Denny's Technical Artist Demo Reel 2015 (animation, rigging, programming)
polycounter lvl 14
I finally had the chance to put together a proper demo reel with content from current and previous projects. This reel is not for applying to positions, but to showcase what I have done so far.
[ame]
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0AAoTSZYcL0[/ame]
Feel free to jump over to Tucho's thread where he shows some of the character models I have worked with. I collaborated with him on both Planetbase and Guardians of Valor. His character models are very fun to work with!
As always, feel free to rip my work apart. This is Polycount after all. I hope you enjoy!
[ame]
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0AAoTSZYcL0[/ame]Feel free to jump over to Tucho's thread where he shows some of the character models I have worked with. I collaborated with him on both Planetbase and Guardians of Valor. His character models are very fun to work with!
As always, feel free to rip my work apart. This is Polycount after all. I hope you enjoy!
Replies
You have SO MANY walk/run cycles in this reel. Personally, I think you should pick one or two of the best ones and only show that. Maybe the multi arm walk, and then a creature walk or run? the player mount on a horse would be a good one to show for sure
Your modular armour system could use a better presentation. You have a crap ton of guys on the screen for most of the presentation, but you can barely see the armour. I would personally just line up a bunch of them side by side, and do a slow, close up pan to the right, showing a wide variety of them.
I enjoyed some of the game view for planetbase, but I also think you could cut some of the shots. Try not to show shots with people walking with feet sliding.
The creature shot at :57 could be cut. presentation is distant and not really sure what im looking at?
the ragdoll physics. "creation of physical assets"??? So, you did the modeling, or? that shot didnt make sense to me. Like, why are you showing it?
Ya, I think over all, you just need to beef up your presentation. Make things more clear as to what we`re looking at, and what you did. and cut the reel in half. You have a lot of seemingly duplicate animations. They may be different, but they seem the same. like lots of runs and what not. If you`re showing the animation, you dont need to show it all in game. A shot or two is all you really need, but when you are showing off your animation, it's usually best to keep it simple. Render it out in maya/max/mobu at a good angle, or the angle you would see it in game. But having lots of shots of multiple characters on screen, just to say you did the animation and rigging, is generally overkill, and takes away from the animation itself.
Again, you do have some great something in here. So let it show!
Do you have any suggestion on how I can best get the point across that the reel is not all about the animation, but also how I handle other things? Maybe change the segments of showing projects to segments of discipline?
I have this dilemma that every project I've worked on, there's barely room to work on quality animations. I'm the guy who produces "good enough" quantity content in short amount of time. In Mortal Online I did around 1200 animations for all the characters involved. In Guardians of Valor I had to rig, animate and implement 60 characters in less than a year. I spent on average less than a day per character from start to finish. Animations were made in about 20-60 minutes on average per sequence.
I think the quantity side of things is what made me try show so many different parts in the reel, despite cutting out the majority of the fat.
Those happens to be some of my favorites. Thanks for pointing them out, it's hard to judge my own work when I pretty much loath most of it. Do you have suggestions on which ones that I should definitely remove?
Good point. My focus was to show the performance rather than the art, as I did none of the modelling or texturing here. I worked on the technical art side of things on this system. Rigging, materials, art pipeline and so on. I don't really know how to show it in good light? People will mostly look at how the armours are modelled or textured if I do closer shots at it, and my stuff will be judged by the quality of the art rather than what it does. I can't show the actual technical parts either, as that's under NDA. Maybe it's best to just remove it from the reel?
Which shots specifically do you think are strong or weak? The animations in themselves are quite boring out of context, like sitting at a table eating, so showing them in Maya would not be demoreel material. Yet I think I'm doing a decent job of doing a variety of different kinds of animations that are supposed to be daily boring movements. How can I best show this? Maybe I just remove some of the lesser shots?
Yeah, that is one of those "what were I thinking" shots. I guess I added it because that part of a video we released always got good feedback on how badass the minotaurs were against players. I'll strip it out in another revision.
I decided to show this one because stable ragdolls are a lot harder to create than people think it is. It's so common to see games out there with ragdolls rattling on the ground when they should go to rest after a certain point, or go to impossible awkward poses that defies anatomy. I don't know how I can shortly phrase that in the demo reel in any different way to make it clear to the viewer?
My intentions are still not to show this to potential employees, but to show what I have done so far in a nice summary. Any suggestions on how to solve my dilemma of multi-discipline work in one reel for this purpose?
Thanks again for the feedback! I know I can come across as stiff in my writing, but I really am glad for the response.
This happens a lot in a professional manner. It's why you see so many personal projects on peoples reels. But here's the thing. If any animation you do is done to be "good enough", it shouldn't be on your reel.
If you`re concerned about showing everything you do, then make multiple reels. Have one focused on animation, and have one for the technical stuff. Tech reels tend to be longer anyways. But at least you can have more focus.
I agree. I will attempt a separate specific reel if I ever need to apply for a new position as almost no studios hire generalists these days. Vacation is coming up and it seems I won't have time to update the reel.
I will definitely keep your recommendations in mind though until next time, which I hope won't happen any time soon. I like my current job.