Animation Reel
Hi I just joined polycount and I am eager to be a part of this community! I'm looking for feedback on my animation reel, specifically for games but I am open to other crits as well. I'm looking for a job in the industry and I'd like to use the critiques I receive here to prepare my reel before I actually start applying. Advice on my skills or if I'm missing anything that the industry looks for would be greatly appreciated. I would also sincerely welcome the advice of an industry professional if possible.
Here is the link to my reel on my website. Feel free to look around and comment on the overall presentation of the site as well if you wish but please know that my breakdown is currently not up to date. A web savvy friend of mine is updating it for me soon: http://www.tcsimpson.com/reel.htm
Also, if anyone knows some good Maya rigs that actually look like they came from a game I would love to try them out. I want my reel to have rigs that apply to games but it's fairly hard for me to find them. Thanks for your time!
Here is the link to my reel on my website. Feel free to look around and comment on the overall presentation of the site as well if you wish but please know that my breakdown is currently not up to date. A web savvy friend of mine is updating it for me soon: http://www.tcsimpson.com/reel.htm
Also, if anyone knows some good Maya rigs that actually look like they came from a game I would love to try them out. I want my reel to have rigs that apply to games but it's fairly hard for me to find them. Thanks for your time!
Replies
It seems very nice to me. Although I probably couldn't even make any of that so I may not be the one to comment...
You have some neat things in it. i liked the car being chased by the space ship, and the blood flowing through the viens.
The character animations, however, need work. They arent very fluid, and dont have much weight to them at all. By that, i mean it just seems like you`re going from pose to pose, but thats about it. you`re holding each pose way to long, especially with the fighting. You need to go back and work the curves in maya. offset some things. review your references if you need to. See how people are actually fighting. When someone grabs the others neck to knee thm in the head, they arent going to hold that for a second and then knee them. its gonna be one fluid motion. unless they are already in a clinch. but even then, there will be alot of movement.
I did the grab and knee animation as well a few weeks ago. Now, you shouldnt use it for a reference. at least, not the only thing. find some actual reference. there's tons out there. but heres what i did. Mine isnt perfect, but i just want to show you what i mean about being a bit more fluid.
[ame]
Truthfully, if i was hiring people, id probably turn it off after the second animation you had. But, only because of the order you posted things. You put your weakest first. The box lift, the guy in the chair, and even the lip sync is better than the guys fighting, and the ninja chick. Rework the order of your reel and you`ll better your chances right away.
Just keep at it. keep practicing, and you`ll find yourself getting better really fast! if you can start adding more secondary action, you`ll see a huge improvement. sometimes all that takes is offsetting some curves in the editor.
good luck! and keep us posted with updates! we`re here to help (even if we come across as being an ass)
WTF is "Please upgrade your browser to view this site. Thanks!"
You don't show your best first (in fact you show some of the worst).
If you strengthen the throw anticipation pose, you could put the anger animation in...and the lip-synch aint so bad. And the car shooting sequence is nice.
That knee animation is brutal and should be scrapped, it exhibits a complete lack of understanding of animation... I suggest reading Richard William's book. Do you know about curves in 3d Animation, and how to use them? Same with the second animation, pretty awful; the freeze during her first jump is just sloppy.
If you want to keep the heavy box lift animation, at least animate the hands before he touches the box.
In my opinion, the best thing you could do at the moment is take an animation like 1 guy punching another guy in the face, and keep making changes to it until it looks as good as something you'd see in a professional game or movie.
If you're not doing animation and thinking ''This is good enough for a paid for product'' then an employer wont think so either.
Please try not to get disheartened by this thread, I have just gotten into professional work as an animator and a couple months ago there's no chance in hell I could have gotten a job. I posted on here and I worked my ass off to make a reel that was completely new.
Get the animators survival guide from somewhere and just copy his cycles and exercises. I cant stress enough that you need to be looking at your work and going 'this would pass off no problem in a game that cost 60 bucks''. It's also very important that you keep getting feedback, post animation you do in this thread and ALWAYS change the animation based on ALL feedback unless you are certain the poster is wrong (or if you've seen their work and they're in no position to judge).
Sorry I cant be more helpful atm, good luck with everything.
It feels very pose to pose and that gives a mechanic effect and not organic. you need to offset the motions and make it more snappy. Build up more anticipation then release the energy.
Use moving holds, it feels like the character almost freezes when they hit a pose make it look kinda dead.
I see what you mean about fluidity. I need more moving holds and more exaggeration. Thanks for the reference video. My biggest struggle is probably phasing out of the initial stepped curves and curve maintenance. I wanted the fight to be first because I figured that a game reel needed to have something more common to games at the beginning, although I generally favor the angry guy animation, but I guess that's not necessarily true
To JMYoung: I had no idea my site gave that message. It works in my IE at home. Maybe you have to have IE7? I don't know why it tries to redirect to firefox though. I'll have my web designer friend look into that because that should not be happening. Thanks for catching that.
I'm not sure what is meant about a freeze in the jump for the ninja girl but I think what you're referring to is my attempt at having her bounding off the wall. She puts a foot against the wall and uses that to get a higher jump. I think maybe it's the timing of the push-off that is not showing that accurately. Also the angle of the whole scene might need to be adjusted. Also, I see what you mean about the heavy lifting hands. They have a stressed position that doesn't change so I need to fix that.
So I guess all that's left to say is that I'd better get crackin'
are 3d Noob 101. I suggest you cut 'em, they do nothing for your reel except send noob flares up.
She wouldn't lose momentum by doing that, she would keep going...but your animation looks like she hits a brick wall then gets her momentum back. You really need to go back to basics, read all the books again and understand body mechanics and animation before you go about putting a new reel together...
You've got to ask yourself if this is what you really want too. Because you should have been animating during your year off regardless, if you actually loved doing it and really wanted to be an animator. This is not the level of quality I would expect from a guy a whole year out of college (or in the last year of college for that matter). Sorry if that seems harsh, but its the truth.
Some good learning resources you should check out
keithlango.com:
he offers a cheap video tutorial service that is very good and you will learn a lot
animationmentor.com:
a very extensive course but very expensive - I've actually completed the course and can highly recommend it although I had to give up my life for almost 2 years whilst doing it
11secondclub.com:
A monthly animation competition - you'll learn a lot by just working to a piece of dialogue and getting honest critiques from everyone
Also for a games reel you dont need to have game specific animations on there - you can tell someones ability to animate regardless of whether they are doing a dialogue piece of a run cycle - as long as you've a good eye for animation and can show that on your reel you'll be fine
I advise like others have said putting your best stuff first, and throwing away anything you aren't happy with - a good rule of thumb is you are only as good as your worst piece. If your showreel is only 1 minute long then thats fine (I've been animating for 8 years and still keep my showreel to around the 1:05 mark), so keep it short and awesome.
About your presentation. You should consider putting the reel in a format that can be scrubbed. As an animation lead I prefer to see Quicktime files. They are the best to scrub frame by frame. You should make a version that can be downloaded and shared with an art team, and possibly an entire company, without worrying if your site can handle the bandwidth. Like others have said you can re-order your animations sequences so the best are first, then the weakest, and the moderate at the end.
About your animations. It's good to see that you have control over the rigs and are able to achieve the motion you are envisioning. A good exercise to perform is to study the 12 Principles of Motion then create an animation meant specifically for each one. When you've done that start combining them. You'll be animating like a pro in no time!
I'll give you some inspiration. This is one of the animators I worked with on Halo Wars:
http://chuck-o-rama.com/animation/showreel/ctinney_HWreel_med.mov
Per monster's request, I have added my reel in Quicktime format compressed in Zip files. They still seemed to come out as huge files though, and I wonder if that is a problem for hiring companies. I used winRAR with the best compression. I tried 7-Zip because it compressed better but its zipped files were not recognized on my friend's computer so I went back to winRAR. Also per monster's request, I now have the option to scrub through every video on my site, which I agree is a huge improvement.
The message to upgrade your browser should now be completely gone. I honestly don't know why my original web guy put that there but I have a new one now so it's all good now
Based on everyone's reviews here, I'd like to think that the order of my reel is now a lot better, but I would like some opinions. Thanks a lot for the examples and websites! I'd already heard of animation mentor but I just don't have the money right now unless I take out a loan :-/ And I've been wanting to do something for 11 second club for a while now, but always thought it might be misleading on a game reel, but apparently you guys say that is not the case. So maybe I'll get on that.
Thanks again everyone for your critiques. I hope you will feel the Christmas spirt and give me some more! Merry Christmas!
you have 2(3) animations in the reel that I'd want taken out.
the blood stuff...not even gonna explain myself
the aircraft taking off, has what to do with animation really? I mean, other than moving solid objects around.
(3rd, is the car at the end..but yeah, guess you can keep it)
your first animation is by far - faaar, the best one.
but, you're confusing me... you dont want 11 second club stuff in your reel, because they might be missleading on a game reel, but.. you have this? which is just about what you'd get from a 11 sec assignment..
then comes the ship.. are we to be impressed by the boxes being animated? or the engines turning? .. thats not really "WOW" animation you know..
then we have the walker. I belive the guy who created it did a decent walkcykle for it? did you check it out prior to working on this?
I dont understand whats going on in this animation (is it game-reel related? how?..wat? lulz?), is the walker waking up? stands around for a while, then....erm, falls down? goes back to sleep?
the fall/going back to sleep animation is just..weird
its like he is being pulled down, rather than falling down because of a missed step and letting gravity taking care of it.
then we have the second best animation I'd say......dot dot dot
the guy walking up to the box looks good enough I guess d^_^
but none of us are buying the rest of the animation, the weight and what not..
I cant crit too much on it, I've never really done one of those exercises so...
BLOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOODDDDDDDDDDDD?!
then we have the only game related thing in your game-reel that you dont want to put 11 second animations into because it would mess up the game related animations you have in it...wait, wat?
it fits the game-reel concept the best because the realtime styled character and obvious prince of persia inspired animation - thats good. try to do animations from games that people think highly of, show that you also appreciate those works and that you are eager to do something similar.
but you need lots more extreme poses here. make her move like a ninja and what not, right now its kinda like grandma running around you know. very stale and minimalistic..
your last pose is what Im talking about! should have something similar before she starts running..
not gonna crit this too much either, gonna give a reason in my closing sentence.
the walker walk.. not buying it at all, sorry
the car is cartoonish and funny, nicely animated.. (but, game related, how?, anyways)
yeah, its good I guess..
some people have said it already, you need to re-evaluate your reel before sending it out.
I'd say, dont send this out at all.
see it as, your first collection, of the animations you've done....then, turn around and never look at it again.
you need fresh material.
everything in that reel, has to go. you're not even allowed to salvage that guy throwing the remote at the tv.
11sec is just what you need right now.
and it will work in your animation reel later too.
if you want a gamereel though, you should just hook up with a mod team and do animations for them. walks, runs, idles - all the fun stuff *sigh*
looking at this reel, working with mod teams and doing animations by yourself on the side.
you'll be ready for another reel in 2 years. 1 year minimum..
I love it when animators come to pc..
then I can finally give some crits, instead of just lurking and yelling profanities at the screen because people dont model their stuff in a way that would fit into a gamedev (rig, animation) pipeline
now, back to lurking!
*burrow*
All this is to say that to anyone who puts their stuff up for review on this site or any other, critiques are always good. And it's always good to continually learn and improve. However, don't take what some harsh people say as the truth of all truths. This is art that we're doing, and art is ALWAYS subjective. So just because some people don't like your stuff, you should keep working and learning new things, but don't ever let them convince you that what you've done is not worth anything. My experience is proof of that.