First Demo Reel
 

Hi everyone,

I just finally got my first demo reel up and running on my website and would like to get anyone's thoughts and takes on it.

http://johnzimmermann.com/gallery.php?p=demo

Thanks,
John

greaat stuff. very nice presentation.
one thing i notice with the creature rig, is the amount of jiggle in the bicep muscle when ever u moved the arm around just slightly. same for the calf muscle of the legs.
however, i dont know the anatomy of the creature that muscle skin is for, so maybe u should show it actually being driven by your muscle system.
other than that, everything else was spot on.
i love your resume. lol

I see you went to Full Sail. How was that over there. Been looking at some schools and Full Sail was one of them. A bit far from me but if its good then why not.

Good job with your demo reel too.

I've been looking at Full Sail, as well. So, same question.;)

Hey guys,

Sorry for the the late reply. Thanks for taking a look at my reel and commenting.

vladimirjp:
The plugin used gives each muscle a jiggle node which can be adjusted so the muscles move more realistically. The muscle popping is occuring do some wrongly placed upLocators for the muscles, a problem that will soon be remedied. We'd just figured it out, but when I was doing the reel I didn't have as much time to site down and do an intense look. Holiday breaks had cut into our class schedule so deadlines and everything were even quicker than it was usually.

I do plan to skin it, and will soon do it, am in the process of finishing up another character for a friend. The beast was actually supposed to be skinned by the time I was part way thru my demo reel class. But the skinning plugin we were going to use didin't arrive till I was pretty much done with the class. But I hope to have him skinned soon, not to mention get the texture and fur for him from the guy I am working with.

Omy and SuperTrooper:
Full Sail has a pretty decent program for computer animation. Most of the teachers and lab instructors are great, and will help you out with pretty much anything. Tho, you have to go to them, primarily since they're there for everyone and can't keep watch on just a few people :) . That is unless you get them to remember you in a good way, not by acting like a suck up or brown-noser, most don't like that.

The schedules are definitely crazy, but you have to expect that from an accellerated program. Sometimes you'll have normal class and lab hours; others you'll have labs at anywhere from 1 am or even 5 am. Tho, usually you won't have such schedule more than a month at a time. They are just something to be ready for, but they usually aren't all that bad.

I know that the school is in the process of getting new gear and are also revising classes so that they have a lot of the updated techniques happening in the industry.

Tho they have their faults, they're just typical faults that you can hear about most schools. Not too mention each person has different concepts about faults and what not.

Either way I think it was worth it. Probably would've done something different if I was able to, but I'm fine with things now. One of my main suggestions for you or anyone else who's interested, don't go in expecting everything to be given to you on a silver platter, that you're owed everything, your not and you won't get anything out of the school. Basically it's what you put into it. Most of the people who go in with that attitude, end up being the ones down the street asking "Do you want fries with that?"

Lol, Now I'm off my little box:D. Good luck with your decision and thanks again for thoughts on my reel.


John

Nice reel.... Very clean and straight to the point well done.

Thank you for answering. Nice job on your reel as well!

No Problem SuperTrooper. Thanks Kurt.

:) hmm i would try and not to use fireworks to code the site for you ;) as the code is pretty messy... also i bet you could use allot less images if you used that bg as a tiled image... now fireworks uses them all as images which increases the load on the site.

Could not see the movie since i don't have quicktime :rolleyes:

awesome reel!
is the music in the background "blue man group"? sounds a lot like them. very very cool.

Element_Khaos,

Thanks. Yeah it is Blue Man Group, from their first cd Audio, song was Club Nowhere. Thought it fit well with the style of the reel.

thought so man i love that cd. have you ever seen them live? quite a performance.

Yeah, I saw them in New York City, back in 2000. They were great, I really want to go again some time. Hopefully I can make it down to Chicago some time to go see them again.

wow !

very impressive...!

FubaR,

Thanks for checking it out.