Josh Hano 2009 Demo Reel (Low-mid Poly Characters)

Pencilninja

Hi guys, I welcome any feedback on my latest reel.

I was laid off from the Game Studio Nerjyzed Ent on January 10th (Martin Luther KingJr Day!) and have been working as a freelance artist since, however I am now seeking full time employment again. I'm looking for a studio that does hand held titles, and would appreciate any direction anyone can give me to find these studios.

oh right, here is my reel

http://www.beecomic.com/Demo/JoshHano_DemoReel2009.wmv

Orgoth02

The music is HORRIBLE!!!. I had to mute it with in the first 8secs. Your models are pretty decend but taking almost 3 mins to show 5 characters is a little long. Overall I am not a big fan of Reels. Stills have the same effect (if not better) in half the time.

Ferg

yah, you're not an animator, just make a website. Good chance many people will pass you up simply because they dont have time to download/save/watch your video.

Pencilninja

l

Ferg

If you're not an animator, you dont really need a reel.

Videos are lower resolution and definitely not the optimal format for displaying modeling and texture work.

Pencilninja

Ah. Game Art reels are pretty standard, I think you need a reel and stills (Which I also have, but I'm not displaying here.)

However I'm not interested in this becoming a discussion on the relevance of demo reels- but the best ways to improve the one I currently have.

JasonLavoie

Any chance you can host this on vimeo or something, I guarantee you no one (for the most part) will wait here to download a 41 mb file.

Orgoth02

Pencilninja wrote: »

However I'm not interested in this becoming a discussion on the relevance of demo reels- but the best ways to improve the one I currently have.

First off, I can tell you as an employer, I don't want to watch a video unless it has something moving in it. A turn table is not going to do anything for you. If you are appling to my company as a character artist with a turn table reel...NEXT! Second it is hard to really study your models because...they are always moving and are not on the screen long enough to get a real good look at them. Thus if you want good advice on how to improve your skills, submit renders or screenshot

conte

could you even put some screenshots?
dunno who wants download cat in a bag.

aesir

i downloaded it cause it DLed at like... 1 meg a second.

to start, blah blah i agree with everyone else reels for non animation is pointless.

next, your first model, I didn't like much. scragglepaw rocked although I wish his fur worked for a back view. hunter wasn't great either. I enjoyed flak's design a lot.

Your reel was too long.
wmv is a crappy format for reels. mov h264 is my prefernce.
I think you should practice faces a bit more.

good luck on the job hunt.

ae.

vimeo is your friend!

Avanthera

yeah, so i downloaded the video before I even realized it was 41 mb (yay fast internet!) but I gotta agree with the others. a few high rez images of your models deforming and in poses would leave a much better impression than just spinning.
Ok, crit on the reel:
-The music was meh..
-If you are going to change the reel, I would put in some shots panning over the models to show more detail, and different pedestals would help to make each model more attention getting.
-If you want a low poly job, then why are almost all of your models around 4000 tris? only one handheld model in there.
-Also, not to diss your art style, but a few anatomically correct life drawing sketches would do very well on a character modelers application.
-hope this helps

renderhjs

another up for no video downloads/ streams. It eats bandwidth and time combined and often makes the impression only worse because of different music taste, long text intros and all in all perhaps bat timing.
If you modeled low poly assets stills are the best way because:
- fast loading
- can be saved and or printed or easier shared (i.e reference in a eMail, conversation,...)
- reduces the impression to 1 shot (easier for you to cheat, optimize the shot, make a nice composition/ rendering)
- standard

oh and I haven't looked at the video,- it takes ages here to load + I hate windowsMedia player streaming

AnimeAngel

Ya have to agree overall. Your work is great, I love the models and some really nice texture work. But the reel is unneeded since you are not an animator. If you still insist on having a reel it should should be fast paced with fast paced music and about 1-1.5 min not 3. It should be also optimized for quick download, so that someone looking at it can click on it and it plays without waiting for it to download.
IMO just build a killer website with some nice still shots of you best works. If you insist on turnabouts I suggest using some simple embedded animated gifs. Thats all you really need.

mLink

Writing this as I'm watching the video.
Here's some things I see that could be fixed/changed:

-That music...
-It was jarring to have the textured model spinning counter-clockwise followed by the wireframe to be spinning clockwise.
-the girl with wings has some nasty looking tris running up most of the back of her thigh
-The pedestal looks sci-fi with fantasy characters on it...just doesn't really fit.
-hah, ScragglePaw was pretty awesome. work on the hair planes on the back so they aren't just two flat rows of polys. I'd put it sooner in the reel too, it's stronger than the first two characters.
-Hunter looks unintentionally cross-eyed
-I liked Flak. The texture on the front of his arms seemed..non-existent. His pedestal actually works with his design.
-The faces next to your contact info are creepy.

d00kie

I didn't want to download the video since it was so large and I'm very impatient so I clicked the link in your sig.
It took me to Polycount.
I thought it was going to take me to your portfolio page.
I've been had.



:poly122: maybe I've been hacked! :poly122:


EDIT:
I just moused over and saw you typed the polycount URL before your webpage URL. Might wanna fix that good sir. :thumbup: