Reel Review for Jr. Animator position

CartooniX

Hello guys! I wanted to make a post because I'm lost on what to do in terms of my animation career. I'm stuck on what I need to do to get a junior animator position at a game studio. Can you guys give me some tough critique and advise me on what to add to my reel?  I'm severely lost and I don't want to lose motivation because things aren't going my way.  Please. 

https://vimeo.com/263593444

Nadiia

really nice reel. I would probably use fewer works but the best of them. 

AGoodFella

There's some potential here but there's also a lot to work on. Distracting camera motion, ending shots on a still image for too long, the walk/run cycles at the end are also very poppy, could also work on your breakdowns more. Being a junior is still pretty tough to get and you're still expected to match the quality of the rest of the studio but you can do it if you put the effort in.

I'm a junior at a games studio and I would recommend finding a mentor like on Gumroad or something and someone who can consistently give you feedback and help guide you. Someone like Jean Denis Haas or Jason Shum. It's what I did.

I'd also think about taking some classes online at Animation Mentor or iAnimate if you can afford it. Would also help putting your reel on syncsketch if you want proper feedback on your work.

Might be disheartening to hear this but I was in your position a few years ago, you can get a job at a studio but it will take a ton of time and effort. Keep making stuff and posting it here for feedback.

Ushiro

AGoodFella is right, there is potential but keep on working hard. I also would recommend watching for tuts online (there are a boat load of it).

Also, your reel is 2 years old and I think you should make a new one. I know it takes a tremendous amount of time to create one but I'm sure if you have the grind you can make it.

I would also recommend you experiment with you animation a lot more: most of your reel is combat related. I know combat is cool but show me some traversal, roll, run sprint, walk and jump. Try some shooting animation or casting a spell . Add variety and work on your timing.

You have good posing but your lacking smooth motion and you can get it by tracking your arc and your curves in the Graph editor.

Make the Bounciest Run Cycle you've ever made ( Noodle Arm everything is floppy but it should feel right) just to work on overlapping and timing.

Hope you the best Keep on grinding.

tholmes3d

Here are some bullet point notes. If you decide you want to dig into certain pieces to refine them, I'd post a syncsketch link. The below notes will be general, so just reply here if you want to get more specific. Anyway's here we go!

• First shot looks good: Timing feels pretty good here, I'd push the posing more and linger more on the recovery to help with readability since the action is so fast. 
• The second shot feels too sped up to tell the story effectively. It seems like you had a story you wanted to tell also wanted it to take 2 seconds when really it needs 5 or 6, and because of that there isn't time for the proper pacing of movement, the camera ends up confusing because of how fast it moves and the story is hard to follow. This is a perfect case of "less is more". There is good stuff here, but it needs time to breath, otherwise it won't work.
• Again, there is good stuff here but it needs time to breath. You could hold the falling shot for another second or two to build up the tension and let the viewer get reoriented.
• Fourth Shot, it's a cool action idea, but it's unfinished. On a demo reel you want to show you can do the job well, and that first means finishing it. This is the big shiny action moment, but there is a lot of character to be shows through the moments before and after a big hit. Find something to love in those moments and they can be even more entertaining than the big hit.
• The next two attacks and the dog walking are OK, nothing huge sticks out, but they also feel like exercises which honestly for a Jr position may just fine. I'd leave them alone for now and then eventually they will be the thing you can cut once you have other crazy awesome pieces.
• Cut the two run cycles. Your other work is way better so they don't stand up to the quality bar you've set.
• The attack works very well from the side, but is less gripping from the front. Either only show it from a single angle (often 3/4, but you could choose just the side), or work on the front view to make it match the dynamic posing of the side view.
• The idle is nice and smooth. In the future instead of bouncing between 2 poses (A>B>A), try using 3 poses (A>B>C>A, or A>B>A>C), in order to help make it more organic.
• The lost shot looks really cool but it's too short for me to enjoy it.

These may seem negative but I'm just trying to give you the short version of what you can improve. Like I said up top, if you want to dig into any specific pieces I'll be happy to give a more rounded view of what is working and what needs improving.

As a general note with all your whole reel, you have too many still idle poses at the end of an animation, or super quick cuts because the animation is so short. I'm watching this as a compilation of your work, so if the cuts and editing are jarring, it takes away from my overall view of your reel. Remember that it takes a viewer something like 6-8 frames to notice that something has happened on screen, so you have to give time for the viewer to adjust from one thing to another. This is just as important when switching from shot to shot (that's why idle time at the end of a shot is helpful), as it is inside each shot (especially when doing large camera moves).

I think if you slow down your shots by building in time in the right places, the overall effect will be much more impactful and your quality will show. Remember exaggeration works both ways, not just speeding things up. Keep up the good work, and keep on posting so we can see your progress!

captainumbrella

Solid amount of work and good length on the reel IMO. Some things I'd take into consideration to improve it:

- I would have liked to see more angles of certain animations because some look good from one angle, but how do they look from another?

- You have a lot of short animations. Something I think would boost your reel would be something longer or more extensive.

- Your run animations are pretty janky at the moment IMO and some of the fighting animations seem to go unrealistically fast in certain parts, as if some frames are missing or skipped.

- The reel would be quite more interesting to watch if it perhaps had fitting music. I also feel like the intro and outro with your name and contact information is a bit bland and could look a bit more interesting to catch the eye since it's the first and last thing we see.

Other than it looks neat for a junior animator. It depends a bit on what kind of bar the studios you apply to have set, but I've seen plenty of junior animator reels and to be honest, yours doesn't stick out, not in a bad or good way. It's just very much similar to much I've seen personally.

Keep up the good work and really take in the feedback others have left and I'm sure you'll grow!

svrart

Hi,

I am not an animation professional, but I liked and enjoyed what you have :-)