Finally here is the full version of the Huggies Free to be tvc. At 105 seconds long this is gigantic for us commercial - love that short formatte - peops. This team really got stuck in with a smile. Christian Greet, Timo Lenton, Phil James, Chris Maguren, Chris Lyne, Layne Howe, Jared Toth, Dylan Coburn and his Karactaz won 1 gold for best direction and 1 gold for best animation at the Singapore creative circle awards.
Cirkus is currently working on an Australian Ronald McDonald House Charity Campaign (RMHC). RMHC is an independent, non-profit organization, that seeks to help seriously ill children and their families
Here is the first of two 30sec TVCs produced for Leo Burnett Sydney which finds our live action hero boy in a cardboard world created by his Happy Meal box. We follow him through various locations where money contributed from the Happy Meal goes to helping out the children and their families.
This year, producer Marko Klijn and animation director Scott Willkinson attended the Ottawa 08 International Animation Festival in Toronto. Canadians do like our accents and as a result we are now connected to the Stop Motion company Wind Up Pictures with Stop Motion master Neil Burns as leading man. Go check out his stuff and float through the magical land of Stop Motion madness.
Felicia (liontamestress@cirkus.co.nz) has spend hours and hours to build a "clothified" brick wall for one of the key visuals of Comfort "The Chase". Not bad for a first timer aye...
This year, Cirkus is the one of the Silver Sponsors of the Boards Summit and, as we speak, producer Viktoria Berryman is on her way to the Big Apple! She will join Scott Wilkinson (who is already based in New York) to the Boards where Cirkus has a stand, so come visit us, check out our latest work and chat with Vik and Scott!
As the Comfort saga moves on, this time around it is the main character Andys fragrance that gives him away in this chase. He just cannot hide from these obnoxious papparazzi. Cirkus overcame some sudden speed bumps to get both kv and tvc produced within 9(!) weeks. Nonetheless, dare we say it, Kevins and Cirkus best so far!
Thanks to our Comfort team: Scott Wilkinson, Layne Howe, Chris Lyne, Boris Plateau, Phil James, Timo Lenton, Matt Pitt and Vik Berryman...
Cirkus Animation Director, Christian Greet won the Juice TV Award for Best Roots and Electronic Music Video. The promo for TAHUNA BREAKS Real Life follows a silhouetted band on an animated sheet of paper around town. The 8th Annual awards were held on October 1st at the Stamford Plaza in Auckland The video saw Christian pull out all the tricks in his magic bag – directing (wrangling people and paper!), editing, tracking, roto, 3D, compositing, grading and a few late night wines…
I had the opportunity to work with the talented, up and coming band Tahuna breaks and the idea for the music video was inspired by the lyrics of the song. The opening of the video shows the band on a piece of paper that gets rejected several times, trampled on, driven over and eventually literally ends up in the shit. From this absolute low point a breeze of wind picks it up and the journey takes a turn for the better. The paper ends up in the ocean where it drowns. But it is not the end…as the whole environment then transforms onto paper, as if the Idea has become eternalized and materialized.
This video could not have been done if it wasnt for the help of Blair Watkins. He not only supplied the camera and steady cam rig, but also preformed some outrageous stunts (like hanging of the back of a car), putting his gear and life at danger to get the shots required.
The post work was quite overwhelming, involving lots of frame by frame tracking. But the biggest task was to print out all the black and white frames of the band, and wrinkle them by hand. This would have taken me years to do by myself. Luckily the band stepped in and sacrificed their evenings and drew on favours from friends to get a large team together to get it all done in time (and make it fun on the way). When time was short and much work still to be done, Marko (the mighty Cirkus Ringmaster) stepped in. He loved the idea of the project and let me work on it during working hours. So really, like with all these projects, it was a tremendous team effort, and would have not been realized without the above mentioned helpers (and many more!) In the end we always think we could have done better, but are all blessed to be recognized and awarded for everyones hard work.
Recently a few of you have asked us how the animation process works, well here ya go. Feel free to forward this to your clients, the last page showing animation versus life action can really help those that are new to animation relate to the process.
Check out our latest TVC created for Huggies with Ogilvy Singapore. This 30 second spot is part of a bigger project; we will showcase the complete project soon. In the meantime, have a look at this beautiful piece of work, created with a troop of animators using a mixture of stopmotion, 3d & 2d animation. stay tuned...
The newest, grandest, greatest, colossal Cirkus showreel is out now! Sit back as we step right up, to present to you our fearless, priceless acts!
It’s an absolute fact! More than quadruple the array of moving pictures and genius animated talent that have ever been congregated, are now on one single Digital Versatile Disc.
Magical and strange act from exotic countries – compiled at the edge of the world – forever united in overshadowing vastness, are here to finally be revealed on show!
Brooklyn Bridge! A fine example of Industrial era engineering and a great walk with the best views of the Manhattan skyline on offer... James Browns oft quoted line finally held some resonance for me (Scott)
Cirkus completed this Huggies live action/animation tvc for Ogilvy Singapore. Live action was shot on the red camera by Director John Blick. Bearded Lady Craig Sinclair proved to be an excellent baby whisperer, so no illegal sedatives were used shooting this commercial. Cirkus boys, Christian Greet, Timo Lenton, Phil James and Layne Howe took care of the animation passes. You may wonder... what about phase 1 then? Stand by, its coming very soon now!
Our latest DVD will be on show very soon. Contact liontamestress@cirkus.co.nz if your patience is already running low. Here’s the cover designed by “Trapezist” Timo Lenton.
That’s right folks, we have a new show for your viewing pleasure!
The artistic direction for the latest promo from Cirkus came to life from left field. Animation director Christian Greet: “What we initially set out to do was going to be very different. However the basic concept remained that the promo should play on the viewers’ emotions & mood”.
This promo, produced over a 6 week production period, with a team of 3 not having much sleep, is made from a combination of photo-mapping, 3D animation and After Effects. The landmarks featured within this film are made from images from different European cities.
Camera mapping allows us to create photorealistic environments with very little effort but it has its limitations to how much the camera can be moved. Therefore, the Cirkus team needed to 3D model the city featured in the end shot; the camera is HUGE here. The true test on this CG shot was to make it integrate perfectly amongst all the other photographed shots. A bit of film grain definitely helped!
Next to come, we’re thinking a "making of" portraying the madness going on in the office during a project like this. It will offset the dramatic aspect of our promo we reckon.
Fresh’n’fruity splatz: a fun little online game. This game is based on a TVC produced for Saatchi & Saatchi New Zealand.
Animation directors Christian Greet, Timo Lenton and Phil James teamed up with illustrator Nathan Jerevicius to create this flatly shaded 3D animated film.
Due to work obligations Cirkus postponed our Christmas get-away till February. Deciding to opt out of the usual 5 star dinner, all computers were shut down for the weekend, and the whole team plus partners travelled to Hahei in the Coromandel for some rest and relaxation. In between barbeques and beach time,we managed a kayak trip around to Cathedral cove and a night time dig at hot water beach. What a blast, much fun was had and there is nothing like the beach to cure a hangover!
This year Cirkus has had the pleasure to work on some pre-visualization animation giving some of the Cirkus team a nice time-out from commercial land.Contracted by Underworld 3, Animation Director Christian Greet,
led a troop of 4 animators to build and animate the previs. Cirkus also sent out ‘on set’ man Chris Maguren to be a constant point of call during the shooting process, animating on the fly with VFX Supervisor Charlie McClellan.
1 X 30” tvc and key visuals: The Comfort story continues. This project gave us the opportunity to have some real fun in character animation!Scripted by Kevin Geeves and produced by Julian Tok of Ogilvy Singapore and directed by the usual suspects, Scott Wilkinson, Layne Howe and Dan Taylor with a team of animators including Matt Pitt, Kyla Bendall, Boris Plateau, Chris Maguren, Chris Lyne and Timo Lenton.
The “Flare” story brings to life new characters, being Andy’s band and a couple of roadies. Set in a concert hall, Andy the Rock star and Lily his wife show off their dance moves with the help of Comfort “Goodbye Stiffness, Hello Freedom”.
This project took a total of 12 weeks to produce. Cirkus also created Key visuals for this project and flexible Andy now features Vietnam wide!
Cirkus wins a bronze Axis in animation design for WWF! This spot was directed by “Freak” Phil James, “Illusionist” Tim Civil and Ben Stevens and made for WWF China through Ogilvy Beijing. Using a mix of 2D and 3D animation processes it shows the plight of the Tiger through an evolution process.Lovin the continuous camera move! You change 1 thing, you change everything! Well….
This tvc also made in-book status for D&AD Awards 2008 and was a Film Craft finalist in the 2008 Adfest Lotus Awards.
1 x 15” tvc and key visuals: Thailand:Another Comfort project for Ogilvy Singapore.Thai Pouches came our way in the middle of producing Flare. Creative Director Kevin Geeves, the driving force behind de Comfort project, devised this script for Thailand to utilize the new Comfort band characters modeled for the Flare tvc. Cirkus also generated several key visuals for this project.
An adventuring Animation Director! The chance of Scott Wilkinson to win the green card lottery equals that of an elephant dropping on your head as you read this. Subsequently, Strongman Scotty is now living it up in New York City! Still very much part of the Cirkus team, Scott will be managing the Comfort Projects from NY. (This gives Cirkus nearly 24hr turnaround – nice!) Scott has based himself for operation with the nice kids at Interspectacular www.interspectacular.com.
Ringmaster Marko Klijn attended the rather exclusive Spikes Awards in Bali to hear about the state of affairs of the advertising community. Cirkus Statuettes and cards were handed out to relevant contacts. Back next year we reckon!
A charming little orange juice commercial for Ron Davidson of Creative Hotpot (www.creativehotpot.com).Directed by Cameron Chittock with D.O.P John Cavill, this project meant a fun but long day in the studio, puppeteering some oranges to give them the right amount of personality!
1 x 30” tvc and key visual: Comfort “Spring breeze”, another Cloth world spot, for Vietnam. This time, the emphasis was on the new “Spring breeze” fragrance. Co-directed by Scott Wilkinson, Layne Howe and Dan Taylor, this ‘loony tunes” inspired piece was produced within 6 weeks and became the No1 commercial in Vietnam during April.
1 X 30” stop-motion tvc: Australia: Finally, a stop motion job!Working with GPYR Sydney, Cirkus created this funky vita-weat tvc.Using expert model maker and stop motion director Norman Yeend, this tvc was shot in 14 days. With a bit of clean up, we created this charming yet realistic looking food spot.
Check out the latest key print visual for fabric softener “Molto” Indonesia.Keeping within the Comfort ‘Clothified’ context, this fruity visual takes it’s inspiration from the 60’s.
The animation house where the imagination takes centre stage. Our troop of artists create local and international work using a diverse range of techniques to help you get the most exciting and entertaining images. We provide concept, storytelling, character, environment and graphic design. We visualize, edit and grade
