With this, I found the best place to post your showreels was on Youtube.
Starting off with the good;
Starting with length, the showreel has a very nice length of 1 minute 50 seconds although this can only be judged on a case by case basis as a long portfolio but with a mass of high qualiy work could do wonders whilst a short show reel with very little work could still seem too lengthy. In reality it doesn't seem like the length should be judged, it should be based of it drags on or not or at least the time allocated per item.
No item really drags on although the quality of some of the showcases seems to be all over the place. The first item lasts thirty seconds and provides multiple pans over the object alongside a wireframed low poly. It would be nice to see more angles but its still quite nice. The second object doesn't have much beyond zbrush spins and a flash of the wireframe although the third attempts to incorporate all these features. I believe the starting downwards pan could have been a little less zoomed in but beyond this, all i can really pick on is the choice of pose. A T pose is good fore displaying the character but adding an action pose would really bring the showcase to life.
What really catches my eye is the minimalist style and strong opening. Transitioning from a stylised title screen to a slow pan of the highly detailed robotic horse really grabs your attention and makes your interest for the entire showreel.
Overall its very original, the use of slight animation in the title and the choice of music following the pace of the camera pans is a great example of attention to detail. I'll try to incorperate these in to my final product although it could mean a fair bit of work within adobe after effects for such small details.
Now for the bad;
First off, this isn't a terrible show reel. It's more down to its sever lack of structure. The content within seems very overboard with what looks like an overview of every asset the artist has ever created, bringing the showreel length to a whopping ten minutes. The vast majority of these assets should be cut out, especially the small, simple pieces as in comparison with the full bar, they seem to greatly drag down the quality and bore the viewer.
Lets go over the content quality. Out of the entire show-reel, i believe the only pieces that should be kept in are the bar models, the higher quality, base coloured weapons and possibly the sink scene as these showcase the artists modelling ability. Many of the assets dip greatly in quality when it comes to modelling ability but this quality dip is seem mostly in the texture work. Its obvious from assets such as the mini-gun that the artist has spent his/ her time almost entirely focused on the modelling side. With these assets included in the reel, it does nothing but work greatly against the artist, displaying their weaknesses and doing very little to display their strengths. Cut out all except for the prior mentioned assets and it could be brought down to a 2 minute length and prevent a lot of boredom.
In regards to the pans; every object has the exact same spin. It would be nice to see some variation just to mix up the showreel but i realize that this could be quite difficult when displaying such simple assets. The pan does work very nicely for the bar and could work if slowed down slightly for the guns but a few side-ways pans or simple slow zoom-ins/ zoom-outs would add much more depth without requiring all too much extra effort.
There is no texturing breakdown or wire-frame displayed throughout the entire showreel but as a CGI artist its understandable as optimization wouldn't be all too useful beyond improving rendering times.
Now we have the music choice. The artist has attempted to make the reel far more energizing by adding what could be viewed as battle music although this just seems very unfitting and rather comical at times. When it comes to music choice, finding something calm and ambient that slowly builds can add a sense of mystery to the work.
The final point that seems like a deal-breaker for anyone still wanting to hire the artist at this point i a randomly added clip from the Muppets, stating that "sharing is caring". This removed any possibility of the reel ever being taken seriously and dis-credits any of the prior work. This reel alongside the same artist's epic food reel would probably bar him/ her from serious employment but looking on the bright side, the reels can be used as a checklist of things not to do in my finished product.
1). 3D Modeling Showreel Portfolio Akshay AAIP Arena 17 Chandigarh
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UsTfMjWM-FMStarting with length, the showreel has a very nice length of 1 minute 50 seconds although this can only be judged on a case by case basis as a long portfolio but with a mass of high qualiy work could do wonders whilst a short show reel with very little work could still seem too lengthy. In reality it doesn't seem like the length should be judged, it should be based of it drags on or not or at least the time allocated per item.
No item really drags on although the quality of some of the showcases seems to be all over the place. The first item lasts thirty seconds and provides multiple pans over the object alongside a wireframed low poly. It would be nice to see more angles but its still quite nice. The second object doesn't have much beyond zbrush spins and a flash of the wireframe although the third attempts to incorporate all these features. I believe the starting downwards pan could have been a little less zoomed in but beyond this, all i can really pick on is the choice of pose. A T pose is good fore displaying the character but adding an action pose would really bring the showcase to life.
What really catches my eye is the minimalist style and strong opening. Transitioning from a stylised title screen to a slow pan of the highly detailed robotic horse really grabs your attention and makes your interest for the entire showreel.
Overall its very original, the use of slight animation in the title and the choice of music following the pace of the camera pans is a great example of attention to detail. I'll try to incorperate these in to my final product although it could mean a fair bit of work within adobe after effects for such small details.
2). 3D Environment Showreel - Sam Hayes
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O0Vnj6FJgw0
First off, it may not be the best and has a fair bit of room for improvement but its the best i can currently find outside of CGI/ VFX showreels after looking through maybe 40 reels. From the start, the reel has a very nicely animated intro with a light-brown faded image of the artist prior work. This sets the tone nicely for the huge western town.
The quality of the work is very high although i feel the the opening down-wards pan doesn't showcase the best of the artists ability. In the first few seconds it seems incredibly important to try and blow away the viewer, capturing their focus. A little extra detail on the town sign or maybe even a god-ray could add wonders. Still, the quality throughout is very high and almost every pan is unique. I would have liked to see a slight fade between pans instead of the abrupt transition but this would be easy enough to add in my showreel.
After multiple pans, a wireframe is shown but i would have personally recorded the scene with textures and with just wireframe so i could blend between the two within Sony Vegas or After Affects. This wouldn't be a difficult or time consuming task and could add a lot to the showreel. This is an absolute must although it means i cannot do any specific editing until i have both variations rendered out so they can be edited in parallel to ensure every transition is the same between them. This would be a nightmare to do otherwise.
The use of animation really brings the reel to life. From the starting birds to the rotating wheel, it all makes the scene feel much more dynamic. I really wish there were dust particles to further add to this but thats just something to consider in my own work.
When it comes to the length, theres enough content within that it leaves you wanting more. Honestly at 1:30, it could have been much longer and still kept my interest but i believe the artist has taken quality far over quantity, showing only the absolute best they have to offer. The work quality could be better and more information should be provided such as completion times and texture resolution, even reference but the artist has an eye for detail and knows how to display his/ her work. Music choice wise, a slowly building ambiance is used so even this side is covered.
This showreel will be great reference for pacing and to compare against my own but for sheer showmanship, showreels such as "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zwi0Ju0ZwzE" will be invaluable. Every last camera angle and transition has been cleverly thought out to provide the best possible viewer experience.
Now for the bad;
1). CGI 3D Modeling Showreel HD: Character and Creature Reel by Jason Brown
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MZYpn2Tn5pM
This is a tough one as the showreel itself has apsolutely fantastic work although i feel like its presented very poorly. I have no issue with the length of two minutes nor the pacing of the content. What i have an issue with is most of the showreel consisting of movie clips without providing any breakdown of what assets were worked on by the artist in question.
The opening sculpt was of outstanding quality and although the pan didn't cover much beyond a small spin, it seemed like a suitable approach for any small object or monster head. The snake on the other hand seemed to pull down the quality greatly. The model is nice but doesn't seem like it could have been the artists best work in comparison to the prior sculpt. I understand this was put there just to showcase its CGI counterpart in the physical movie but it almost loses your interest. I would have probably pushed this comparison further back in the showreel for once the viewer has become entirely hooked.
The slow outwards pan over the spinning executioner model was just thrown in to the middle of Herculez movie clips, this would have looked fantastic if put either first or in place of the snake. All that would have needed changing is the spin/ zoomout length as it seemed very fast paced in relation to the rest of the reel. This is repeated a second time for the phaero model although its shown between the movie showcases which just comes across as confusing. Did the artist create the environments too? You're given next to no information.
I feel like the artist has attempted to make their showreel exciting but it just has no context. The work is of the highest quality and its obvious from the movie clips that he's an employed artist so the showreel may not be to aid him in employability but to simply show off his yearly work progress.
The music seems very unfitting and barely audible for most of the reel but this is quite an easy fix and annoyingly one of the hardest things to get right as it reflects on the pacing of the media and finding something unique could be impossible with copyright laws coming in to play.
2). Demo Reel 2015 - 3d Artist - 3d Portfolio - Umar Abid
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oENZ9k-6fkg
First off, this isn't a terrible show reel. It's more down to its sever lack of structure. The content within seems very overboard with what looks like an overview of every asset the artist has ever created, bringing the showreel length to a whopping ten minutes. The vast majority of these assets should be cut out, especially the small, simple pieces as in comparison with the full bar, they seem to greatly drag down the quality and bore the viewer.
Lets go over the content quality. Out of the entire show-reel, i believe the only pieces that should be kept in are the bar models, the higher quality, base coloured weapons and possibly the sink scene as these showcase the artists modelling ability. Many of the assets dip greatly in quality when it comes to modelling ability but this quality dip is seem mostly in the texture work. Its obvious from assets such as the mini-gun that the artist has spent his/ her time almost entirely focused on the modelling side. With these assets included in the reel, it does nothing but work greatly against the artist, displaying their weaknesses and doing very little to display their strengths. Cut out all except for the prior mentioned assets and it could be brought down to a 2 minute length and prevent a lot of boredom.
In regards to the pans; every object has the exact same spin. It would be nice to see some variation just to mix up the showreel but i realize that this could be quite difficult when displaying such simple assets. The pan does work very nicely for the bar and could work if slowed down slightly for the guns but a few side-ways pans or simple slow zoom-ins/ zoom-outs would add much more depth without requiring all too much extra effort.
There is no texturing breakdown or wire-frame displayed throughout the entire showreel but as a CGI artist its understandable as optimization wouldn't be all too useful beyond improving rendering times.
Now we have the music choice. The artist has attempted to make the reel far more energizing by adding what could be viewed as battle music although this just seems very unfitting and rather comical at times. When it comes to music choice, finding something calm and ambient that slowly builds can add a sense of mystery to the work.
The final point that seems like a deal-breaker for anyone still wanting to hire the artist at this point i a randomly added clip from the Muppets, stating that "sharing is caring". This removed any possibility of the reel ever being taken seriously and dis-credits any of the prior work. This reel alongside the same artist's epic food reel would probably bar him/ her from serious employment but looking on the bright side, the reels can be used as a checklist of things not to do in my finished product.
