Pete Circuitt aka Bitstate

Egypt - Mount Sinai

2011-05-19T05:01:00.002-05:00

This is Tania, Nick Knoles and me top of mount Sinai to see the dawn. It was unbelievably cold, but was also truly beautiful. I shot a time-lapse, at least I must of, but have no idea where it is.

whiskey pete's and buffalo bill's

2011-04-13T05:05:00.001-05:00

my good bud, the High King of Scale and Rotate - Bill Sneed sent me these two snaps.
Between California and Nevada, the first stop is two casinos across from each other, called Whiskey Pete's and Buffalo Bill's. Classic.

Chris Stewart at Point Annihilation. 1992

2011-04-11T22:43:00.000-05:00

I was going thru some old snaps, and found this. Its my mate Chris who sadly died in a car crash the year after we graduated university. Ages ago now. I took this from the rocks and with a 50mm lens. So this wave breaks incredibly close to the shore, and you can hear the boulders roll around under the water in the swell as they are strangely round. Chris was the only one of us who really surfed this break and slotted into the waves with real menace. The rest of us were shitting our pants. I think he would like that this snap is online. he was really proud of it.

GI test + c4d ( advanced renderer )

2011-02-28T14:33:00.001-06:00

a quick test to see if I can in fact can do shiny 3D. Or contemporary chrome teapot. This test uses GI ( calculated for object and camera move ) to test for artifacts. Render took about 20 minutes.

fatsuit + hdri + syntheyes + mum's kitchen

2011-01-26T21:30:00.001-06:00

this little tracked test wont impress anyone but its the first one using a HDRI that I shot myself demoing some new nodal gear from hongkong. Location ? my dear old mums house. The kitchen to be exact and the hdri I used to light this test is below.

Tama, a Bona Fide freak of nature, part II

2011-01-26T03:29:00.001-06:00

I shot this on my little pentax underwater camera and the clicking is the air bubbles in the microphone. I thought just before I shot this that he looked lost at sea, and the shot works well for that. But really he is looking at the caustic light on his toes. Fiji is all sorts of good times.

drawings and paintings of old men

2011-01-26T02:45:00.004-06:00

Recently my computer life was on a ship, furiously dodging pirates to get to New Zealand where I was waiting, beer in hand. One of the benefits of having no computers around is generally getting out more. That and drawing old men.
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Tama, a Bona Fide freak of nature.

2011-01-26T01:51:00.001-06:00

This is my son Tama in Fiji. Tania and I took him out to the reef snorkeling and it was a beautiful thing. When i took this snap he was two + 3/4 and so good in the water. Putting his head under, holding his breath for a decent chop of time and pointing at the fishes.

Tower.

2010-12-30T04:55:00.000-06:00

Director : Pete Circuitt @ Bitstate
Agency : JWT NYC.
Produced : Kallan Kagan / TEG
Design : Pete Circuitt
Post : Pete Circuitt
Animation : Starz

Created with JWT New York for Macy's and revisits the characters from my film, Yes Virginia, created with the same team minus Wayne Best who was then ECD at JWT , now at COG.

floating Virginia in the Macy's Day Parade

2010-11-28T11:51:00.000-06:00

Here is the character Virginia from my film - Yes, Virginia, made into a 100 foot plastic blimp and manoeuvred down the streets of New York for the Macy's Day Parade. The film is screening again on December the 17th on CBS at 8 pm, and is sure to become a lasting, and well loved classic. I was not able to get to New York myself so thanks to Bill for the photo.

Fiji timelapse

2010-10-16T04:45:00.002-05:00

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I usually loath sunset time-lapses but when I shot this while on a Fiji Island last week, I was testing out a new remote timer i brought before leaving London. At the time I was punching in different intervals testing how flexible the unit was, but ultimately I regret not setting it up properly because of the sweet way the night sky pushed thru the blue. Also how the stars are quite sharp - the 1080 image is really great. I roughly re-timed it in After effects to smooth it out but its still a bit steppy. Fiji is all sorts of great times.

grandpop

2010-09-14T10:09:00.000-05:00

When I was in New York last November my Grandpop died of a sudden heart attack. He was my favourite fella in all the world and we had a heap of good times together. He built his house with his bare hands, and so for me, the light moving through the almost unoccupied halls and rooms, is an emotional cornerstone for what he was about. A huge influence to my life and work and I will miss him hugely.

some snaps of my mates

2010-08-27T13:16:00.001-05:00

No posts for a while, i have been trying to go through my photos of my mates and grade a few of them a day. Sadly i have only done this once.

Aminita Muscaria - the mushroom for discerning animators.

2010-06-23T12:26:00.003-05:00

This i thought was compelling and interesting stuff. The Aminita Muscaria mushroom is the chosen fungus for many animators. Its true ! click on the image and read the pack shot.

England expects.

2010-06-23T04:29:00.002-05:00

I drew this bloke after strolling past a pub during the England Vs Algeria football match last friday. to be honest this fella was a mixture of about three hundred horrified English gents watching their team bottle it for old blighty. I was smart and stopped watching after the first half.

Circuitt for Mayor

2010-06-21T04:44:00.002-05:00

the guy on the right is my hard arsed delinquent cousin Matt who is running for mayor in The Napier City Council, New Zealand. Making the Circuitt Family proud.

projection man + T4D smoke test

2010-05-28T04:34:00.002-05:00

This is projection man ( C4D ) test using a building modeled from photos then textured by projecting those photos onto the geometry. Turbulence 4D was used to generate the smoke and fire. This is my first test using T4D, and the plug has since been updated but I have not had another chance to look at it. The photos used for the modeling and projections are below.

grinning poolside bloke

2010-05-18T06:01:00.004-05:00

a quick doodle to offset those sad waiting blokes that are contemplating old fashioned volcanism in the post before.

sad waiting blokes

2010-05-10T03:32:00.004-05:00

Recently I got stuck in Canada because of the volcano, and I had to fly to NYC then Barcelona, then travel up to London via train. After waiting in endless lines for days to try and get tickets. During that time I saw a lot of pretty unhappy travelers , this is one of them. The middle one looked a bit like my friend Cocky.

short film treatment - faux stopmotion/claymation.

2010-03-03T05:41:00.003-06:00

Here are a few basic treatment frames for a short I have been working on. The sets need some heavy customization, as many models in these treatment frames are in as placeholders till I get the time to model them specific to the style I want.
When you are doing something by yourself sometimes its necessary to take a few of the scenes you have written down and flesh them out in a visual style to keep you going. A visual style is more than just the character and set design, its the lighting and colours used too, which is not necessarily evident in a sketch. In this case its a painterly, practical set look I am after.

Yes Virginia wins a Gold Pencil.

2010-02-17T09:05:00.005-06:00

One Show Entertainment : specials or onetime screening GOLD.

http://www.oneclub.org/os/ose/showcase/?year=2010&id=11395

SKETCHBOOK

2010-02-17T07:43:00.007-06:00

This sketch is just to practice more face on characters as i usually draw on the 3/4.

CHARITY SKETCH / PAINTING

2010-02-17T05:13:00.001-06:00

This was a gift to Wayne for his schools charity auction. The mother who brought the portrait option asked for something for her sons birthday. I had it mounted in two frames, one above the other.

RBC - Shiny Happy Relay - final 60 sec clip.

2009-12-29T08:37:00.003-06:00

This was the final 60 sec spot. The delivery time-frame was tighter than a fishes asshole - so water cant get in ( as my grandfather used to say.)
The result is pretty good considering the production schedule, and multiple language and time versions required, however ultimately I would have loved one or two more weeks on it. You can check a production diary on my site at bitstate.com.

credits

Director ( bitstate ) : Pete Circuitt
Modeler ( bitstate ): Jay Harwood.
Production : TEG
post production : Golden Square.

Yes Virginia : Mr Church - first version.

2009-12-26T08:13:00.012-06:00

This was the first very version of Mr Church I developed during the early pitch process, his body in this case, was a portrait from the time period, so we stuck his head on that. In the early days i was also keen to push for smoking in the film, as it was honest to the time period, but this idea was dropped early on for obvious reasons.

Yes Virginia - full cast line up

2009-12-11T11:37:00.001-06:00

This image is a line up of all the cast in the concept art phase - as you can see there is quite alot of characters to show development for. A special mention to Fola Akinola here who took over from Bill Sneed to be my lead character artist for the film after the Romantic Gentleman Sneed departed for the city of angels. I'll upload more character work next week.

Yes Virginia - first boardomatic ( excerpt )

2009-12-11T09:06:00.008-06:00

One of the things that i felt was really beautiful was the original work on the first boardomatic illustrated by Marcus Reed. The amount of detail he drew in each frame was phenomenal. We sat outside in the fading British summer and talked through the film several times, postulating and acting out each role to establish the frames required in this short frame boardomatic. This is really early on in script development when the opening shot pulled up on Virginia in a classroom instead of her house. Virginia's dad was modeled after Morrissey, and he had wooden body parts on the kitchen table, and the bully Charlotte was a boy named Charlie. And finally that is Mr Church leaving the library as Virginia arrives. In the original script Mr Church secretly pines for the librarian's favour.

early mood film and crowd tests

2009-12-11T06:05:00.006-06:00

Early on back in December 08 when Yes Virginia was perhaps going to be much smaller i set to work on the film by myself. One thing that i knew would be problematic would be to get the city streets to have the right density of extras for a busy city. So i made a quick hack-job of a crowd generator in my 3d software that actually became quite powerful. It meant i could have several character variations. Also all the crowd 'clones' of those variations would use the one 32 frame walk cycle but each use of that walk cycle would be randomly offset to give the impression that each clone was unique. The opening shot on this mood film has over 150 clones walking down the left hand side of the street. I dont have collision detection or anything like that but felt it did the job for wide shots. Music here is Wilco.

Introduction - Yes Virginia Production Diary -

2009-12-09T23:07:00.022-06:00

The work in this Diary I am very proud of. Not only because I think its a great body of work but also because it was made in a very short time. Its no secret I worked myself breathless on this project but everyone who was involved in this film, from the voice talent to the artists on the production floor, genuinely felt affection for it and wanted it to be great. This film needed that sort of dedication to make it appear truly touched by the human hand, rather than a computer, which was very important to me.

I always loved it when a director would take a personal interest in the supporting material for a piece of work. I dont know if you have seen Michel Gondry’s collected works DVD ( director series volume 3 ) but that DVD held an enormous presence for me when I first saw it. Not just for the work inside, but a peak at the mind of the great man himself and how his work all came together. Im not saying I am any sort of Gondry but I always knew when I had directed something really worth shouting about I would want to show it next to all the intriguing work that goes on, artist to artist, that the general public never sees.

On any project there is a huge amount of sketches and beautiful work that people will never consider when watching the film, as opposed to the compelling simplicity of looking at a still frame. Sometimes I think that this work will finally get angry, and sneak out of the studio to come strangle me in the night.So to prevent that happening here it is.

I am a hands on guy, often I’ll take a smaller project, and do it all, from soup to nuts. This long form work made that impossible and so I am indebted to Starz Animation in Toronto for coming on-board to finish this film, to such a high standard in such a short time, my wonderful TEG producer Kallan Kagan for keeping such a tight ship when we were under the kosh thru-out, Bill Sneed for being a true American gentleman and collaborator from the very first pitch, and Jay Harwood for his very quick modeling skills that were so vital for my camera layout and set planning early on. And of course Matt MacDonald, Wayne Best the creatives at JWT and creators of the show, Chris Plehal, the writer, and Producer Kate Schwerin at JWT.

And finally, of course a big nod to Mick Ebeling who was also supporting this project from the very beginning and always believed that I could pull it off. Big hugs remotely to Dex Deboree, my EP at The Ebeling Group, who brought this project to me in the very beginning, when it was only a 3 minute web film, and then shrewdly pushed, prodded poked the thing until it became a 22 minute Christmas special - nicely done squire !

Pete Circuitt

ps - check back later as there is a ton of good stuff yet to make it into this diary.

Virginia - early concept art

2009-12-09T22:07:00.005-06:00

Bill Sneed and I worked together on the original pitch back way back in August 2008. We executed this pitch together over a period of three feverish summer days and it fell to Bill to execute the concept sketches for Virginia. Bill fell in love, and so the romantic gentleman departed for LA not long afterwards, but you can see how the original concept art was key to the development to Virginia’s character.
She is a beautiful character, but to get her to look so sweet from all angles took ALOT of work in the 3D department. This is because her head is quite big and flat. Ultimately if virginia was seen in profile it would not be flattering to her character design so we determined during layout that we would try to limit these shots as much as possible. We did an enormous amount of tweaking on her face geometry to make it work for the shots and I think it payed off handsomely. I am so proud of this character, and there is so much to say about the character development in general which sadly I don’t think I’ll have time to do write this up at length just yet.

<--- Virginia - final character

opening shot development

2009-12-09T12:47:00.004-06:00

This clip shows how the opening sequence developed from the very first pitch, to the final film. Although I did the pitch move and the pre-viz camera move myself, the post work on the teaser was executed in Barcelona with the very good people at Boolab. The final film was completed with Starz Animation.

Sets : bedroom - sketches, film frames and the Edmonds cookbook.

2009-12-09T12:08:00.010-06:00

I used Cinema 4D extensively for all concept work. Virginia's bedroom needed to have a special touch, and her central window feature provided the lighting and mood device I was after. The optimistic sun design I wanted for the this stained glass window in her room features alot in my work - why ? because something similar was on the cover of my mums cookbook when I was a kid.

Sets : Kitchen - sketches, reference, and lighting paintover

2009-12-09T11:33:00.006-06:00

The kitchen is one of my favorite sets, probably because I quite like kitchens in real life but also because I had such a terrific time down at the Museum of Childhood in Bethnal Green, London. The good people there took me in after hours and opened up the dolls houses so I could cleanly photograph some reference. The miniature look was a style was a style I wanted to push for early on. The really tough schedule made that difficult but I am proud of the quality of sets in the time we had.

Yes Virginia - trailer

2009-12-09T10:30:00.000-06:00

Yes Virginia - the first trailer. from Pete Circuitt on Vimeo.

Abbey Rd - recording the score.

2009-12-09T10:12:00.002-06:00

This was a blast - visiting Abby road to experience how a score is put down to a film. The surprising thing was on the day it is all pretty much real-time - very little post-work is involved, by that i mean track mixing. I know alot of work goes on for the musicians to get to this level but it is so completely different to animation. Spot a mistake ? well that will be a 15 hour re-render sir ! The orchestral record was all done in four hours - you gotta love that. Thats Wayne and Matt on the final two shots, the creators of Yes Virginia.

Sets : the study - sketches and styleframe.

2009-12-09T09:56:00.008-06:00

I used Cinema 4D extensively for all concept work. I prefer to work in 3D space as quickly as possible, so my sketches were then modeled in Bitstate’s london studio by Jay Harwood. I would then take the 3D set to texture, and set dress it, to my liking. I am a pretty hands on guy and really love doing this stuff myself as it establishes the look and feel for the film for everybody in production to see before we put these models into final surfacing. Its also a great way to figure out cameras and lens work early on as you can drop a camera in the scene to visualize your shots accurately to how it should play out via the script. Jay's very quick and clean modeling was vital to my process.
I called this stage script geography as it plotted out the space the characters would move with-in against the script. For example I wanted Virginia to open a door at the back of the room, and almost timidly approach her occupied father, to ask the big question - ‘ papa, is there a santa claus ? ‘

Sets : Churches office - sketches and styleframe.

2009-12-09T09:44:00.002-06:00

I am really fond of some of these sketches. Some of these were quite early on - you will see a secretaries desk on the right which we scratched early on - and we changed the windows slightly to make them more elegant. Incidentally you will notice in the film that, like Virginia's room, these windows were strategically placed to give us really dramatic lighting options.

wall artwork

2009-12-09T08:59:00.009-06:00

I drew and painted the medically themed poster wall art, in the screen printed style of the day, and painted the framed family portrait also for the fathers study. The grumpy looking suited man I painted for churches office. I felt strongly that this subtle detail would help build upon the period piece we were making, and that detail would at times saturate the frame to be achingly beautiful.
I would have loved the time to paint more of these. As an animator myself sometimes I start to really appreciate the thought of making an image to be looked at singularly, something you can actually hold in your hand rather than look at on a screen.

Film Stills

2009-12-09T08:52:00.005-06:00

Virginia : final character.

2009-12-09T08:27:00.004-06:00

And this is the final Virginia in her outdoor costume, holding her famous letter.

Virginia - early 3D development

2009-12-09T08:17:00.014-06:00

A still from the teaser we executed in January, and our first 3D version of the Virginia character standing to the right holding the letter - you can see how much work was done after January on her face shape to get it to work in 3D while keeping the charm of the original concept art.

After January we took our non production 3D model and went to work to solve the problems with the Virginia character so that her head and eye spacing would not cause her to look freakish when viewed in side profile.

Virginia : alternate concepts.

2009-12-09T08:08:00.004-06:00

Here are some alternate concepts for Virginia that were discarded early on. The blond version looks a little like Jody, a tiny version of the girl who stole Bill’s heart.

press clippings - Yes Virginia.

2009-12-08T10:36:00.001-06:00

I thought it might be useful to collect all the press clippings these will be listed below as they come to hand.

Shots

source e creative

official blurb and time of the premier screening

CBS announces YES, VIRGINIA, a new animated Christmas special based on the 1897 true story of Virginia O'Hanlon, an 8-year-old girl who inspired the most famous newspaper editorial of all time by asking, "Is there aSanta Claus?"

Friday, Dec. 11 (8:00-8:30 PM, ET/PT), on the CBS Television Network.

Cast - Yes Virginia

2009-12-07T08:48:00.003-06:00

Alfred Molina ( voice of Francis Church ) is an accomplished London-born actor whose diverse and distinguished gallery of performances has led to a lengthy and triumphant career in film, television and the stage.

NEIL PATRICK HARRIS (voice of Dr Philip O'Hanlon ): Equally successful on stage and screen, Harris continues to demonstrate his creative versatility, most recently voicing the character of Steve the Monkey in Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs.

JENNIFER LOVE HEWITT (voice of Mrs Laura O'Hanlon ) currently stars in CBS’ hit drama series, Ghost Whisperer.

BEATRICE MILLER (voice of Virginia), a ten-year-old New Jersey native .

CREDITS TEG / BITSTATE

2009-12-06T15:10:00.001-06:00

credit list for TEG / Bitstate below

Producer
Kallan Kagan

Producer
Dexton Deboree

Producer
Mick Ebeling

Executive Producer
Dexton Deboree

Executive Producer
Mick Ebeling

Director
Pete Circuitt/Bitstate

Characters Designed and Created by
Pete Circuitt

Sets created and designed by
Pete Circuitt

Art director
Pete Circuitt

Lead Character Designer
Bill Sneed

Voice Director
Kallan Kagan

Lead Environment Modeler / Directors assistant
Jay Harwood

Character Design
Dan Brown

Character Design
Fola Akinola

Creative Development Animation
BooLab

Creative Development Producer
David Marcelino

Production Manager Bitstate
Mathew Mager

Director of Operations
Martha H Smith

Production Manager
Noelle Romano

Editor
Darwin Ignacio

Storyboards
Marcus Reed

Coordinator
Mel Senecal

RBC - Shiny Happy Relay - pitch clips.

2009-12-01T10:51:00.000-06:00

Here are the clips I furnished to the agency with the original pitch, the first one shows how I wanted the runners to group together and the second was an example of how I saw the rotational sets would work to transition through the diverse regions of Canada.

RBC - shiny happy relay - pitch clips

2009-12-01T09:47:00.000-06:00

These are some of the clips I provided to the agency with the pitch. The first one shows how the characters would run on the set, the second shows the rotational set design.

blood spattered vested man in t-pose

2009-08-14T13:28:00.001-05:00

just as the title says - tiny bit of blood on that vest. more to come . . .

2009-08-14T13:17:00.003-05:00

new sketch book, so drew one of my favourite things. a zombie. This one has been stabbed in the lungs with a spade. I usually try to treat sketchbooks really sweetly when i first start them, but invariably they get ruined by ugly messy lists and scribbly notes. Actually i am trying to draw more, as for years now, i have not been spending the time sitting down with pad and pencil just for the hell of it.

2009-08-14T13:11:00.003-05:00

This sketch I made on another flight back to london from canada of a Victorian lady looking out of a plane window. The intention is to combine the two pictures later and make a scene.

unit del pedro at 30 grand feet

2009-08-09T13:35:00.003-05:00

a drawing of myself looking out the window on a flight back from New York city. I was flying back after a meeting in which the job I am currently working on, was not green lit as I had hoped. The job booked several weeks later and its a project I dearly love.

New Zealand Feb '09

2009-08-09T13:15:00.003-05:00

These snaps were taken when Tania, Tama and I were in NZ last summer. We hired a camper Van and drove down the south island to Rico and Suzi's wedding. Was a sweet time and all my youthful hatred of campervans has been erased.

blog entry number one.

2009-08-08T16:05:00.000-05:00

test with engine at 30, 000 feet.

RBC - shiny happy relay - style frames.

2009-01-23T09:43:00.002-06:00

This was a little beauty of a script and against stiff competition we were flattered to have won it. With a cast of hundreds, and a Christmas period deadline that was abjectly terrifying, the result was an achievement on many levels. We had to execute two 60's, one in English and one in French, and two bilingual 30's. The idea was to mirror in animation an actual torch bearing relay race across the width of the grand nation of Canada .

The set design I am especially found of - here are the style frames I made for each scene.

you can see the final clip here http://www.bitstate.com/tv_film/29QT.htm