August• 2017 | 75READER’S DIGEST
Motek’s lead animator Oshri Even-
Zohar was eager to join the project,
and the creation of Sweetie began.
First, Oshri and three other
Motek artists created a repository of
references from hundreds of images
of Filipino girls. Using these, they
designed Sweetie’s facial features
- everything from the bones in her
cheeks to the thickness of her skin.
Next, the team designed Sweetie in
two dimensions, painting and draw-
ing her with different expressions and
from various angles. What did Sweetie
look like when sad? Happy? Embar-
rassed?Theteamcreatedavastmood
board and then modelled it in 3D.
Finally, it was time to use motion
capture to animate Sweetie. An actress
specialising in mime acted out the 25
movements Sweetie would be able to
perform, from nodding yes, shaking
her head no, smiling, adjusting her
web cam and typing, to getting up and
exiting the frame. Each was synced
with a keyboard command so that
Sweetie’s responses could be easily
controlled in real time.
Theentireprocesstookcloseto
six months.
Then Oshri proudly presented the
petite brown-skinned girl to Mark,
Hans, Albert-Jaap and the rest of
the small team. Sweetie had to be
convincing. He walked her through
her range of movements, then turned
to face his audience. Every single
member was smiling.
Sweetie was a go.
IT WAS JULY 2013and the team
had rented an empty warehouse
space in the desolate industrial har-
bour of Amsterdam. They boarded
up the windows. When the landlord
asked questions, Mark said they were
shooting the new IKEA catalogue and
couldn’t have any leaks.
Then they loaded in laptops,
screens, routers, online security gear
and webcams. All the computers but
one had been programmed with IP
addresses that appeared to be in the
Philippines. The remaining laptop
was ‘air gapped’, never having been
connected to the internet and was
therefore safe from hacking. This
was where data on the identities of
the predators would be stored.
Then the infiltration began. Four
operators specially scouted by Mark
entered chat rooms that Hans knew
were playgrounds for predators.
The operators worked in pairs.
While one engaged the predator
with Sweetie, the other used clues
from the chat to search the web and
identify theindividual.
Hans watched as Sweetie entered
her first chat room. No sooner had she
posted her username than requests to
make contact flooded in. Men from
all corners of the globe were eager to
share personal information – emails,
Skype addresses, real names, naked
photographs – in the hopes of pur-
chasing webcam sex with a prepubes-
cent girl. Sometimes they demanded
a glimpse of Sweetie before revealing