Demo Reel : Dirty J

[GodfatherUr]

Great work you got there. :beer: Love the assasin sequence. Best of luck to you on your job hunting.

[Stimpy]

i really like those animations, but i must say the environment in the first two parts kind of ticked me off. i mean, its obvious that you are focusing on the models and animation, and not on a full scene, but this low poly environment with those textures pasted onto it kind of ruined it.

maybe you should get rid of the textures and just have her and the guy act in a clean neutral environment. would show it off better imho. cause i really liked that samurai / ninja / girl model thingy. :)
really liked the part with that mech as well.. was fun to see him running and the little guy inside hanging on. :P


ps. why did you credit only half the music tracks?

[ZeroNeuro]

Looks good so far. Very comprehensive. Might I suggest adding in the character rigs themselves, since you have the textures and models prevalant? As far as the demoreel goes, I think that you should stick with maybe one upbeat high energy piece of music instead of three varying styles? It's great that you show some diversity, but it distracts the viewer. Keeping it high impact is a good way to entertain as well as display your talents.

You have a great start, but I think the ending should be the marine and the car should be switched with that sequence. Makes it more triumphant in a way.

The work inside the reel is good. I do not see you having too hard of a time finding work in the game industry. Especially with a front page spot on CGTalk.

Keep up the great work.
Cheers
Ritchie Roberts
ZeroNeuro Arts Ltd..

[prayas]

pretty cool anymation skills! Like your models and love to see them move like this! The marine is cool when running away! love the mecha thing when running! Only thing i feel it doesn'thve the quality of your human models is the alfa 155! Sorry this one looks pretty basic to me! texture work and all!

for the music you choose! maybe as zeroneuro said one track is enough!

P..:

[LordEzzat]

wow man the models were awesome but for me it was th animations that got me they were very well done, very humanistic and emotional on some,great squish squash all the goodies i thurally enjoyed it!!:thumbsup: :thumbsup:

[Tudor]

Really really nice! :)
I would hire you on the spot!

One thing. The marine running. The guns seems very light.

[Renzsu]

Hey Jay, great demo, I'm sure you'll get a game related job soon, sorry we got to work together so short, it was great :beer:

[The Magic Pen]

It's not to bad ...

The good : Looks like you have a good grasp of low poly modeling . I like how you can Texture,Rig and animate shows you can do more then one job if you did land something and diversity is the key to getting a job these days trust me.
When you have the characters in the all white back ground especially that alien with the mecha that was very cool and the animation was pretty good !! The end with the car was pretty good and could have been a lot better with diffrent music and editing . The first part with the girl is pretty good and the low poly background show you can do that kind of stuff so keep that in there .

The Bad :.Man first thing is take out that buggy . The textures and the model are just not pro quaility . Put the marine in with some animation to show he can deform properly in the plain white back ground . Take away that really bad explosion effect because it just isnt working for ya . If you want an example of what to do with a marine look at the Halo 1 teaser trailer .

The Ugly : Have mercy on us and take out that really bad music in the car scene . It just does not fit in with something that is supposed to be high energy .

My suggestion is look at something like the Star Craft ghost trailer or The worlds of war craft trailer ...keep your demo reel consistent and very high quality ( As good or better then what you see in games now ) Your on the right track but I just think you need to smooth out the rouph edges . Good luck

[stephen2002]

wow, that was very nice. A little long, but very nice.

My favorite portion was that you didn't just have the character stand still and have the camera rotate around. The character stood in the center and posed, keeping the very natural motion going, while you showed wireframes in the background. A lot more interesting to look at I think.

A lot of the motions were very realistic, great job overall.

Two MINOR things I noticed that looked odd:

1. The reflections on the sword. I would take them out because they are just distracting.
2. The car accellerating. The particles comming off the tiers shoot backwards like it is in a wind tunnel, just dosn't look right.

[John Lee]

Hey man i tell you some thing there is definately a future in the gaming industry for you. You will get a job in games no probs!

[anthonyenos]

You definitely look like you have low poly modeling and texturing down. My suggestion would be to edit it down a bit. Right now you have a good 3-4 minute demo, but if you cut it down and eliminate the stuff that doesn't work you can have a great 1.5 to 2 minute demo. I agree with the comments about the particles not working as well as the modeling and texturing. Don't be afraid to shave some time off of it. Great job!

[LucentDreams]

the music edits are my biggest critthere isn't much flowbetween then, I like the girl on the white BG with the texture maps and wireframes, the guy was similar but with the vehicle coflicting in the BG, then the green and magenta alien thing you abandone that for basic spinning models, not sure why.

Yeah that explosion didn't do much for me. I agree shortn it, aim for three minute max, and make sure to get a bit of everything in the first minute, or at least the best nthe first minute, many places don't have time to watch the whole reel the first time round they sample it then sort into watch later and better luck next time.

[edaddy]

i didn't think the reel was 'unbelievable' or anything, but it was good - i would definitely make changes to the marine sequence, and probably change the audio to make it flow more, although i do understand why each 'section' had its own music ... the alien in the walker-thing was the best part of your reel IMO .

[monotypic]

GREAT STUFF! that car pulling outta the garage was perfect... i got this warm fuzzy feeling seeing ... ( and i'm not even a car lover ) terrific work... let us know where you end up.

[CGmonkey]

Ah I saw your models on polycount!! ;)
Excellent work mate!!! Good luck in the industry, you'll need it! ;)

[Dirty-J]

wow, thanks for the feedback. It help a lot being able to get some fresh eyes and fresh opinions on this. I'm almost positive, I'm getting rid of that car scene. It dosent look like too many people will miss it. In its place I'll upload a higher quality version.
As far as the music. I get so many diffrent opinions, it hard to know what to do. Music editing obviously isnt my strongest skill. I would love sometime to get a music pro to do an original score. Stimpy, you mentioned I didnt credit all the music. I recorded the first track of www.betalouge.com, and I have no idea what the song is. I am taking all the other comments into consideration as well. Hi Renzsu, I guess I found where you hang out :p

[Stimpy]

i was mostly asking about the music credits since i forgot the name to the third track. i know i have it somewhere and its prolly some ninja tune stuff, so i guess its dj vadim. first track is some goldenboy vs miss kittin remix and the 4th one is from the shirly bassey remix album. in case anyone is even interested.. ;)

[DePingus]

For those wondering about the music...the 2nd song (which played during Assassin) is called Rippin' Kitten by Golden Boy featuring Miss Kitten (Glove Tension Club Mix, I believe).

Good stuff, by the way!

[RIpsTer]

You should really have your contact info in there more. I've been told several times by many different people you should always have your contact information at the beginning and at the end of a demo reel. It should also really stand out in the scene, it's kind of a psychological thing it makes you seem more accessable.

[mastering3d]

@Dirty-J >>HI m8 ,From what I have seen so far its looking good.But I can not see it all ,As it just stops working and the music go's on ..Now from what your saying i need the new Divx 5.0.3 which is installed and its stoping where the guys gets out of the car and starts to run ..Then nothing but music...Do u have any idea why that is...

[Dirty-J]

weird, I have never heard of that problem, and quite a few people have seen it. I have no idea? corrupt download maybe, i'm just guessing. Sorry I cant help more.

[Asorson]

For what it's lacking in individual quality you make up for in diversity. What I mean is the models, textures, and animations are nothing spectacular by themselves. But the fact that you can do all of these things to a pretty high level of quality and put them together in a composition like this makes up for it.

If there is one suggestion I would make that hasn't been mentioned already it would be to pay more attention to lighting and color. The entire reel has the washed out default grey look that most peoples first renders have. This is caused by leaving the ambient light color to default grey, not taking time to set up a decent lighting system, leaving the default anti-aliasing settings to area (which is way to blurry in my opinion) and not paying enough attention to color in the textures, and in the lighting.

Especially when dealing with characters you should never have a desaturated ambient setting, either in the ambient color of the texture or the ambient lighting of the scene. Also none of the regular lights in the scene should be desaturated. In real life there is no true white, black, or grey, there are hints of color in everything. And skin that has a greyish tint looks dead.

[mastering3d]

Thanks any way ...I'll have to redownload....

[mixel]

i suggest going to college and getting an art degree. i think you'd be too in over your head if you were to land a job at a real game studio

[Dirty-J]

heh, thanks for the advice Mixel, I was wondering where 5 years of my life went? Yes, I went to university, and got an art degree.

Eric, very true about colours. It seem good attention to colour only comes with a ton of practice, and I'm not quite there yet. Although, you do lose a lot of colour information when you compress with divx, but I definatly see your point. Most of those scenes were actually rendered with no ambient light, but the soldier and assassin scenes both use distance fog, which may be compounding the problem.

Thanks for tracking down that song title for me guys, awesome:)

[lerpiedood]

Hey Jay, I just watched your demo reel. It's very nice! Great animation skills there! I loved the alien guy driving the mech, that was awesome, and the physics on the race car were great. I'll certainly be looking out for some great things from you!

[Tudor]

Actually, most of the ppl I work with have no art degree. I certainly don't have one. At most of the game studios it is the same thing. A degree don't matter at all. What matters is that you can produce with quality on time and adjust to whatever style is needed. An art degree is mostly only valueable if you feel you got something out of it yourself.

Originally posted by mixel
i suggest going to college and getting an art degree. i think you'd be too in over your head if you were to land a job at a real game studio

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