My First Demoreel

[JaredTaylor]

I can't offer much input, but you could add some maya muscle to that raptor. And I don't see the point in the drawings at the end.

Also, my biggest thought, unfortunately was, this music is so obnoxious, where did my mute key go? Ahhh it's dark in my room, I can't see the mute key, mashed some buttons, and finally found it.

Rest seemed okay though, good work :)

[Dragon]

Hi Harry,
Nice Reel. Looks like you have put quite a bit of thought into how your controls behave. Not to be argumentative w/ the previous post, but I think the inclusion of your life studies are a good thing. When we look for new TD candidates, artistic skills and knowledge of anatomy are some of the criteria that we base our decisions off of. You can be a very technical person and create amazing procedures and tools, but if you don't know how a shoulder actually works anatomically or should look aesthetically then it won't amount to much when applying those tools to a creature. As charTD's we should all strive to have a better understanding of these things, it makes us more well rounded.
Your body rig stuff looks nice, but I think you can improve your reel by going a little further w/ the facial stuff. What you have there is cool, but it looks (from the video at least) very limited. Maybe you can work closely w/ an animator that really likes to push the poses into extremes and go from there. It would be nice to see the final results of this too.
And, one more thing... you can also expand this a little by putting some simulation work on here. That may not be your goal, but it would show an understanding of it. More often than not we put some kind of dynamic control into our rigs to free the animators up from doing secondary animation and allows them to focus on the performance of the character, so it does come in handy.
Anyway, keep up the good work.

[DanHaffner]

First off, welcome to CGTalk, we're glad to have yea!

I just made my first demo reel too, and if you're anything like me, you want people to tell you the honest truth about your work. I couldn't stand it when I showed people my reel and they would be like, "Yea, I like it."........Thanks for telling me nothing. What did you like, what didn't you like, what do I need to change? So I'm gonna tell you everything I thought while watching the reel, and in no way is any of this a personal attack, just honest setup artist thoughts to another setup artist. So please, do not get upset or offended.

Music didn't really bother to be honest, I wasn't really paying too much attention to it. I did skip though on the biped as seeing controls get pulled and a character move on every demo reel gets old is pretty boring and over done. So I did do some skipping through him, as it kinda felt to just keep going.

One thing that I flat out don't understand is why you would show your proxy mesh for the biped? Why didn't you show the finished bind? Did you not have one? Did you not finish the bind in time? Was the bind really bad? I think I spent more time wondering why I was looking at a proxy then looking at what was being shown.

For the facial rig, you might want to say if you're using joints or blendshapes to achieve the poses. I would assume blendshapes since you were using the channel box to trigger the different shapes, but might not be a bad idea to have a little indicator pop up and say which method you used. Also, less is more with a facial rig, you have A LOT of controls on the face, which I don't think an animator would enjoy keying all those, but since I am a rigger, that's just my opinion. I am working on a few facial rigs my self for a 2nd demo reel, and I am trying to allow for complex poses with very few controls.

I also agree with showing off some dynamics, that dino tail was screaming to me to put a procedural or dynamic system on that.

You got a solid reel, with decent stuff, but it was missing that "wow" or "now that's cool!" factor. It kinda felt like a reel to show you know the basics of rigging.

It's your first reel, and it's a good one, I'm just giving advice for possible revisions, and like I said, this is stuff that I thought of while watching.

I just made my first one a month ago and I am already working on a 2nd. (I kinda missed the small detail of putting a facial rig on my reel *facepalm*) So I am already doing revisions and rigging some heads to put on a 2nd reel.

Good luck to yea and look forward to seeing more work from yea. Keep it up!

[rflharry]

Thanks alot for your feedback guys. I agree you take your work to alot of forums and get "thats great..." and it really doesnt help in the long run when your trying to improve. It was part of a brief to include life studies within the showreel as industry likes to see your ability to draw anatomy from what weve been told.

@Dragon
I agree that the facial setup is limited. I was testing out what could be done with blendshapes and a cluster based spline set up for the smaller detail controls. I was unsure what seems to be the best method at the moment. Ive seen a few joint based setups that work well and a few that work on clusters so thought id give it a try. Im really keen to attempt to add some secondary features to the body rig but a little lost at where to start. I have only been at this for a few months so im sure il find a way, unless you have any tips on getting started? thanks again

@DanHaffner
I understand the need for proper critique and appreciate you giving time to do so. I know what you mean about wanting to do another reel straight off. I "finished" mine around a week ago but im already eager to do another. First off i utilized a proxy as the screen capture software i was using caused maya to go incredibly laggy. There is a low res and smoothed mesh on the rig that are bound, but areas like the knee do need a little work. I agree though that a bound mesh would of been much better.

The facial rig is a mix of cluster curves for the little details and blendshapes. It was my first crack at trying to get a advanced face over basic blends. I like your idea of using only a few controls to do alot of features. What method are you using blendshapes? Joints?

I would love to achieve some dynamics on the dinosaur tail it was something i set out to do but i tried a few different methods all with poor results. Do you have any advice on where i could learn the basics of procedural or dynamic rigging. Ive seen it alot in reels but I havent found any strong information to help me get started.

Appreciate you industry guys giving me feedback. Its definately given me the drive to get going on more advanced projects. Would love to hear back again and will try and stay part of the cgsociety community more often. Thanks guys.

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