Professional Practise 3: Updating my Showreel

 Professional Practise 3

Updating my Showreel

• Tim Dillnut Showreel Notes
• I contacted Freelance 2D Character Animator, Tim Dillnut, enquiring about his recommendations for showreels. I told him I will be graduating in July, so he gave me some great advice on how I could put together my showreel. 
• Here is the list he gave me:

• I think I already tick a lot of boxes with the work I have produced so far at University. In addition to this, I think I cover some of the senior roles, such as Variation of 1s, 2s and 3s, various types of characters and differing styles. Despite this, I still need to further refine my work as clearer visual examples of these, after graduating, through a series of tests or my own personal projects. 

• Edd Benson Showreel Notes
• I additionally contacted Edd Benson, a Junior 2D Animator currently working at Blue-Zoo Animation. He offered a lot of advice, despite being a 3D Animator and sent me towards a YouTube video of a showreel talk and review. Whilst this is mainly for 3D Animation, I feel that I could take on board a lot of the advice. 
• One great piece of advice from the talk was, "Don't make a reel of walk-cycles" which I think applies also to showing a variety as much as I can. This is why I would like to separate character animation and show a variety of shot types and movements. 
• Here is the talk he directed me towards:

• Edd also gave his own advice with, "something high energy," which would grab a studios' attention. I decided to include some acting animation to start with, from my COP Module and Aviation Aggravation. I wanted to separate this with The Monstrous Children Documentary animation and inbetweening I completed for Kingdom of Masks. I think this starts out the showreel with high energy and instantly would grab the viewer's attention. This timed with the music also works really well, so it works as a great opening to the showreel.

• Creating my 2D Animation Showreel:
• I liked the idea of using the music creatively in the showreel. I understood that this might not be something a lot of employers/studios listen to, however, for the purpose of my general, online showreel, I thought it would be best to try this method. 
• In addition to this, I wanted to expand upon my previous showreel from last year. I am still proud of a lot of the work I produced and I think that they do feel relevant in my current work. 
• In my showreel, I needed to include my branding. I tried this by adding a red box at the bottom for a subtitle, indicating my role. I additionally changed the title to include my website colours and the end of the presentation utilising the red again. 
• Unfortunately, we needed to limit the showreel to 1 minute, therefore I had to cut down on the work I put into it. I was going to try including my work in progress scenes, which would fade into the final shot, however I had to scrap this because of the 1 minute time limit. I will adjust my showreel in the future to include this. 
• Here is my end of year showreel:

• What could be improved:
• I think there could be more examples of character interactions in my showreel, as there are little to no examples of this. I would need to animate something after University work finishes, as a study, to help add this missing element.
• Some further acting examples would help solidify my skills much more, so this is something I would like to work on in the future.