Thread: Animation Reel
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# 3 11-12-2011 , 06:30 PM
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Join Date: Oct 2011
Posts: 139
sorry, if I seem harsh, I'm gonna critique it as if it were a professional demo..
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Your demo should be relevant to the position you're applying for. If you think that your modeling skills are really good and want to show them off, I'd do a second demo just with design - it doesn't hurts and you give the person who's doing the hiring an option to watch it or not.


As to the animation demo itself:

It should show ONLY your very best work. This is hard when you're a student because you don't have that much to pick from, but it's better to have 2 really good scenes in your demo than 10 mediocre scenes.

Your very best scene should be the first in the demo (first impression + catches attention), you're second best scene should be the last in the demo (the last scene in demo stick in mind).

Avoid bouncing balls. Bouncing balls are typical student exercises (they're good to learn the principles of animation, but they're not good to show off) - to me, bouncing ball = "Hi, I'm student".

You're strongest scene imo are:

1) the guy putting the boxes on the table
2) the bipedal ball's walk cycles (both, keep the first one on longer)
3) the balls with the tails and tennis ball - because it shows off their personalities.
4) *optional - the kick off

So if I were you I'd spent my time tweaking those scenes - till they're perfect.

ei.

1) watch the turn when he places the first box down (act it out - now his legs just rotate), the second box seem very heavy at first, but in the second part of that action it seems like it lost all its weight (again, act it out, if it was that much heavy he wouldn't be able to put in on the table with his arms outstretched, he'd probably have to balance it in on his chest make a step forward and drop it on the table), have him pause a second before reaching for the final box (to breath out).
2) good as it is
3) focus on weight and momentum (especially when he's bouncing up and down the steps)
4) the steps before the kick off are very short & the kick off pose it's wronge.

--if you want to have edge over all your fellow students I highly recommend acting every move and buying preston blair's and richard williams' animation books and applying those principles to your animation--