This blog will mostly contain my research and creation process for my showreel. I do have a general idea of how I’d want my showreel to look, or at least incorporate. From the information given, a good showreel would be around 45 seconds long on average, and flow together properly with both the animations and chosen song (if any).
Content: I would like to incorporate most my MAJAN animation into it once it has been rendered and composited, since most of it consists of fighting animation which is what I wish to specialise in. I will also be cutting up the Spider-Man swinging animation from my Advanced 3D module, as it involves dynamic swinging animation which I am proud of. As well as some small bits from my High Noon animation, a turnaround from my Gundam, a showcase of my cleaned Motion Capture data. I believe these are my best work, however at the time of writing this some of them are not yet complete and cannot be added to the website yet.
For now, I intend on researching what good showreels include, and choose music and a try to find a good pace for showcasing my best work.
Research:
I’ve chosen a few pieces to analyse for my own benefit, and the videos are listed here below. I chose more 3D based ones since that is the medium most my projects utilise.
I chose these as it seems a good mix between professional showreels and also student made showreels, and also tried to find ones that also included combat or action animations as well to see what best to do.
For starters, this one caught my attention, but not so much the content itself but the introduction. The build up of tension, the countdown, and the snippets of intense pre-action really stole my gaze. I think the music/audio helped a lot as well, with the readying shots. I’m unsure if this will be the direction I want my showreel to take, but the idea of using shots to “prepare” the viewers is definitely interesting and I’ll take it into consideration.
This one I will definitely use more inspiration from, due to it also having a “Spider person swinging” animation. The entirety of the showreel is a bit short but I find that having Spider-Gwen here start off with a landing could be useful for my own showreel, as I have a similar shot.
This one definitely has more polish and everything feels “in sync” in a way. The beat of the music feels like it matches up with certain movements and it definitely helps in capturing the audience. I definitely would need to find a song that matches up with my animations, or the other way around where I match up the animations to my song.
This one had a much faster pace to it compared to the ones before, and one thing I noticed on this one that the others did not was the inclusion of who the animations were made for and also if they were featured in anything. This obviously is not possible for me as all my animations were made purely for myself or academics, but I can definitely still include the softwares I used and the role I played in them. The general “vibe” of the showreel was way more upbeat, and the animations also had a fun energy to them as well, so I think matching song choice with the animation definitely plays a key role.
This next showreel bought something to mind when watching and I think it is key to update here on my blog as well, and it is consistency. I remember during a seminar that I was told that I should not be a “generalist” and instead be a “specialist”, since in the modern day companies will prioritise searching for those who can apply to specific role, instead of someone who can do everything, due to the workflow of most projects requiring different roles to be filled. In my showreel I intend on applying myself to the role of “animator” in the “action” category. From the showreel shown above, I really liked the way it keeps the same models and style, but changes from more “realistic” movements like in live action adaptations to more “dynamic” action sequences that are commonly seen in fighting games. I think I could use the same idea with mine
Another great example of how the music amplifies the entire showreel, this one with slowed but intense movements from the models and animation. I doubt I will go with this path of “vibe” but I definitely will keep this idea in the back of my mind. Another thing that stood out was that some of the animations weren’t complete in terms of composition, texturing and lighting, but still showed the artist’s expertise in action animation. As of writing this, some of my animations have yet to be rendered but I will at least add playblasts as they still do the trick of showcasing my skills.
I will be using ShotCut for the majority of the video editing.
Before going into compiling my showcases, I realised I needed a Intro to the showreel, to at least give a brief explanation of what the viewer will be watching. So I decided to use the Logo entrance that was intended for the website
This short intro gave at least a brief idea of who this is from, and then I spent a bit of time animating this
It was just a short little text scroll, but it gives a general idea of what the video is.
Here I was going to do a few warm-up ones to get the action going, like a short opening to lure to viewer to stay for the good bits. But the pacing was a bit long due to the “warm-up” animation having awkward timing compared to the pace of the entire video. Instead I opted to use this animation
To put in between, so I can keep the viewer’s attention by showing something different just often enough to not be too much of the same.
There are still some I would like to include in the showreel, but are not complete yet at the time of this writing. For now I will move onto music and text editing.
Song choices:
I went onto the Internet to find something that I believed would best suit the tone I’d want to set with my showreel, and since most the projects I intend on including high octane sequences and dynamic movements, I focused my search for music that would be high energy. Not to mention most my animation did have a oriental vibe to it, so I will also try to lean into that aspect
This one I quite liked but then as I listened more it seemed too low energy and moody, I was looking for something more akin to a chase sequence
This one felt like it fit better, but still unsure if I’d like the pace itself.
This one fit the tone of what I was searching for much better, but the pace felt off compared to the showreel I had already crafted. Will keep searching
This one felt the absolute closest to what I want, so I will give this a try. Will try to find at least a few more I believe
This one feels like it hits it on the nose as well.
The audio from Yakuza actually fit incredibly well with the song and the vibe, and the beat matches up with the clips as well. Will do additional tweaking but so far so good.
This here is my showreel, which will be updated with the relevant media when all other submissions are finished. This will have placeholder animations of playblasts, but I am happy with this final result