Building a Showreel - feedback wanted

Avcat

Hey i'm a third year on the Game Art course at the University of Hertfordshire and am currently building a showreel ready for my plunge into industry. I have a module designed to help us do this where I have to hand in a new piece every 2 weeks (not finished but with decent progress) then have to hand in 5 clips before Christmas and then again with improvements in January. 

I will be posting these clips as and when I do them and then re-posting once improvements are made but I'm looking for extra feedback aside from my tutors  so anything you guys have to offer will be very much appreciated. 

Avcat

Here's the first piece I handed in for my showreel project. It is a collection of dragon animations I worked on over the sumer of the Fall of Orloth project. 

I have since had feedback from my tutor and intend on improving it before the Christmas hand in and will continue posting improvements when made but any feedback would still be appreciated.

 

password: dragon

https://vimeo.com/240869385

AnthonyAnimation

Thanks for sharing! A few notes;

-Timing, spacing, and weight are a bit off. Give the character time to shift weight and anticipate the step/jump up onto the dragon. Reference is always good. You can look for someone climbing up an elephant or other objects to get a good idea of body mechanics.
-There are points when only a few parts of the dragon are moving. If he's lifting his leg or moving his head the rest of the body will shift weight and react to the movement.
-The dragon jump up into flight is too quick. This is a large creature with a bunch of weight, this means it takes more energy for him to get airborne. Have a few small flaps to get his front lifted in anticipation for the jump. 
-As with reference for the human, reference for the dragon is good too. Here is a great resource http://www.brendanbody.co.uk/flight_tutorial/index.html

AGoodFella

Agree with the notes above.

You could probably remove the human and have this a pure creature piece.

When the dragon comes to land, I would expect more violent wing flapping.

Elithenia

Don't forget to put your videos up on sync sketch to maybe get some more feedback

13randO

Anthony's critique is pretty on point, imo.
-There are points when only a few parts of the dragon are moving. If he's lifting his leg or moving his head the rest of the body will shift weight and react to the movement.AnthonyAnimation said:

Thanks for sharing! A few notes;

-There are points when only a few parts of the dragon are moving. If he's lifting his leg or moving his head the rest of the body will shift weight and react to the movement.

To be more specific on this point, one example of this in your  dragon reel is the first shot where the rider mounts the dragon. It seems that you rotated the nurb ctrl from the neck without accounting for the weight of it's head.

In that shot, it also doesn't seem that there is enough idle movement in the tail and wings. They shouldn't move all that much, but the idle movement still should be felt to make the anim convincing.  I would also agree that the rider could be removed so that this could be a full creature reel. Hope that helps a bit, can't wait to see the reposts! 

Avcat

Thanks for all the feedback. I decided to just take the hovering animation and improve that as I had a few other animations to do and not much time. Here's the latest on it. I have until the 4th of December to do any more improvements. I'll also post the other clips I have shortly. 
 https://vimeo.com/246781023

Avcat

http://https//vimeo.com/247314210

Here is the next piece I've done. A body mechanics exercise.

Avcat

Here's the syncsketch of the 2
 https://syncsketch.com/sketch/3898f45346db/#306722

https://syncsketch.com/sketch/3898f45346db/#306733