Showreel

I have been looking at some technical showreels online and I think that I need to really improve mine. My old one was a miss mash of my work done over a couple of years but since then I have found what direction I wanted to go in and need to make a showreel that reflects that.

My showreel will not be able to compete with some studio showreels like the CineSite technical showreel and Studio Liddell. My showreel will show my technical skills. I thought about putting some ocean shader and wake tests but then I thought that it doesn't really show skill because they are just settings. What I decided to do instead was show me playing around with my rig, my blend shapes working and MEL scripting. All these videos will be sped up so that it will fit into under two minutes (they were originally about 10 minutes). As something extra, I have put the rig working and animated at the end so people can see the rig in action.

My showreel can be improved upon as I do better work and develop my skills after I leave university but at the moment this is what I will use to try to make an impression for employers.

The hardest part was choosing suitable music. Some music had sour language in and then with one track, I tried to loop the introduction which was just under a minute but I couldn't loop it and make it sound good, it was obvious it was repeating. In the end I went for a Daft Punk track called "Aerodynamic"which is just an instrumental piece. I faded out the end so that it didn't just come to an abrupt stop and layered it over my showreel.



I wasn't happy with my title pages because I thought the writing was too big and distorted slightly so I created some different title pages an in the end went with a more professional looking black with white writing. I also forgot to credit the music track artist so I added that in small italics at the bottom.

I think my showreel does have a theme because I use the same model throughout the piece. It is kind of a story from rigging to animation. It starts with me testing the rig on the cat and then viewing the blend shapes and leads to MEL scripting and ending with an animation test of the rig in action. There was a lot of other things I could have put into my showreel, like my nCloth tests, but I like the way it flows.

I have uploaded this to vimeo and youtube and below is the finished showreel.