3D Animation

Putting Together a Demo Reel

November 19, 2008 November 19, 2008 You know you’re in the home stretch of your program when the instructor turns to you and says, “You’re going to spend the next two weeks rendering your best work for use in your demo reel.” How can this be my best work? It feels like only yesterday I was learning the difference between NURBs and polygons. As with other disciplines, the demo reel is an example of your art in motion. In the case of 3D Animation, the reel should highlight the skills you want to focus on (or the job you want to apply for).  You can prepare a reel that focuses on modeling, rigging, texturing, animation, etc. By virtue of not having completed the course yet, our class’ reels will be predominantly generalist – a little bit of everything all rolled into one. Having two weeks is good, because for complicated, high resolution images, it can take a long time to crank them out. Unfortunately, week one was bisected by a Career Fair. We’ve known about both the Fair and the rendering week for a while, and have been working toward getting our reels done as quickly as possible, but as we close in on the 13th hour, I wasn't sure any of us would be “reel ready” by then. If only the Fair had occurred two weeks later! Despite that, like every other event by CDIA Career Services, it was be a valuable networking opportunity. Even if I don’t have a demo reel ready. Some work from the final reel that I haven’t shared before includes my architecture project: I’m also showcasing my vehicle from the original modeling module: Combine these with Bruce and the Elves vs Robots group project we did, and I think the foundation of a generalist reel will be born. Speaking of collaboration, we were approached by a student in the Digital Filmmaking program (again, through the good graces of Career Services) about doing graphics for the opening credits of his final film. This great opportunity has the class uniting once again to develop concept art and assets he’ll be able to use when he goes into post-production. More on that to come.