Showreel

Here’s my final showreel of my first year work. Being very selective, I’ve managed to keep it at just over 1 minute.

I’ve structured the editing and sequencing of the video heavily around the song I chose, Proleter’s ‘You Can Get It’. First there is a little introduction with a varied selection of my work from all disciplines then I start titling the sections of the video. I start with my work from TV Paint as its some of my favourite work comes from this and I’ve done a range of different things in the software.

Then I transition to work from After Effects with a lip sync clip. I decided to use the puppet I had created for that project to lip sync a small extract from the music instead of using one of the lip sync projects I’d used before to avoid having to turn down the music. I felt that using one of the clips I had already made would have felt a little out of place and would have ruined the pace of the video. That’s why I didn’t include the music from my ‘Animation to Sound’ clip.

Moving to stop motion, I really like the second clip of the rig smashing the orange ball. I managed to time that to hit the beat as well, which is quite satisfying to watch. Next comes my showcase of moving from reference video to first pass to finished mystery box sequence. The fade from Valentina to the first pass is very smooth as I managed to line up the footage so she and the puppet were the same size and so their steps were in time. That part looks fab.

Then I showcase a few character sheets which I threw in because I thought they looked nice and showed the initial plans for characters that are included in the reel.

Then I finish off with my work from CG which isn’t my best, which is why it comes last, but it does show I have a basic understanding of the software.

I round of the video with a little self portrait animation that grows, holds on normal, then explodes to reveal the title card. I quite like it as a little flourish to the reel, I just hope it’s recognisably me!

 

 

Showreel Analysis

Let’s start with this. Despite the reasonable overall quality of animation, this showreel is quite flawed. First there is the audio problem. The music is a little too loud, especially at the beginning where it’s covering up what’s being said in the dialogue, which is cut from various films. There’s also a little issue from poor editing of the music track towards the end.

Some of the clips could do with being a little shorter, especially a the clips towards the end. We linger on the dragon for way too long and we start to see the flaws. The video should never have passed the 1m30s point. He’s made some pretty good animation look very corny. The titling is also vague and there’s no contact details on the video.

This one is pretty darn good, however I feel the structure is a little random. We start with some initial roughs of some different walk cycles, one of which turns into the finished article which makes a nice transition, but from then on, it seems to be clips from a few different projects randomly inter cut with concept drawings. All the work is great, but we could have guessed that from the first minute, the second feels gratuitous. There’s also no contact details.

This one had no trouble giving out the contact details – It even has them in the thumbnail! I thought it was interesting to see the contrast between a working animators showreel and a students. I watched Gemma’s one here and it certainly didn’t feel like 3 minutes, which just proves you have to be really bloody good to be able to go above 1 minute 30. Have I sold myself short or been realistic leaving my own at 1 minute?

In spite of what I just said, it could probably have been a little shorter, since it is much of the same throughout, but it need the time to show both her work on key animation as well as the cleaned up footage.

Her showreel making skills seem to have got her employed on a few great projects, so I can’t poke too many holes.

The animation for this one is stunning, it’s quick cut, in most cases with a really fun soundtrack. Again, it hits two minutes and as we go into the second minute, I check to see how long more its got. It’s got a very uniform style but still explores a few different looks around that.

What’s strange about it, is after all that, we get a name and email address dumped onto the video in Helvetica. What’s that about? I’ve just seen some crazy design going on and now this? It’s a bit of a let down, but it works. There’s also no date on it.