Opinion on Game Animation Reel

JhGreene

Hello Fellow Peeps!

So I'm getting a reel ready and sexy for CTN this year and I thought I should ask you guys what would you expect to see on a demo reel AND what would blow you away. I study a lot of demo reels and I get somewhat overwhelmed because I'm not sure what Game Animation demo reels should entail.

Hito

there're a lot of divergent directions you could go as far as content. Few things for sure though:

• keep it short and sweet, 40~60 sec, assume no one will get past 30sec mark.
• Best stuff at the front, don't waste more than a few seconds on name/contact.
• Little lighting goes a long way, keep the render look/feel consistent shot to shot as much as possible.
  
• Edit the whole reel as if it's a sequence, try to keep the eyes focused around the same spot on screen when cutting to next shot.
  
• Make note of what you did each shot, little on screen text like "Rigging/Animation", "Keyframe Animation", "Mocap+Keyframe" etc.
• Good creature clip for extra credit.
  

AnthonyAnimation

Hito covered it pretty well. You can tailor your reel to game animations, but be sure to add personality to it. We've all seen walk cycles, picking up something heavy, doing parkour, etc. Body mechanics are king, but be creative, make it fun to watch.

Don't feel forced to animate one specific thing. Animate what you want to animate, as long as it's animated well your passion will show through.

ajramsey28

will it hurt your chances if you cant light and render your shots? I worried I'm going to kill my lap top if I do. It hasn't been doing so great lately. 

EVernier

If the animation is good enough it shouldn't be a problem, though there are a few alternatives to render. You can look up how to get your shots in Unreal Engine or Unity, for example. Or use Maya's Viewport 2.0 which will get you a decent result with minimum effort.

LloydHallam

ajramsey28 said:

will it hurt your chances if you cant light and render your shots? I worried I'm going to kill my lap top if I do. It hasn't been doing so great lately. 

My current demo reel doesn't have any rendered shots, and I got a job out of it, so it's not a big deal if your shots aren't rendered.
 
Like EVernier said, showing off the animations in an engine like Unreal shows that you have a good enough understanding of the engine to implement your animations, as well as make them, which could be the difference between you, and someone else going for the same job.

ajramsey28

Thank you guys for the responses, they were very helpful. Always something I wondered about! 
I'm going to try the game engines. I need to learn how to use them better anyway especially unreal. 

Hito

Quality of the rendering does affect the perception of your animation. It's never "just the animation". The effect may be slight, but can be enough to push the decision one way or the other. As you only have about a minute to impress, anything that doesn't directly help is hurting.

Maya VP2, UE4 and Unity all make very good and fast rendering options so you can devote more time to the animation instead of waiting for renders.

AnthonyAnimation

Along with what @Hito is saying, it won't always be animators that see your reel first. Sometimes it's recruiters who aren't as familiar with animation, but are more impressed with things that look nice. 

It's good practice and it shows you're willing to go an extra step to impress.