Industry Thoughts on Showreels

I performed a (small scale) survey of a few indigenous animation companies asking about 10 questions regarding their personal take on showreels, their recommended 'Do's and Don'ts' and a top tip they might offer. Below are some of the answers returned. Many thanks to those who took the time to reply.

Personally speaking, when screening showreels....

1) What is your biggest "no-no". In other words what makes you turn off a reel instantly?

Anne Tweedy (Boulder Media):
  If someone makes a DVD and it needs to be able to load on automatically.

Unclear footage, bad sound quality- in this day and age this is totally unnecessary and finally no flow to the viewing.

Everything and the kitchen sink on the reel.

 Joel Simon (Flickerpix); 

1. WHEN STUDENTS DON’T BOTHER MENTIONING WHICH PART OF THE WORK IS THEIRS (ESPECIALLY IN THE CASE OF CG) OR MAKE IT HARD TO VIEW THE REELS IN THE FIRST PLACE, LIKE CD’S WITH MASSIVE FILES, STRANGE FORMATS, ETC..
2. BUT IT ANNOYS THE HELL OUT OF ME  WHEN WE ARE ABOUT TO RECRUIT PEOPLE WHO IT TURNS OUT HAVEN’T DONE HALF THE STUFF ON THEIR REEL.. 

 Barry O'Donoghue (Barley Films):

The DVD not playing. So test it in its entirety on a DVD player AND a PC. You never know what the viewer will use. We are not likely to try every dvd player in the building if we have a stack of dvds to get through for an artistic review.

2) what are your thoughts on music over a reel?

AT: I think it needs to be there, it enhances the viewing. However it needs to be laid correctly and should have some sense to the visuals, e.g. lip sync, the music should have faded off and fades back on so that what you are showing is clear. Plan the music, make sure it suits it and is not too heavy or hard again ask someone to listen and look at it before you lock it.


JS: I DON’T MIND IT THOUGH I MAINLY SWITCH IT OFF (UNLESS THEY’VE USED A CLEVER UNUSUAL PIECE OF MUSIC)


BO'D: Unless it is directly related to the scene it is unnecessary. Remember that it is not an editing showcase it is an animation showcase. The animation performances are what we will be looking at. Of course if you are applying for an editing position or sound design position then it would be of much greater importance.

3) In terms of duration, how long before you get bored, generally?
AT: A minute and half to 2 minutes should be the goal for the length of a showreel. Anything more you are pushing it- you should be able to cut your work together to be informative, clear and snappy. If I can see you are good after 10 seconds the reel is a winner. It should  also be clear what the person worked on!


JS: DEPENDS HOW GOOD IT IS, BUT I TEND TO VIEW  ONLY 10-20 SECONDS OF NON-SOLICITED STUFF, OTHERWISE LONGER

BO'D: We just want to see your best work. If that only amounts to 30 seconds then anything beyond that is too long. If you have up to 2 minutes of GREAT stuff, we will not get bored watching it. The fact is we’ll know by the end of the first scene on your reel whether or not we’re going to want to watch the rest of it. Either it will show promise or it won’t.


4) Is typeface / slate design important to you?
AT: It is not that important, however it needs to be clear and clean. Making sure things are separated.

JS: NO

BO'D: Not important as long as it is clear. Keep it simple, again the character animation is what we are looking at. If your reel is geared towards VFX or after effects/compositing skills then maybe showcasing these through the typeface, etc. might be more important.

5) Do you favour a particular format?
AT: QuickTime’s

JS: ALWAYS FAVOUR WEBLINKS, IDEALLY LINKING TO THEIR OWN SITES / BLOGSPOT, SO THAT THERE IS SOME INFO SHOULD I NEED SOME, YOUTUBE AND VIMEO ARE OK TOO

BO'D: Online reels are fine (vimeo, youtube, etc.), as are dvds if sent to the studio.

6) Are 'work in progress'/unfinished clips acceptable to you?
AT: It is better if they are finished, but as long as it is clear they are a work in progress and if is a seriously good work in progress, which give the viewer a good indication on what the end result could be. But really is should be a limited amount of it! finished is easier to judge.

JS: YES

BO'D: Yes, but we do want to see that you can take a piece of animation to completion. That would mean a properly tied down drawing (not necessarily clean-up). 


7) Do you prefer to see credits / details superimposed onscreen or listed in a separate document?
AT: The end credit should have the name of the person and contact info- this should be replicated in a separate document. Also a link to an online version of the showreel would be good




JS: ABSOLUTELY PREFER THEM, , ALWAYS WANT TO KNOW ‘WHAT DID THEY DO ON THIS’

BO'D: Unobtrusively onscreen is good. A list is a useful addition.

8) Do you care to see walk cycles & other routine animation principles exercises?
AT: It needs to be clean and finished, but a lot of this should appear in some way in the reel in small segments, a happy medium of the exercises and definitely not all of them.  




JS: YES, I THINK IT’S A IADT FORTE

BO'D: Only if they are of a high quality (finished and on model). If you have nothing better after 4 years of work than principles exercises that are two years old, that should be setting off as many alarm bells for you as it does for us.

9) Is an apparent level of diversity important to you?
AT: Diversity is good as long as it is not cluttered, you need to hold the attention of the viewer and putting everything in plus the kitchen sink will not give the animator a proper chance-really the main thing is to have what you believe are your strongest pieces to show what you can do.


 JS:  IN SOME CASES IT’S ACTUALLY A HINDRANCE, IT ANNOYS ME WHEN THEY FAIL TO MENTION WHAT THEY ARE GOOD AT / SPECIALIZED IN (ESPECIALLY CG) WHICH MEANS WE HAVE TO DO A WHOLE BIG INVESTIGATIVE PROCESS... NOBODY CAN DO EVERYTHING
 

BO'D: First and foremost we are looking for strong character animators, in our case hand drawn animation. If a range of performances can be shown with more than one technique (CG, stop-mo, etc.) that’s fine but we’ll still need you to be able to draw really well.

10) What's your no.1 tip to students cutting their reels?
AT: Take the time to be self critical about the material you want to use, ask others what they think- people you don’t know and who don’t know you. Plan it out, it needs direction and keep the timing right, if you have a long piece, make sure you find the balance with other shorter pieces.

JS:  FOCUS ON WHAT YOU’RE GOOD AT / ON WHAT YOU ENJOY DOING (USUALLY SAME THING)

(NB. – THIS IS DIFFERENT FROM ‘WHAT YOU ENJOY WATCHING’)

BO'D: Only your best work. Best scene first.
 
and lastly, could you put these qualities in order of importance as you see it for animators
acting, story, technical, draftsmanship, originality

AT: 1. Acting

2. Draftsmanship

3. Technical – if this is to do with the using the software and computers then it can really be taught on the job, however some knowledge is advantageous as anyone being employed these days need to have some idea of the technical side of things so they can start running- if it is the technical side of animation then is would be joint 2^nd, a person can animate but can they animate in the right time given for a scene?

4. Originality

5. Story

The reality is as an animator you need to be able to do the fundamental which is draw and move – from this point on you can experiment with story and content,

 
JS: ACTING, TECHNICAL, DRAFTMANSHIP, ORIGINAL, STORY

 

H.264 Gamma shift issue

Although H.264 has many advantages and has quickly become an industry standard for mobile devices and video sharing sites it still has one major downside, which is a gamma shift or brightening of the midtones. this may be an acceptable trade off for the excellent compression ratio for many situations but there are obviously cases where colour and luminance are of huge importance and such a shift is not acceptable.

This issue has been brought up a lot throughout forums all over the net for quite a while but Apple have never offered a satisfactory solution or update as far as I'm aware.
An open source codec named x264 (made by the people who brought you the popular open source VLC media player) has been offered as a work around and in looking into it it seems to be an excellent codec that will be constantly evolving and improving according to the needs of the community as is intent with open source). The codec is only needed for encoding not for decompressing therefore others wont need to have x264 to view your work, as long as they have H264 which almost every machine will have by now.

Get x264 codec (recommended)  for mac here  and PC here

Despite this issue right now H.264 may be the best option around (with the possible exception of x264 & Apple ProRes for editing HD) but things are set to change as they always do in any technology, keep an eye on VP8 and HTML5 which promise to give H.264 a run for it's money.

In the meantime here is another workaround written by Andrew Stewart over at the video copilot blog that seems to have garnered a number of positive replies...

Hi all,

I have a quicktime gamma workaround that works for exporting h264s and other codecs that have the gamma shift issue. We use it at work for sending h264’s of telecine color grading reference to some very fussy clients, and so far no complaints :)

The blend/transparency/alpha trick comes close, but the blacks are still a little bit grey and dosent give the same results on both mac and pc. The trick we use has been coined the ‘tiff trick’ and works by tricking quicktime into using default tiff image gamma before an export.

How to do it:

1) Create a small (32×32 pixels or so) tiff or bitmap – dosent matter what color, just make it 8bit and RGB
2) Open a new player and ‘Open image sequence’ and select the tiff/bitmap. set the frame rate to whatever you’re going to be working in
3) Open your desired quicktime in another player, ’select-all’ and ‘copy’ the clip
4) Back in you ‘tiff/bitmap’ movie hit ‘add to movie’ – this will add the video over the top of the tiff/bitmap on a second video layer
5) Export using your desired codec

All going well the gamma will match your original video very closely

iPad - New demand for animated content

With the release of the iPad many new opportunities are likely to come about for animators creating content for such things as digital magazines or as they have been termed in some places "living magazines", and also animated children's 'books'.

The cost of creating moving content will obviously be higher for the magazine publishers which may limit the uptake initially, although some may choose to eliminate print costs altogether and become online only.
Some magazines will merely port a digital version of the paper product with no moving additions but the one's that really embrace the new medium will be wanting to create deeply immersive content which is where we come in! Here's an example of one such magazine...

VIV Mag Interactive Feature Spread - iPad Demo from Alexx Henry on Vimeo.

Here's some more info on that particular magazine including a 'making of' for that content...
http://bit.ly/VivMag

Advertisers will most certainly be capitalizing on the extra dimensions of time and interactivity, some of which can be witnessed in this example from wired magazine...



It's one to keep an eye on for those interested in motion graphics more so than traditional animation although hopefully demand for all types of animated content will get a boost with the proliferation of the iPad.

Flash Animation & Inking Process...

Here's some great examples of flash animation process by a guy named Nick Cross showing a stage by stage breakdown of his process and also showing him inking a frame...


http://bit.ly/NickCross01

and here's the inking one...

The Bokeh Filter

Bokeh is the term for the quality or style of the out-of-focus parts of an photographed image.
Here's an interesting novelty item that creates unique bokeh ...http://www.thebokehfilter.com/