Animation Demo Reel - Tips and Tricks, Dos and Don'ts (part 1)

welcome back it is Friday that means fna Friday for new animators and today I want to start a new series about demo reel it's gonna be about tips and tricks do's and don'ts and examples and all that good stuff alright so there's a lot to talk about about demo reels and this is going to be a multi-part series generally you want to tell your real tortes the company that you're sending your reel to or nowadays it's not we adjust if you're sending but it's online a link you know what I mean so if it's a game company it's getting specific stuff VFX company we affect specific stuff feature animation TV so all those different groups of animation if you will they have different styles and different demands so if you do all kinds of digital stunt doubles and camerawork and creat your stuff and it's all for real and you send that to Disney not very useful so once you've chosen the company that you want to gun for think about the content and then like I said tailor your content towards that company and I'm doing this event right now because I'm doing another demo real class for animation mentor which also did last semester so all those ideas are so fresh in my head and plus I got notes but generally you want each shot to kind of represent a different skill by that I mean if you do a really good way assignments then why have another way assignment later on in the real so why repeat yourself so generally I will look at something where you show wait you want to showcase body mechanics and weight weight shifts lifting something pushing so something that really shows the the grasp of animation principles in terms of portraying different type of weights at least that to me that's the minimum you show good quality but it's all weighty stuff and it doesn't have to be a big creature walk you're on this could be again a box lift or a character lifting someone or pulling on something just something that's weighty which segues into a good full body mechanics shot which and of course you can combine those two it could be something lifting way in that obviously is enough in a wide shot you see the full character and it shows weight and the full body mechanics and weight shifts and all that good stuff so anything that I mentioned of course you can combine things and make it more like a shop versus just to exercise highlighting one single skill or one single aspect that you want to show but anyway I will look at weight I would look at full body mechanics and then I would look at performance and performance I will break up into pantomime and then lip-sync now pantomime again could be full-body and then if you get close to the camera or however you want to do it if you want to cut in just do a close-up but I would do something where it's emoting without the help of audio and then you have lip sync and then lip sync I would look at potentially two different shots something that's a bit more extreme so this have to be all super sad and also we're happy but if you just do multiple shots that always show the character with the same emotion then again it doesn't show enough variety any variety I would showcase female male kids old people bigger skinnier and also creatures and are creatures in terms of photo-real in the rotoscope like a horse gallop or something but something that's kind of more like Zootopia or the dog and Coco or just their many many movies nowadays there are showcasing humans and creatures I would definitely not neglect creatures and only have humans on there but understand it's tricky to get a good cartoony creature raike that's free online or even paid so I'm going through my rig list and posting things animation buffet I'm trying to find something really good in terms of creature for feature animation that you could use for your reel and if I find something obviously I'll do something here and then do a post and let people know now if you know something comment please let other people know if you find a good rig for creature cartoon animation including a good facial stuff but circling back again variety is key so I would show if you do a wide shot nice good body mechanics with weight so you can ride away show I can do animation properly with all the right polish and everything moves with the right principles applied and good weight but on top of that you do want to show performance and that's why I said pantomime and lip sync so you can actress through body poses and pantomime mr. bean style Chaplin or whatever you want out there and lip sync where you have the Audrey that kind of defines your timing and also the mood but of course you can see all my acting Alice's Clips where you can kind of take that I maybe change it to make it a bit more personal a bit more original and all these points to me warrant the different fna so something that's just about body mechanics something that's just about performance and so on and so on two different different examples but I want to just quickly say that within your reel you got to tailor it towards the company you're sending it to and show different skill sets within each shot obviously you can combine different skill sets into one awesome monster and then have multiple of those but again variety is key so you don't want to do performance performance performance where it's always the same thing what's kind of a close-up and kind of the same emotion just kind of repeating yourself and you have showing off enough different skill sets that being said whatever you do your strongest shot has to be first so when someone looks at your reel they're gonna go through that first shot and if it's not up to snuff they're gonna go ahead and then click it off now I'm exaggerating this might be worst case scenario but still you want to look at really the best shot up front so it shows right away this is what I can do stay with this reel and look at the rest and to me this is across the board so the effects feature games TV whatever you have the strongest shot has to be first you don't want people to kind of wait and go is this gonna be okay oh yeah this was okay you don't want to risk that people click off your reel just stop playing because they don't have the patience or the time to wait for the good shot so first shot has to be fantastic and the last shot has to be really really good and the middle one has to be really good obviously everything has to be really good it's better to have a short reel that's awesome then longer padded out reel with kind of LK shots in the middle it was you're gonna get kind of judged on the worst Sean your reel but going back to what I said this is going to be the focus of this part one fna the first shot has to be awesome and one of those examples that I showed to my class is a real by Stefan Schumacher he's an animator at Pixar and a long time ago he was at the Academy and he's real is still online and I show it in every class and even though it's old and dated it still holds up really well and all the things that I point out for demo reels do's and dont's are all in this reel so I'm gonna scrub through the reel so you can see kind of quickly what's going on I will have a link in the description to his reel but that is the real in short now I'm gonna talk mainly about this first shot but one of the things you want to do when you have a reel you do want to screw up and kind of see visually what is going on so here are the things that I will point out a lot of people do a waste of acting shop usually it's a character in an empty scene and that's kind of the framing and there's nothing there and they can just do their performance if you watch my channel you know another massive fan of this at the same time if you watch my channel you know that there are many examples that contradict what I said but again this is waist up and even here to some degree waist up now why does this work for I think at the very beginning this is a really really good shot that shows so many different body mechanics and pantomime and just so many complexities I'll talk about just in a second but because of this this shot right away shows I can animate and then after that it's okay and even he actually you have the complexity of someone turning around is the 180 has a walk towards camera you don't see the weight shifts but still in this shot he already showed what he can do so now we can concentrate on different performances but then going back there's still this and again I'll talk about this later on but then you have something that's full body full body with creature and then back to pantomime waist up and lipsync waist up with two characters and with a small interaction there so as a whole really good and this has secondary action this has reacting to something that's you know you can have something that's outside it could be a sound effect or whatever or another character in the scene but it's not just a singular character and what I like about this one is that you have a pretty real depiction of creature behavior there but I like that he has still a human character there's a connection there she prepares things and has that human connection at the end she likes her cohorts so lots of little things that are really liking is real same with this one using the space and the mechanics so I think this reel covers a lot of different things but let me go back to this first shot and let me play it tell you why I like this so much she's got this little kid up there jumps into this swampy things and that's it all right now the first thing that happens is this it's just purely mechanics there's no thought process there's no pantomime but right away within the first seconds it shows off I can animate a character moving from A to B but with these complexities the set or the set piece is angled and thin there's one of the things that people do in many many shots is that the surface is always flat if again if you are some of my previous clips you know that I like set that could be a hillside in this case a tree trunk whatever we have because that uneven ground will force asymmetry potentially in your character depending on how uneven the ground is but it gives you a variety and how the character will move from A to B if it's you know branches or jungle stuff they can go underneath it just kind of forces you to think about how will the character move and all that good stuff that I like so in this shop right off the bat the character walks from A to B on a surface that goes up and it's not very wide it's not very safe which then again forces the character to think about balance which then goes into this this is moment of off balance and then adjustment so because of that there's already change in timing it's not just a cycle of someone walking up from A to B the pause so this contrast in timing and just visual poses so a little hop up there into this and this to me is kind of a smaller version of having a conflict in your shop and I was a big fan of a conflict I was like when a character is exposed to a problem but then the character has to make a choice to fix that problem and those choices reveal character so one of the kind of mean examples that I have but it kind of it illustrates the points to be exaggerated you have the puppy that's on fire you have the computer doesn't fire which one you're gonna save the computer and then people you go oh oh yeah whatever it is but it always kind of causes some sort of reaction but I think that to me is a really good thing in your shot when your character is presented with a problem or conflict and the character has to make a choice and the choice reveals character and again it doesn't have to be an essay again because of previous clips your character doesn't always have to be a good person that can be an antagonist it can be a villain it can be an evil choice because movies have antagonist and evil people and all that and I think that should be something you could focus on in your reels it's not just always good people so going back to the shot that the tree trunk is not safe and wide and uneven presents a potential problem for the kid and it has that way slightly off balance Nasr re you know rebalance himself and then continues on so it's not a mental challenge not something where he has to fight or a dialogue where he fights verbally with someone but just a small thing that shows that he can fix something and it also forces the character in you with your animation to give it some more contrast just a big fan of this then after that it switches through actual pantomime so you have full body mechanics and then thought process I love it a little moment again change in timing after all the big movement and the the bigger moves here and with the timing you have him slow down the shot slows down and you can see he thinks about that things about where he has to step and is ready to jump so after purely mechanical things from body mechanics point of view there's more now a thought process which to me is really important in your shots if you just have movement it could be potentially boring and again if you watch my things or yours one of my students you've heard this I'm not a massive fan of characters dancing or doing martial arts or that type of fighting not because it's not cool but a lot of times it's just movement that being said again if you follow the stuff that I that I retweet on Twitter there are many many awesome shots where people just fight and do martial arts but I usually like the stuff where the style is a bit more push there's interest in timing and the poses are pushed so it's just kind of something where you look at reference and you kind of replicate the reference it's just not that interesting to me if someone would be dancing but then maybe halfway through the pants fall down and the character has to decide well I'm going to continue this dance that to me is adding conflict and it's interesting to me because I want to know how the character fixes that situation and all of this is kind of couched within a dance move but I understand if this is completely subjective but going back thought process to me is key you want to show that the character is thinking and is alive so after this he decides and jumps now hold on to this and falls into this swampy water what I like about this too is that you have a hard surface element so the way your character walks on this barefoot on something hard like this is going to be different then when he jumps here so there's a different gravity aspect to this hanging on to this it's gonna change how he moves here and then as he falls into this this is again a different location different outside environment that will change how he moves the timing and how he goes from A to B now going back again like I said barefoot on something wooden something a bit harder and you can expand on this and what if it's done oh the whole set is somewhere snowy and you have someone in ski boots or something walking across snow and if for those that have walked in snow you know a little step and then go down and stepping and good now frozen is a good example of all that snowy stuff and all the influences of snow on the character with wind and and all of that good stuff so many examples are out there but that's something again I want to highlight is that well if you have your character think about what are they wearing and what are they walking on and maybe you can change that and change that your advantage to push either comedy or just to push the poses or whatever you want to do now on top of that if you look at this you have set pieces here set pieces here I think the composition is really nice you have nice elements there which will be the gradient there and it's not crazily rendered you don't really need a render in your scene so of course it looks better but here's my thing and again this might be subjective but I just wanted you know put it out there if you see a shot that looks really good in terms of brain there's you got the lighting and the textures and all that good stuff but the animation is kind of it's not quite there my thought and from what I hear from other people is also why did you spend time lighting this why didn't you spend this time animating and fixing it and finishing it many people might roll their eyes go well maybe someone else did to render for me or maybe I didn't know that the animation was not good enough and I just wanted to make it look pretty I understand there many many reasons I'm just saying all the time should be spent in to making your animation fantastic because that's what you're applying for is an animation position not lighting and texturing or modeling and all that yes all of that will help elevate a shot potentially visually and make it potentially also more professionally looking I know all those pros and cons I'm just saying I think this works because it's a nice presentation but it's not too far out there it doesn't distract from anything the focus is still animation but it's better than a character in its default outfit or gray on a gray background the other thing that I like is when you look at the shot look at the camerawork follows the character is very subtle to the end here and also like that he it goes down with the character seeing somewhere on the water stuff and going up now about what I like about this is that the can work is actually really nice because you have just subtle movement to give it some light but and distract from the shop and when the character jumps here you have this moment the character breaks frame you don't want your camera to move ahead of the character unless there's a very specific choice or story point where obviously there's always an exception but usually the camera person does not know what an actor actress or creature whatever is going to do so I like this it doesn't have the character too far out or we miss something where we're confused and the camera still catches up and has that end with a Creole expression at the end and again a different type of movement because he is in a different kind of environment so you have water then you have air but also air holding on to something at a nice little home with a nice pose in there then you have the hard surface element then you have the pantomime and then going back into just full body mechanics with a little bit of a contrasting move because of this setup of where he walks on - all in all I just love this shot and to me that as you first shot I look at this I go this is really good there's so many elements that are really good and thought-out then again Stefan if you watch this you can come and say I never thought about any of this or I thought about all of this and more so let me know if I am projecting things into this I never know but this is how I take the shot this is what I take from the shot and that's what I try to tell my students again I might be wrong or not but this is kind of what I'm taking out of the shot and it's a really strong beginning piece whose like I said it shows quantum mechanics right away full body it shows thought process and different complexities and even a bit of current work so after this I think you can do all those performance shots where it's waist up because why do another full-body shot unless of course it's something a bit more weighty so maybe this type of composition but the characters pulling pushing or lifting something I think that's totally valid so there you go your first shot has to be awesome and I'm going to show different examples in future fna so this is only part one I have different reels different types of shots but it comes to the effects cartoony and different do's and don'ts and tips and tricks to really round out a long list of this is what you should be focusing on and again I'll try to cover VFX and games as well as feature animation so hopefully this will be a good series that covers as much as possible but I will obviously miss many things so if you know something as you watch this you go away he missed this comment the comment section is open so anything you want to add feel free I think everybody will profit from that and learn from it and I will close this part one with that so if you watch this whole thing until the end as always you know this thank you so much if you liked it you can hit the like button if you have not subscribed yet subscribe and hit the ball back because I do upload almost every day except the weekend so if you want all the vacations hit that button you know the typical YouTube ending but that's it for me thank you for watching and I will see you next week [Music]

Channel: Jean-Denis Haas

Views: 17,793

Keywords: character animation, spungella, jean-denis haas, animation tips and tricks, demo reel, animation demo reel, demo reel animation, animation demo reel tips, animation demo reel 3d, demo reel example, character animation reel, character animation demo reel, demo reel animation 3d, demo reel tips, pixar animation demo reel, animation tips, animation tips for beginners, animation dos and don'ts, how to make an animation demo reel, best animation demo reel opening

Id: zFg-3Cr3Wyg

Length: 18min 20sec (1100 seconds)

Published: Fri Apr 12 2019