25 Tips to Create an Animation Demo Reel

let's talk about demo reels demo rails are a collection of your best work presented to recruiters to hiring managers to potential clients for freelance it's your way of saying this is what i can do this is what i'd like to do and if you hire me please this is what i can do for you there are a lot of different ways you can go about putting together a demo reel some are really good and there are some things you don't want to do at all we're going to get into all that today i have a lot of stuff collected from recruiters hiring managers studio managers or i guess artist managers is the term for that animators whole bunch of different people in the industry and this information is good whether or not you're an animator if you're a modeler a lighting artist if you want to be more of a generalist either way all this information should help with whatever it is you want to put together in case you're new here hi i'm sir wade i do a ton of animation stuff here on the channel so if you like this type of video hit subscribe bring that notification bell so you don't miss new uploads and if you have any questions you want to talk about any of this kind of stuff live i have a link to my twitch down below where i'm live a couple times a week or if you want to support the channel and get access to more educational resources a link to my patreon so let's get into it 20 plus tips as fast as i can give them to you for putting together a good demo reel portfolio kind of the same thing as far as overall structure two minutes is a hard limit one minute maybe is like a target you want quality over quantity it doesn't matter that you have a whole bunch of different shots to show all this experience because chances are you don't have a ton of experience you may have some student films some different projects you've worked on your animation school assignments walk cycles there's a lot of exercises and things like that you want to try and keep your real short and sweet to the point with the whole thing really just made out of your best and your favorite shots i've heard from recruiters and from animators that sometimes you're real depending on who's looking at it can be defined by the worst thing on it so if you can look at your reel and you can pick out a few things that are like oh that's definitely my worst consider just removing it wherever you are kind of in terms of skill level if you can see your worst work if you can see like ah that's not very good chances are everyone else is going to see it too so if you're able to see that that's not that great it's probably a good option to maybe consider taking it out also i'm not numbering these tips just in case you were waiting for a number two we've already had number two and we're just gonna keep going anyways but what i was saying before that's especially true with anything that needs some explanation if your shot isn't clear and easy to understand probably shouldn't be there you're not gonna be in the room you're sending your demo reel as a link probably a vimeo link or something on your website or whatever by the way as far as where to put your demo reel i use vimeo i recommend vimeo a lot of animators and other artists use vimeo or art station depending on kind of what type of work you do if it's mostly images then having a link to a website to art station to something like that will be very helpful to just have you know something someone can scroll through easily and see your still imagery versus if you are doing animation or something that requires video previews vimeo is a good option because you can upload a video to vimeo and unlike youtube you're able to swap out the video file and keep the same link so if you send out a link to five or six different studios and then update your demo reel you can just swap the video file without having to re-upload a new video and then send out a new link to everybody makes a lot more convenient but anyways you're sending this link to whoever's going to look at it and you're not going to be there so if you normally show your shot to somebody and they go okay that's cool is this character upset like what are they if you have to then you know do the whole thing where you're like oh yeah well what he was thinking was if you have to do that take it off your reel because you're not going to be there to do that and if it's unclear to whoever you're showing in your day-to-day life chances are the recruiter the animator whoever it is looking at it is going to have the same thought and you don't want that however you do want to be able to explain your choices to explain why you did what you did how long did it take you any of that kind of information because if you do get a callback if you get an interview if you get a phone call whatever it is that you're you're receiving from your demo reel you want to be able to answer those types of questions i've had recruiters share with me that that is sometimes part of the conversation what do you like about this shot what would you change if you had done it differently now how much time did it take you and how much time do you think it would take you now if maybe it's an older shot be able to explain your choices your workflow the mentality behind whatever you were putting together maybe why you chose this shot where the audio come from what did you do with it and when you're sending information to a recruiter make sure that your demo reel your resume whatever you're sending has your contact info has a way to get in touch with you your name your email your phone number your website whatever it is your social media linkedin's a great option and make sure that whatever links you are providing if the person has to retype it on their own if they can't just copy paste it from somewhere like it is baked into your video or whatever make sure it's not some long crazy url that someone has to like really kind of cross reference to make sure they type it properly for example my website is just surway.com easy and i'll probably do a separate video on creating a website for yourself a portfolio online using social media for networking and so on let me know if you want to see a video like that but for now know that social media is actually a really great tool and that a lot of recruiters will be happy to look at social media whether or not you invited them to sometimes they're browsing looking for artists to hire and sometimes they'll just check the link if you included one and to that end if you have an instagram for example with some artwork on there and then pictures of your dog and then your food and things like that i would recommend making a separate art instagram so that you can kind of have a visual portfolio of your work that way if you do send for example instagram to a recruiter it's easy to find what they're looking for they click the link there's everything they need they can click on it for more context and a little like blog caption area but regardless of what social media platform you're using you want it to be as easy to find your stuff as possible another thing that was shared with me by recruiters was the context of how you did your shot can sometimes be important for example if you have a character rig or tools that are kind of subpar maybe not that great to include how long something took you can be really important because if you did something with you know a rig maybe the rig doesn't look that good it's not that appealing but you were able to accomplish whatever your shot was in like an hour in a day and however long that might be really important so that they don't assume it took you a couple weeks or vice versa something took you a really long time as long as it makes sense that it would have taken that time you can share that on the demo you can bake that into the corner of how long it took you to do whatever was on screen and if you want more information on this by the way i do have this video which is a really really great video where i interviewed a ton of different industry professionals when i was at ctn two years ago i think and there's advice from animators recruiters character designers storyboard artists there's a whole bunch of people in here sharing a ton of great information so link to that down below or in this corner you can click it here so enjoy that it's one of several interviews here on the channel the next step is having a variety of shot types and animation styles so as far as shot types you want to have a mix if you can of acting in performance mechanics and weight you want to show the physicality of a character but also that they can be human that they can act and emote and you know have emotions depending on if you're trying to go into games you're trying to go into feature film if you're trying to do tv if you want to do commercials the ratio of what's important may change a little bit for example pixar's really going to want you to have good performance and acting and obviously mechanics is important but they really need to have acting to make you cry because it's pixar come on and if you look at games that's not to say that they don't require that because if you look at the cinematics being created and a lot of even just gameplay stuff there's a lot of character a lot of personality now with technology getting better and better and what we can do in game engines you're starting to need that kind of stuff because we can push things further but on the flip side there are some games that personality isn't as important it is more about the mechanics of the action so depending on your skill level with different types of shots what do you have more experience with versus what are you newer with there's a lot of different range you can use here but this also goes into comedy versus drama like you you may not want to have all funny shots on your reel especially if your jokes aren't actually that funny if someone actually watches and laughs that's a good sign if you show it to a friend and they don't chuckle maybe it's not as funny as you thought it was but mix in some serious stuff with some comedic stuff and just kind of play around get your reel to have a nice variety and also that does lead into the animation style you may have some really realistic hyper real visual effects style work you may have some really push crazy cartoony noodle arms and things like that and anything in between you don't necessarily have to just pick one style and just go in that direction because that's the only way you're going to get a job i've heard that advice before it's not great advice this is my bad advice i've heard videos so if you want to hear some bad advice and how not to listen to it that's another one but you should be animating the stuff you want to animate and you may over time try different things you may try some cartoony stuff try some realistic things to show that you can do both is important because studios sometimes mix and match what types of movies they work on for example if you look at dreamworks how to train your dragon is a very kind of realism realistic motion type of show but then you've got boss baby and trolls which are a lot more kind of cartoony or if you go back to pixar you've got inside out where everything outside in riley's world is realistic where everything inside her head is much more cartoony so you can sometimes blend those styles and it is good to show a studio that you can do both that said you do want to tailor the reel for the studio you're applying for if you're applying to sony or blue sky where they do a lot more pushed graphic poses you probably don't need to show them as much hyper-realistic stuff whereas at ilm where they do a ton of hyper-realistic stuff because they're working with live-action footage and they're integrating animation with the live action plates you probably want to show less of the really push stuff and a lot more of the character weight and realistic high fidelity acting performances also if you have any creature work on your reel you know quadrupeds four-legged creatures dragons any of that type of thing that's gonna be a huge selling point just to show that you can do creature work which not a lot of animators by like ratio can do because it's not really taught a lot of places there are workshops you can take in different ways you can learn it but that's another selling point especially if you want to jump into vfx and you should constantly be reevaluating your demo rail as a whole looking at each piece individually and looking at the real overall is there anything you're missing is there anything you have kind of duplicates of for example my demo reel i did this video where i kind of reviewed my own old i think it was 2017 demo reel or something that reel had two different shots with grimmel and hiccup each one had a character sitting which is kind of a duplicate shot hiccup and grimmell were both sitting down they were both acting tests there wasn't really anything new to be gained by watching either one so in a new demo reel i'm only going to pick one of those shots i'm going to use the grimmel shot even though it's shorter it doesn't show as much weight i think the acting is better the personality is better and that's the one i want to lean on so look for the weakest link and look to replace it constantly that's the thing you always have to be doing once you make a demo reel you're not done you have to just keep working on your demo reel really until you get a job and then stuff you do with that job will get added to your demo reel and replace other things and it's just kind of a constant cycle of like the phoenix from harry potter he just caught fire that makes me want to go watch harry potter again by the way that phoenix shot is on somebody's demo reel just saying now get into some of the questions that people have asked me about demo rules for example when you say you go to school and you do a bunch of different classes or if you have a lot of different experience maybe doing different types of work if you've got some modeling you've got some animation you've got some lighting some effects blah blah do you put it all in one reel or do you separate it generally you want to separate it now there are a couple options here you can make one generalist reel and you can put your best stuff collectively into one reel remember to keep it short it's not about collecting all those pieces and bloating your one reel with it you do want to keep it short keep it sweet just your best stuff and make sure you list in that case at the bottom somewhere for each shot what it is you did that way you know if you are trying to do a generalist reel it's clear whether you modeled and rigged and textured this object but maybe didn't the animation or if the animation's motion capture versus if you were working with motion capture data and that's the focus of the shot or whatever generalist reels are a little bit more forgiving because you can kind of mix and match some different ideas but for getting a specific job in the industry getting a job at a studio you do want to have specific reels for modeling an animation reel effects reel whatever it is you're doing you don't want those really blending because if you're trying to get a job as an animator for example your modeling skills aren't going to come into play that's why it may be good to have a website where everything's kind of broken down right there and if a recruiter were looking for your animation reel they can also choose to watch the other stuff if they want to maybe if there's more openings if it's a smaller studio maybe those skills help you and it's available for them to watch but it's not distracting if they don't want it and speaking of distracting music music is one of those things where there's not like a clear yes or no answer on whether or not you should have it but that said in general you want to have if you have music at all you want to have it kind of low volume you don't want it to be like aggressive edm dubstep like keep the music subtle it should just kind of be a background thing if you even have it honestly my recommendation in my opinion is to just not have music when you are going to conventions which is not currently happening because of coronavirus but normally when you're going to conventions and you're meeting people and you're in these loud halls and you're trying to show people your work on an ipad or a tablet or whatever it is you're already dealing with all this external noise they're trying to hear your work and if it's just kind of background music that they're trying to hear it immediately kind of goes oh i don't need to listen to that okay and it kind of disengages it's a distraction from your work as they try to listen to it then they do hear it and it's disappointing because it's not really needed then they tune out of it but then there's an acting shot with dialogue they have to tune back in it's a lot i recommend just not having any music unless it's necessary if you are going to use music here's three quick examples of something that you could use something that everyone else has used and it doesn't help you stand out so it doesn't really help you to have it and next don't use this type of music [Music] that's gonna get your reel turned off very quickly not just muted but you might even have the entire reel just closed because the first thing is gonna happen is gonna open it they're gonna see your work and they're gonna hear that music blaring and the first thought is where's the remote where's the whatever where's the mute button turn it off and the sound's gonna go away they've already missed the first five to ten seconds of your shot and now they're distracted they're kind of re-centering and because of how many reels have to be looked through by most recruiters most studios have so many applications they may not have time to go back and re-watch your shot so if you started with some good work they didn't see it because your music distracted them now i don't know if this is actually a useful thing but something i try just as an experiment if there are any recruiters watching i'd love to know your thoughts on it down below but i started my demo reel with a title card with my information but then i moved with a little audio cue into the first shot that had dialogue so i had this little countdown icon that way people kind of knew hey there's audio coming up just so you're aware because it started right away didn't want them to miss it so if they needed to unmute they'd have time when it comes to ordering your shot what comes first what comes last all that kind of stuff the flow of the demo reel editing is important making sure things do flow and that it's not distracting as far as like the cuts and when it goes from shot to shot that's when you kind of get into leading the audience cinematography plays a little bit into this even though you're just using completely different shots imagine you've got something on this side of the screen and it moves to this side of the screen if you cut to the next shot and the focus of the next shot is in the same general area of the frame it helps the audience's eye to already be looking in the right place to keep going that's something that you can watch movies and you'll see that's part of editing with movies you can also use that in your demo reel just to make sure everything is being seen because if i'm over here and then i cut over here and i cut to over here you're kind of doing this across the screen which is just a little bit more distracting than if it flows naturally it's not always something you can do for your demo row but if you happen to have that opportunity well may as well use it but that's not the main driving force behind kind of what comes first second third you're not trying to just match up the i you know where someone's looking that's not the main way to choose that order now i've heard some conflicting opinions on this but most of them follow the same basic principles that you start with your best work you show your best shot first to really hook the audience to show the recruiter hey i'm in business my reel is gonna be worth watching and you obviously don't want the quality to drop off after that first shot you want it to stay good which is why you want to just make sure you're always updating everything and keeping your entire reel at the maximum level that you can but if you had to pick say five shots and you had the best one first i've heard different opinions on whether you should just go like best and then just down from there to maybe having your second best be at the end so you finish really strong too there's a lot of different ways it kind of depends on everybody's real in particular but i think it's probably true to do your best work first hook the audience and then maybe your third best work you know something to kind of keep that energy up put whatever else you have it has to be good still has to be your favorites if you don't love it take it out and then yeah end with your second best work so that they end with a positive kind of taste in their mouth a good like oh yeah that reel ended really well like that was a good real right yeah that was good real and with all of that if you are a student if you have student assignments you know the the basic walk cycle the the flower set challenge the the weight you know pick up a box that's a certain weight and put it down somewhere those student assignments that pretty much all of us have done it's not bad to have those on your demo reel but you do want to try and get them off as soon as possible more because you want to show your creativity all those assignments are kind of standardized they're they're things that we've all done we've all seen them they're not exciting they don't really stand out if you do one really creatively and inventively and you do something really cool then maybe it's worth keeping on there but in general you do want to start doing more shots out of school to replace those i think that's a really big thing that when you leave college when you leave school that's often where people kind of get confused and disappointed of why they're not getting a job because you go through school and you learn all the stuff and you make a demo reel and you apply and then you don't get called back and often that's just because your demo reel is just composed of student work which there's nothing wrong with that's where we all start but that's the thing that a lot of schools don't really tell you is that once you finish depending on what's on your reel you're gonna have to take some time to redo a lot of those things to not redo them not redo the shots you've done but to take the principles that those those shots demonstrate and apply them in new ways to different more creative shots that more better represent you and what you want to do and you shouldn't be animating stuff based on what you think the studio wants to see i'm going to do all my shots like this because that's what pixar wants that's not what's going to get you hired what's going to get you hired is coming up with what you are you excited about what do you want to animate what gets you pumped up make those things put them on your reel and whether it's pixar or not they're going to see like oh like yeah we can see what you're going for here even if the intention is there but the execution's maybe not as good the creativity of your ideas should really shine through and that should be a really big focus for when you're putting together these shots and these demo reels so show whoever's watching your shot how excited you are to be working on these types of projects you also want to stop noodling with your shots as soon as possible noodling is usually used as a term to say when you're you're working on a shot and you're just kind of tweaking this and i'll change that uh work on this ah that could be better and you just kind of noodle with it you don't really have a clear goal of what you're doing but you're just constantly working on it because it's not really done it never will be that's that's creativity that's art nothing's ever really finished it's just do it's time to move on you've learned your lesson put it aside work on something else you'll grow faster you'll get more out of another shot versus just working on this one for all time so use deadlines to keep yourself on track or make lists of the things you want to fix and then complete that list watch it one more time see if there's anything else that needs to be added to that list and then just kind of go based on that once it's pretty much done it's time to move on that will help you kind of move from shot to shot making updates to your demo reel and keeping things fresh also i generally don't recommend going back into your demo world and saying ah this shot needs more work pulling it out working on that shot and putting it back because you could probably make a better shot now than that one is in the first place like adding things changing things is usually more work and less results less reward than just saying brand new shot totally inventive totally new stuff all new skills replace that's usually the way you want to do it presentation this is a really mixed feedback on this one if you're in school you'll probably hear that if you want to be an animator focus on animation don't light don't render don't do a background don't do cloth don't do hair like don't worry about that stuff it's about the animation and while that's not untrue that is true it is about your animation there's also something to be said for presentation quality now the idea behind this advice is when you are learning when you're a student and you're focused on the walk cycle the bouncing ball like the anything kind of in that early learning stages you don't want to be distracted by the other stuff you want to make sure you're understanding and applying the animation principles the fundamentals the mechanics all that stuff needs to be there because you need to learn it and be able to show it but once you finish that there is nothing wrong with lighting your shot rendering it making it really look nice stand out doing sound design editing clips together learning cinematography to make sure your camera angles are really nice i've got a video on cameras i've got a video on rendering and lighting and making your shots look nice even from playblast this samus tutorial has some effects and sound design tips so a bunch of stuff over there check it out but the goal here is to make your demo roll stand out so that if a recruiter watches 100 demo reels yours is the one they remember because it was polished the animation was clean the animation was nice it was clear the posing was great the story you were trying to tell was nicely communicated it made them laugh it made them feel something the sound design maybe was above and beyond or the lighting made it prettier whatever it is you want your stuff to stand out and all this stuff only gets better with practice you have to just do more of it to make your stuff better so don't sit on these shots and try to make them like as perfect as they can be and then put it on because that's the one that's going to get you a job sometimes there is you know that one shot on your demo reel that gets you the job absolutely but you're more likely to find that shot if you keep doing more shots and while you only get better with practice having some kind of feedback or guidance will help accelerate that process of learning of growth so if you can get a mentor if you can join a school a workshop some kind of a program showing it to a friend even if your friend or your parents or whoever it is if they don't understand animation and you show your work to them you show your demoral to those people and they look and they go that's great well that's not super great feedback but if they go oh that's really nice so is he mad at him and you go no he's not interesting because if the general public like the people who are watching the movies who aren't really into animation don't fully understand what's going on that's a huge indicator they need to rework that part so you can actually get some really good feedback from non-animation people or non-modeling people or whatever if someone else notices that something's kind of off but they can't tell you why it looks kind of off it's still good feedback and the last tip here is to try not to compare yourself to other people it's hard sometimes because you're going to see amazing demo reels out there and you're going to compare yours to theirs try not to because those people had a demo reel once that was just like yours or even like you know more entry level we all start from nothing creatively and have to build up now everyone builds up at different rates different speeds different experiences kind of factor in all that kind of stuff but you should really try it's hard but try to compare only to your own demo reel from before which is why making all these different versions and keeping it up to date is helpful not only for showing it to get a job but also for your own kind of sanity your peace of mind and to look back and be proud of your own work to say yeah my demo rail doesn't look like this but you know what it sure looks a whole lot better than three versions ago or the one before that or the one before that and that growth can be really helpful in keeping the motivation to say i just i don't feel like this is good then you look back and go you know what it is getting better though and one day it is going to look like some of these other ones or even better and like that's okay so try not to compare yourself to other people's demo reels only to your own but that's the other thing about the animation industry when they say it's a small industry and it's a nice industry in general it is recruiters want you to succeed they want to tell you yes they want to give you feedback and help you if they have time and so when you get feedback from a recruiter from an animator from whoever if it's somebody who knows what they're talking about and is trying to help you they're trying to help you they're not trying to give you weird advice to like put you on a different path one of the biggest things about getting a job in the animation industry is being a good person sometimes people slip through the cracks like any industry sure but that's kind of the point of the hiring process interviews and things like that they're trying to learn a little bit more about who they're interviewing to make sure that whoever they're hiring is actually a good person that's sometimes more important than the demo reel not to say that you can just get in without doing any work you have to show that you can do the job but beyond that you can also learn and improve on the job they can teach you new skills you can get extra training no one's gonna be able to teach you to be a better person so that's a big part of it so remember don't be a jerk be a nice person be friendly be kind you don't have to be an extrovert you don't have to be an introvert like none of that makes a difference as long as you are a positive person to be around someone that these studios will want to hire because the people at the studios want to work with you that's extremely important to go with the demo reel and i have a whole bunch of other stuff i want to talk about for resumes and cover letters and other hiring type of stuff so if you want to see more of that if you have more questions let me know down below happy to make more videos talking about this kind of thing and again if you want to ask me these questions live talk about it i'll link to my twitch down below educational resources on patreon subscribe if you enjoyed this video hit this button so more people can see it thank you for watching and i will see you in the next video [Music] you

Channel: Sir Wade Neistadt

Views: 56,795

Keywords: animation demo reel, create a demo reel, animation reel tips, demo reel tips, how to create a demo reel, cg demo reel, 3d demo reel, animation showreel, animation, reel, tips to create a reel, animation jobs, get a job in animation, art portfolio tips, 3d modeling reel, cg generalist, showreel, art industry jobs, animation industry, get hired, 2d animation reel, intern demo reel, student demo reel, tips for animation students, portfolio tips, character animation reel, 3d, 2d

Id: ynVANlM9ZXQ

Length: 24min 26sec (1466 seconds)

Published: Thu Jul 30 2020