Elvis Presley once drove a milk truck. Paul Newman used to clean pools. Even Albert Einstein worked in a patent office. Day jobs: can't live with them ... can't eat without them.

Just ask any of the thousands of microserfs enslaved in the perpetual Dilbertdom of cubicles, "bored" rooms, and machiavellian management mazes that are all too common in the IPO-driven frenzy of our glorious "new economy." Listen closely and you'll hear the rumble of corporate discontent, of artists pining for their big break: "This is just my day job," says the rock star/database administrator; "I only work in new media to pay the bills," says the fine artist/interface designer; and sometimes - if you listen carefully - you might even hear, "I'm a Web developer but I really want to be an underground comic artist."

"The goal was always to balance client work with our own projects, and that was something we couldn't do in any other environment," says Leonard. The trio, who recently won a Silver Award from I.D. magazine for the interactive version of their Angry Monkey comic book (the print book comes with a CD complete with interactive characters and a rearrangeable storyline), have been creating comics in their spare time for years. "We wanted to do transmedia development," Leonard says, using the buzzword the studio coined. The team created stories in one medium and tried to migrate them to as many other media as possible.

"I think we've been able to keep the balance between client work and our own work," says Leonard. "Now it's sort of integrated into the process."

Angry Monkey's client work certainly hasn't suffered from the studio's predilections: their first big client was Lucasfilm's Starwars.com, for which the monkeys created all of the site's animated online comics. Other monkey business includes Web sites for the game "Riven," the movie Blade, and the upcoming Lord of the Rings movie trilogy. In addition, the monkeys are now also branching out into creating interface designs for movie DVDs.

"Doing DVD menus is really exciting for us right now," says Leonard. "It's back to the idea of transmedia development: how does the technology affect how we approach navigation and story telling?"

Of course, it takes commitment and energy to keep attracting exciting projects. "The difficulty of client work is that you get pigeonholed. Other folks say, ‘oh they're the sci-fi guys or the fantasy guys' and that's not necessarily everything we want to do. At one point last year, I thought, if we do one more site that has a black background, I'm going to scream," he says.

Adds fellow monkey Dominique Sillett, "Sometimes in client service relationships, it feels like you spend all this time building the windows and doors of their business, and they take it and run with it themselves not understanding the foundation that was laid down," she says. "Many clients tend to destroy what was created."

Luckily, their faith was restored when they began working on the site for WildBrain, a San Francisco-based animation studio. Launched late last year, the site uses every color background but black, but more importantly, Angry Monkey had one of its most positive client experiences during the creation of the site. For Sillett, the collaboration was the creation: "In a lot of ways, the relationship between Angry Monkey and WildBrain itself created the site," she notes.

Leonard says he has also gotten a lot of gratification from Angry Monkey's relationship with New Line motion picture studios. "They are much more hands off," he says. "There is a trust there that is very nice and it gives us a lot more opportunities to enjoy the projects and dig into them." The studio has created interactive menu systems for four of New Line's movie DVDs, including Blade, The Corruptor, and Pleasantville.

Angry Monkey has come a long way in a relatively short time. Founded in the autumn of 1997, the company originally consisted of its three founders in a live-work space in San Francisco's Potrero Hill. Today the studio is situated in the decidedly more new media-esque SOMA district of San Francisco, in a hardwood-floored warehouse space overlooking a gas station for passenger buses. Angry Monkey's lobby is filled with bicycles hanging from racks and troops of stuffed monkeys (angry and otherwise) populating the space. The kitchen, behind a blue velvet curtain, is lorded over by a spinning disco ball, the small conference area is decorated with funky 3D models, and a couple of couches and easy chairs take up the middle of the large room.

There are almost 30 people working for Angry Monkey now, but the studio has no plans to grow any bigger. "Our goal is not to globalize," explains Leonard. "I just can't picture myself waking up and getting exciting about world domination. I've got enough else to do."

Andrea Dudrow is a freelance writer living in San Francisco, who also tries to balance client work with her own projects.