My first (of many) Demo Reel(s) of 2016!

WeatherMan

Hello folks! I know hardly anyone here knows me except for Slipsius, so allow me to introduce myself with my latest reel:

For HD viewing, click here Demo Reel!



This is easily the hardest I've ever worked on a reel. Feedback is appreciated. Will be updating frequently with new shit. Thanks!

slipsius

Good stuff, Adam! When you say keyframe + mocap, do you mean you`re just adjusting mocap, or that there are actual sections where it's hand keyed? It's hard to tell what you mean by that. Especially with your walk and runs. 

WeatherMan

Good question! For the mocap stuff, it's like, 90% mocap. I have to make a new mocap breakdown reel to show what I did.

MiAlx

Hey man, welcome to Polycount!

Well, it is easily obvious that you worked hard on your reel, I really like it!

Some feedback (just my opinion, take it with a grain of salt)

I think you can re-arrange the reel a bit to show off your strongest work first, since from what I have seen and been told, recruiters often tend to watch the first few clips and then start skipping through the reel and just watch whatever catches their eye.

The order could maybe look something like this:

1) Leave the takedown clip first
2) Parkour locomotion
3) Bow combat shot
4) Climbing
5) Horse riding
5) Acting
6) Soldier with gun Mocap
7) Cyborg Mocap
8) Mech

Some thoughts:

For the horse riding shot, I think you can loosen the upper body of the horse a bit up, just a bit more rotation would really help, I think. You could also make the up and down motion a tiny bit stronger. If you go to the clip and place your mouse pointer over the head of the Lisa rig, you can check out how much up and down it goes. In terms of presentation, you could maybe re-render the shot with some gamma correction (or you can do it in post), just to make the shot a bit more vibrant. This link could help.

The soldier with gun mocap shot, the upperbody feels a bit stiff, I think you could loosen it up a bit. The ammo pouches also feel a bit out of sync (not sure?) with the motion. Maybe it feels like this, because the belt is attached to the hips and the pouches are not individually controllable? Maybe adding some bones and slightly offsetting a few pouches, even by one frame, could break up the motion a bit. 

For the cyborg mocap, in the run stop animation, there is some jittering in the upperbody that you could clean up a bit.

The mech, I think it would really help if you added some context to the scene. For example, randomly place a few cubes around in the scene, with varying height, to suggest that there are buildings around. That and changing the background color to something else, maybe a gradient, since it is very close to the color of the mech. All this could really help the eye focus on the mech and help give some context to the animation.

Anyway, you have a really nice reel, the animation is great.

I hope this helped and keep it up man!

Arturow

nice! that last shot is awesome!

WeatherMan

MiAlx said:

Hey man, welcome to Polycount!

Well, it is easily obvious that you worked hard on your reel, I really like it!

Some feedback (just my opinion, take it with a grain of salt)

I think you can re-arrange the reel a bit to show off your strongest work first, since from what I have seen and been told, recruiters often tend to watch the first few clips and then start skipping through the reel and just watch whatever catches their eye.

Hey thanks! I've read a lot of info about how to assemble a demo reel and the bit I seem to see the most is to have your best shot first and your second best shot last, so that's the order I ended up with. I'll definitely play around with everything in between though, as I would definitely like it to hit the beats of the music better.

The order could maybe look something like this:

1) Leave the takedown clip first
2) Parkour locomotion
3) Bow combat shot
4) Climbing
5) Horse riding
5) Acting
6) Soldier with gun Mocap
7) Cyborg Mocap
8) Mech

Some thoughts:

For the horse riding shot, I think you can loosen the upper body of the horse a bit up, just a bit more rotation would really help, I think. You could also make the up and down motion a tiny bit stronger. If you go to the clip and place your mouse pointer over the head of the Lisa rig, you can check out how much up and down it goes. In terms of presentation, you could maybe re-render the shot with some gamma correction (or you can do it in post), just to make the shot a bit more vibrant. This link could help.

Duly noted! I definitely don't like having to render stuff, because it's basically a whole art to itself for which I don't have the time to learn. I managed to capture the first takedown shot in Unreal in a fraction of the time it would have taken to render/composite/render again. I'll look into the gamma correction though, thanks.

The soldier with gun mocap shot, the upperbody feels a bit stiff, I think you could loosen it up a bit. The ammo pouches also feel a bit out of sync (not sure?) with the motion. Maybe it feels like this, because the belt is attached to the hips and the pouches are not individually controllable? Maybe adding some bones and slightly offsetting a few pouches, even by one frame, could break up the motion a bit. 

For the ammo pouches, they already have joints, and I already offset them by a frame like you suggested...so, I'm not sure? Lol

For the cyborg mocap, in the run stop animation, there is some jittering in the upperbody that you could clean up a bit.

Noted

The mech, I think it would really help if you added some context to the scene. For example, randomly place a few cubes around in the scene, with varying height, to suggest that there are buildings around. That and changing the background color to something else, maybe a gradient, since it is very close to the color of the mech. All this could really help the eye focus on the mech and help give some context to the animation.

Definitely! I wanted to put together a "fake state machine" in Unreal (the game this is from is in Unity and has yet to be released), just so it's clearer what's happening. I know it's pretty hard to tell at the moment; that's the part of the reel that is very much still Work in Progress.

Anyway, you have a really nice reel, the animation is great.

I hope this helped and keep it up man!

Thanks again!

Arturow said:

nice! that last shot is awesome!

Thanks!

MiAlx

WeatherMan said:

For the ammo pouches, they already have joints, and I already offset them by a frame like you suggested...so, I'm not sure? Lol

Huh.. It must be just me then.  
Anyway, looking forward to seeing more of your work.