demo reel questions for the pro's

[kevin heller]

i meant using royalty free models. not royalty models:)

[jeremybirn]

You certainly don't have to model to get a job doing something else (although modeling is a useful and sometimes valuable skill.) You should make clear in titles on the tape itself and/or a sheet accompanying it, exactly what YOU did for each thing you show on your reel. If you want something better than free download models, team up with someone else on CGtalk to make models that you'll texture and light - studios don't mind at all if you can work with other people, as long as you are clear in the breakdown what you did.

-jeremy

[kevin heller]

jeremy thanks for the reply. one thing im not clear about is when you say "make it clear in the titles on the tape" do you mean edit it into the video ? like before a scene comes up ? thanks

[chewman]

This year at the Melbourne Australian Effects and Animation Festival (AEAF) some of the guys from Tippet studios came down and talked. I didn't attend the festival, but some of my lecturers did. They took them out to dinner after the festival and questioned them about a couple of things; one in particular was demo reels. One of the guys said, if you're going for an animating job, why show lighting, or modeling or texturing (to a great detail)? What you want is the animating job. It was the case for one of the guys who worked there - all he wanted to do was to animate. So all his reel was, was really basic modeling, yet with an excellent character rig and top notch animation. By basic, I mean ..boxes.. box for head, body, arms etc etc - you get my gist. The guy's rig was so good that though primitives were used for the character, life was 'born', so to speak - and it worked for the guy who go the job! If you can't do something.. that's alright; there are some people who can do it all.. and GOOD. So you can't model like Steven Stahlberg.. if you're creating a lighting reel.. it doesn't matter.

So for you, you'd like to get into a lighting position.. so I'd make a demo reel of just you lighting various scenes and even show a couple of scenes with different types of lighting.
If you look at one of the video's from KDLabs, they have one room - really well modeled and textured, but the lighting was great! THe lighitng also changed throughout the video as well, depicting differnt times of the day etc etc.. so I reckon that's what you'd want to do - I certainly would do that as well. If you've colluded with other people and so you didn't do any of the modeling/texturing/animating etc yet you lit the scene.. then specify that. I'd also start the demo reel of giving your name and under it, what kind of a demo reel it is. Ie

John Doe
Lighting/Rendering reel

or something like that.

I've probably given you a whole lot of superfluous information here, but yeah.

[kevin heller]

ive been away for a few days ,and i dint see youre post. thanks for the help:)

[jasonkey]

If you are trying get into a medium to large studio, then you can certainly get by without being great at everything. Although here at Fathom we (lighters) are also responsible for compositing and sometimes basic FX, set dressing, and shader tweaking.

For your reel you will want to focus on creating various moods via lighting. This is more than just showing lighting environments at different times of day. For instance you can try to show examples of lighting that conveys danger, happiness, hope, dispair, etc...

Good luck,
Jason Key
Lighter - Fathom Studios

[Baq]

One of the guys said, if you're going for an animating job, why show lighting, or modeling or texturing (to a great detail)? What you want is the animating job. I wonder what to put in reel as 'particles animator'? Don't show lighting, texturing? Just simple particles but in various animations ????

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