Demo Reel: My first demo reel

[ravdog]

Oh and by the way, I used Maya :)

chow.

[Flypaper]

Hey Mike, Looks good, nice composition. I'm over in the next town, just moved out from Vancouver. If you want your Demo Reel to make any sort of impact in Canada (Unless its an architectural firm) Your gonna hve to cross the gap and do some character animation. That's coming from Vancouver, Calgary and Toronto. Keep working at it. It looks good, but needs to be expanded a bit with some more work. Keep it up!

[ravdog]

Flypaper - Thanks for the critique! I definately do plan to learn rigging and animation in the near future. btw - nice to see another BC dude, I'm originally from Penticton :).

lata.

[Marcel]

Try slowing down the camera movements a bit. Instead of doing a full 360 degree circle you might opt to do only a quarter of the circle, with more fluid motion.

It's a nice reel, but the music drives me InSAne:surprised !
A bit too camp for me, that yodel melody!

The presentation is very good, the screen in between give it a professional look.

[ravdog]

Marcel - What! you dont like the music? haha understood :) All the music minus the yodelling is the stuff I listen to so thats why I chose it... None of my kind of music fit the windmill scene and I thought the yodelling was hilarious :) haha.

Thanks for the props and suggestions!

lata

[Stevo]

Overall I liked all the CG elements in your demo. Although, from a very objectional standpoint, your 2D/traditional work doesn't match the quality standards of your 3D work. If your 2D work doesn't match to the level of artwork that a professional illustrator or artist outputs at, you probably should leave it off your real. The people who critique these reals are just looking for any reason to give negative critique. Don't give them that opportunity. Your 3D is really good. And I like the blend of music:thumbsup:

[FatAssasin]

Nice job overall! The title screens are a really nice touch, like someone else said, they make it look professional. The windmill is very nicely done. I'd animated the blades though. It wouldn't take long to make them go around and would add a lot to the scene. And we don't need to see three passes of it. For the most part you spend too much time on each scene or model, especially the truck. That's probably the weakest piece and you spend like 20 seconds just spinning around it.

I like how you showed the cowgirls modeled and texture at the same time though, and the textures are very good. For the drawings section, I'd get rid of the 3 and 5 minute life drawings, they look like student work (and I know you just finished school, but you want to present yourself as professional as possible). Same with the Dirk drawing, it just looks like fan art.

Just keep in mind that the people veiwing your reel are VERY busy and don't want to spend a lot of time watching something spin around, especially more then once. Hope this helps.

[ravdog]

Stevo - Ya I agree with you about the 2d not being the strongest... I'll cut some of it out. Thanks for the music comment, haha.

FatAssasin - believe it or not, the blades of grass, and the windmill blades are moving... its just hard to see. Maybe sometime in the future i'll tweek it but for now i'm gonna hve to leave it. Gotta get a job and start paying back the student loan :) haha. I will though however cut the spinning down and get rid of the dirk drawing, i wasnt sure about that stuff, thanks!

Once again, thanks a ton for the critique... the more the better :)

[Hookflash]

Nice! Although, I agree it would be nice to see some character animation.

So, was Applied Multimedia Calgary a good school to attend? I've been thinking of going there (I live on Vancouver Island right now).

[ravdog]

Hookflash - Thanks man!

Applied multimedia is a pretty good school as long as you're willing to stay extra hours after class for the whole year. The more hours, the better you'll be. The environment, teachers and everything though are wicked. Everything I've done and leart has been done in under a year (thats knowing nothing to being able to do stuff) because the school is very fast passed. I worked hard so i think it was worth my while being here.
Also since the 3D class is only 4 months we just specialize in the area of 3D we enjoy most... hence why I have no character animation. :)

Hope this helps, not hinders. :)

[Asorson]

It's a nice "my first reel". But it also has some of the classic "my first reel" mistakes ;)

The first is the music. The music on your reel should be as passive and non-attention grabbing as possible. It should not distract away from your work, in fact there is nothing wrong with leaving the music out completely. After all you are applying to be an artist, not a composer or a sound guy. If you absolutely have to have music it should be (in my opinion) instrumental without any attention grabbing lyrics. And for god sakes don't change the music every time you change the scene, unless they are movie clips and the music is part of the story.

The second is the time you spent to create these things. Waay too long. Employers are going to be looking for someone who can complete things quickly as well as do good quality work. It seems that the project time for most of your stuff is 3 weeks, does this mean 3 weeks of 8 hour days? Some of that stuff should be more like 2 days. For example the cowgirl"s". It's basically one 700 poly model with some slight tweaks to the texture, no game company is going to give you more than a week to complete that. If you're just starting out you wont be as fast as someone who's been doing it for years, but don't brag about it ;) Just leave the project time off your reel and no-one is the wiser, at least until you get a job and then you can work on it.

Best of luck.

[dur23]

uH oH a fellow AMTC'er!

I was there about a year and 8 months ago...the last softimage class:buttrock:

ima d/ling your demo reel as we speak...

fetus 23 was in ma class too....but he picks bums...

[slice56]

for some reason, i get sound and everything, but i only get a WHITE screen throughout the whole reel. No images :(

[ravdog]

Erik Asorson - Wow thanks for the critique... thats the best i've had yet. I'm not in the industry yet but I think its necessary to have music, even if it takes a bit away. Makes the reel seem more fast paced and replayable. I dunno. Thanks a good point about the production time deal... maybe I will take it off. It was 3 weeks of 6 hours a day, 4 days a week for the record :).

slice56 - Do you have the latest DivX codex? Thats the only thing I can think of.... sorry :)

[Jago]

hey mike
that's a nice reel ya got there. some crits tho... first, i'd listen Erik Asorson...he makes good points. I really wouldn't put in the time it took to make it, and also the music is slightly annoying...especially the first one. Seeing as the windmill is your strongest piece, i'd change the music on that at least. Also, you might want to slow down your rotations a bit so that people can see your models better. Another thing I'd do is chop out the truck rotations, (heh...you could probably put your BoB model in that time slot...that would do nicely) and i'd definately chop out the time listing on your life-drawings. hehe...or you could lie and make em up. Also, i think this is very important....but you gotta add animation to it! it'll add sooo much with just a little animation like the windmill turning, and make more stuff move. It'll make it that much more interesting. And last...for your windmill scene i'd make the ground fade off into the distance, maybe add some hills or something, but don't leave it as a grid. it's kinda obvious that it's just a grid with grass on it...you can even see the edges. apart from that, it looks really nice.
keep it up man. :beer:
-jason

[arvid]

some of this is already pointed out by others but .. what the heck :)

I know exactly how hard people can be on "student reels" (we recieve some from students here looking for jobs) so I think it's important not to give them that opportunity. One thing that bothered me a bit is the 15-frames-per-second sort of look on most of the 3D stuff, I think it loses quality because of that, its just not quite as enjoyable for the eye, makes it harder to work out the details etc.

And I rather see a short kick-ass reel than a long mixed one, choose your best work and nothing but the best :) A reel is not for showing what you've been up to the last couple of months, but rather a way of presenting yourself and your knowledge to a potential employer.

Also leave out info that really isn't necessary, those screens could be visible shorter and you probably don't need to state your email etc on each on of them, frankly I didn't knew where to look so I missed the important info, instead do sort of a creditlist at the end with all the info, though I like the intro, makes you interested :) About the music, well it was really short bits of each one, I'd rather use one single tune to set the mode of the reel.

:wip:

Good luck :)

[ravdog]

Jago - I know its nice to have the animation... but i've been told more than enought times by local companies that if your going for modeling, just do modeling. And if you dont know how to animation, dont mess up the modeling by animating :) so thats for that. I'm already rendering out nice flybys of the BoB, so i may take out that truck... thanks for the rest of the critique man!

Opacity - Wow you must have a good eye to know its 15 frames a second... doesnt the average person only see 6 frames a second. Thats a really good point about the info... i'll make different splash pages to send out to employers but unfortunatly the school wants that info on each screen for there marking.

I may regret it in the future... but the musics gotta stay :) muahaha... even the yodelling.. haha :thumbsup: Thanks again guys!

Peace

[davedavidson]

well like all of the above
but i can say this the reel is nothing special as whole
the music is ok but i must say that if u picked one track and played it all the way through it would have had more impact.

u have some really strong bits in there that are lost by the not so strong bits. this needs to be adressed.
ur character concepts some are very strong but some of the character modelling doesnt do the concept any favours


wat u need to do is only sho ur strong points as apposed to showing small minor details of models that aint that special

i would say ur strong points in the reel are as follows:
enviroment modelling and concepts (show more or show longer)
and ur character concepts in the last part are better than the ones u modeled maybe model them instead showing u have gone from paper to screen.


this aint a bad reel but i think u can do 110% better if u remain focussed as it only takes one project to win an employer.


my 2 cents or 2 pounds worth

:bounce:

[ravdog]

_dd: Thats great advice man. I think I am going to get rid of some stuff.. mainly the truck and those 2 untextured models. The more I watch it the more they look out of place. Everyone seems to say the same about the music... so now i'm thinking more about just having one song play through... we'll see.

Thanks again man. Keep it coming people :thumbsup: . You're helping me out a ton!

:beer: cheers

[Jago]

YO mike!
ok, keep the music. haha. just a couple last things i forgot to add in the previous crit. umm...your rotations seem to be spline based and not linear. that way they slow in and slow out when they're rotating. You should change it so that they rotate at the same speed the whole rotation. i dunno...not really much of a crit...but i just thought i'd mention it. makes you look less student like. Also, i showed your reel to a couple guys...one worked at some video game companies and another at mainframe.
the videogame guy said it's presented well, but you know that shot in the factory...the one with the yellow glowing lights? he liked that one most because he said it gave him a feeling of a whole...but he said you should show it off more, and make it more "video game level" like. make things fit together more, so that you get a certain "feel" out of it. also, add more of an environment to your windmill. if you wanna be an environment modeler you have to make more environments...not just pieces. yup.
and the mainframe guy said lose the drawings at the end...except for the inked ones, like the photoshop test one, the dirk one and the flippin time one. but he said the other drawings don't really match the quality of the rest of your reel.
um, that's about it. hope that helps!!

nice work though! keep it up!
-jason :beer:

[ravdog]

jago - wicked man! thanks again!

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