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On this page you will learn how the animation came together, what was involved in producing it, how two separate CGI clips became the series 5 CGI finale and how we got to 'kill' the Bits babes!! The comments about the anims will be from both me and Mat so I'll put the name of whoever is waffling by the comments so you will know who is saying that. So now stick the kettle on, make a nice cup of tea, sit back in a comfy chair and prepare to learn how 'Virtual Bits' made the transition from being another mad 'Kenz' idea to appearing on your TV screen!
Kenz: The 'Virtual Bits' animation concept came into being thanks to the great reaction we had from the Bits team to our CGI Tron spoof. This gave me the idea of doing a little a little CGI 'toon for the show which featured the Bits girls! A quick call to Mat ensued which basically went "Hey Mat, how do you fancy doing an animation for the telly?" Mat gave the idea the big thumbs up and we set to work planning what to do with the girls (oo-er!) The first things we needed for the animation were CGI versions of the girls. Given the timeframe we had (which wasn't much) producing photo-realistic computer generated versions of the girls was out of the question. Instead we opted for what we call 'gumby cartoon versions' based on those brilliant cartoon doodles of the girls that you see on their clipboards. Mat: The hardest part was trying to capture the essence of each girl in the model. Basing them on the cartoon girls meant their bodies were very 'anime' in design (Big head, Big Eyes and no waist). We felt that by giving them their own clothes (as seen on the show) and trying to match things like hair would quickly result in a caricature that works.
Kenz: We didn't have time to produce a full CGI cartoon with a plot or anything so instead we went for a short (30 second!) montage of clips. Then it was a case of bouncing ideas back and forth for what the girls should be doing in each scene. Some of the scenes were designed specifically so we could use audio clips from my Bits website (Bouff in the little train saying "Me so hornby" for example). Mat: We wanted the montage to kind of introduce the girls and then show them in various gaming situations. We felt a car driving sim would give us some nice eye candy while reducing the actual animating time to a minimum (no legs to worry about). We also threw in some classic stuff like a Doom spoof and also Space Invaders. Kenz: Once the scenes were sorted it was then a case of cramming as many as possible into the 30 second time limit. Some tight editing was needed here. The original Bits theme tune was used for our version of the animation. This meant Mat had to sync the beginning to suit the music and have something at the end to go with the 'beware coward' sample. Mat: For the start of the anim we opted for a Bits 'B' as seen on the show, slightly jazzed up. We had it hurtling towards the screen which gave us our build up (to sync with the start of the music). As the music was a few series out of date, and we couldn't use the new music as it already had a vocal track, I decided to update the old one. Using Fruityloops, I laid down a new drum track that pretty much matched the tempo of the original theme, and then used cool edit to overlay one onto the other. Kenz: With the all the clips assembled and the remixed music in place the finished montage was then converted onto SVCD and recorded to VHS directly from Mats DVD player. The tape was then bundled off to Aldo Palumbo (the Bits Producer). Our work was done ... Or so we thought!! Aldo liked the animation and asked if we had any outtakes or scenes featuring the girls 'demise' which he could use at the end of the last show for series 5. This is where the idea for 'Virtual Bits 2' was born! As we already had the CGI versions of the girls we decided to produce a whole new animation giving each Bits girl an unfortunate 'bad death'. What a way to round off the series, eh?!
Mat: Talk about short timescales! I was given the project via a phone call after just getting back from some rather vigorous celebrating down the pub. I tried to comprehend what was needed and then it hit me. We only had 2 days to animate, render and edit the animation! This was by far the shortest time I had ever had to produce anything. Kenz: I thought it would be a good idea to give each girl a different style of virtual death just to give the animation variety. The minigun was an easy choice for splatting Aleks. Using the 'Doom' inspired section of the first animation as a backdrop for the animation we then came up with ideas of how to dispose of the Bits girls (in a virtual sense of course!) Mat: Having found the loudest WAV I've ever heard (a real Minigun going off) I set to work on the visuals. After having some initial problems with how just to throw a lovely girl like Aleks up a wall and turn her into 4 stone of freshly gibbed lion food I used a trick whereby we switch out the clean, healthy Aleks for madame death. You can't see the switch in the shot but it meant not having to bother with morphing textures and the like. Then I threw in a healty dollop of Voxel Blood and we were in business. Kenz: For Emily I thought of lopping off her head using a sword (tricky to animate) or even a lightsabre (potential copyright problems). In the end Mat went for the razor boomerang (complete with comedy 'dinkdinkdink' noises as it bounces around the room!) Mat: Well this I knew would have to be drawn out and painful. After tossing a few other ideas aside (there was an idea to use crushers like in Monty Mole) but there wasn't enough action in it. So we threw in a bomb. She spots it, we aim the gun at her, she stands her ground, and we take out a waterpipe and drown her before letting the bomb off! (kind of if the water doesn't kill her then the bomb will). Kenz: The 'Doom' inspired background was tweaked and adapted to suit the scenes in the new animation. I supplied Mat with some 'posters' to go on the walls including a movie poster for Tron 2.0 (featuring scenes from our spoof) and the Pyjamarama advert (as me and Bouff had hours of fun battling with emulators for her Bits retro feature - so it's a bit of a private gag). I also got Mat to spray the 'All your base are belong to us' slogan on the wall (which is currently doing the rounds on the internet).
Kenz: With 'Virtual Bits 2' in the bag (done in an incredible TWO DAYS!) it was given the DVD recording treatment and then bundled off to Aldo. Once again Aldo made approving noises but there were a couple of problems. Firstly, the strobing from the minigun ran the risk of triggering nationwide epileptic fits. Secondly it wasn't very clear exactly HOW Bouff died and thirdly Aldo was worried about the quality of the VHS recordings (it was hard to see the 'all your base' message for example). Some more frantic last minute running around ensued but Mat did a sterling job delivering a tweaked version of the animation (along with the first 'Virtual Bits' animation) on CD-ROM (rather than video) for the show. I then bundled this off to Aldo who gave it to the editing team. Both the animations were spliced together to form the Bits series 5 finale! GAME OVER!!
And now's you chance to see the unedited anims which we sent to Bits, an early preview of the CGI Bouff model and the final sequence 'as seen on TV'! Click on the pics or links below to download the movies ...
Virtual Bits #1 [AVI] (352 x 288) - (requires DivX codec) - [8.73mb]
CGI Bouff Preview [AVI] (320 x 240) - (requires DivX codec) - [605kb]
Things to look out for in the anims:- In the scene where Emily chops the C64 in half there's an assortment of unusual items on the shelf behind her. On the top shelf is Airwolf, underneath in the middle there's a CGI version of me (Kenz) and on the bottom shelf you can see a Light Cycle and 'Silly Sam Recogniser' from the Tron spoof. Pictures of the Xmas Chortles cast members are on the 'studio' walls. The car that the girls are in (in the driving game spoof) is actually Lee's black Vauxhall Nova as seen in the Tron Spoof! (I'm sure he won't mind the girls borrowing his motor!)
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