern Washington University or the Seattle Art Institute.


Even when Bressler farms out such work, he does all of the final editing. On his first project, Bressler says he subcontracted out the editing, but quickly determined that at $150 an hour, editing was something you needed to learn on your own.


Previously, he maintained a downtown office, but for the last year has run the business out of his home.


Bressler, who says he has a background in mechanical engineering and technical design, says he occasionally discovers engineering flaws in a product that hes able to correct. In one instance, he added a sprocket to an engineers submission of a large machine that otherwise wouldnt have worked as intended, he says.


The time spent in converting a flat drawing into an animated film clip varies greatly depending on the complexity of the assignment, says Bressler. While a three-minute, single-machine animation can take as long as 30 hours to create, Bressler says hes spent up to 200 hours creating a 12-minute video to simulate the looks and actions of a full mining system that included eight different machines.


He says most projects undertaken by Mechanical Motion take anywhere from one month to six months to complete.


He concedes that his skills as an animator are well below those of Disney animators and others who create cartoons for TV and movies, saying they often have masters degrees in the art compared with his two-year degree. Still, he believes that his skills in machinery animation fill a niche in the marketplace.


P align=center>Ties to Rahco


When he graduated from SCC in 1996, Bressler immediately went to work for Rahco as a mechanical designer. Before long he was attending 3-D certification night classes at the same community college and became the engineering animator for Rahco, long known for its innovative, and sometimes massive, machinery for mining, canal building, and other tasks.


Although he started his own company as a sideline in 1999, Bressler remained with Rahco until 2001 and still gets most of his clients from Rahco referrals, word-of-mouth, and the Internet.


Ive never gone out and advertised, says Bressler, who says that sales ability isnt a strength of his, and he might hire a salesperson in the future.


Though he currently works with a handful of clients sent his way by Rahco and has two major accounts with international petroleum giant British Petroleumthanks in large part to former Rahco employee and friend Martin Colits Mechanical Motions one non-engineering client that has Bressler excited.


That client, New York City-based Loop Digitalworks, whose Loop Filmworks division handles commercial and independent films, animation, and motion design productions, has an ongoing contract with Bressler that he secured over the Internet about a year ago. It sends the small Spokane venture drawings of 20 to 40 inventions every month, from which Mechanical Motion creates computerized, 3-D models.


The inventors use them to give potential investors and manufacturers a visual representation of the invention and how it will work.


Among the inventions Mechanical Motion has worked on are an umbrella with lights, an adjustable scaffold for uneven surfaces, a rechargeable battery for an exercise bike, and the toothpaste squeezer.


What we do is similar to a fabrication shop, but we do it on a computer, says Bressler.


Loop Digitalworks currently offers its clients a 3-D video as an add-on to the services it provides. Bressler says that if the New York City company decides to make the 3-D video part of its standard package, it might send Mechanical Motion animation work for up to 200 inventions a month.


If the Loop thing goes into full production, well probably have to employ four or five people full time, says Bressler. It has gigantic potential and could grow our revenues tenfold.


Revenues are now about $50,000 a year, says the native of Green Bay, Wis., who moved to Spokane in 1984.


Another potential area of growth he foresees in the computerized 3-D businessone he plans to pursueis the virtual control of machines for training purposes.


Technology is becoming so advanced that future machinery operators will be able to train by using a computer to manipulate the controls of an electronic version of a machine, Bressler says. He says advances made in the gaming industry will soon become more prevalent in the fields of medicine and engineering, promoting a more interactive form of teaching through virtual control on a screen.


Bressler asserts that growth in that area of expertise will further narrow the niche Mechanical Motion provides in the marketplace, thus reducing its competition.