 Welcome back, it is Friday, that means FNA Friday for new animators, and today I want to start a new series about Demo Reels, it's gonna be about tips and tricks, do's and don'ts and examples and all that good stuff. Alright, so there's a lot to talk about about Demo Reels and this is going to be a multi-part series. Generally, you want to tailor your reel towards the company that you're sending your reel to, or nowadays it's not VHS tape you're sending, but it's online, a link, you know what I mean. So if it's a game company, it's game specific stuff, VFX company, VFX specific stuff, feature animation, TV, so all those different groups of animation, if you will, they have different styles and different demands. So if you do all kinds of digital stunt doubles and camera work and creature stuff and it's all photo reel and you send that to Disney, not very useful. So once you've chosen the company that you want to gun for, think about the content and then like I said, tailor your content towards that company. And I'm doing this FNA right now because I'm doing another Demo Reels class for Animation Mentor which I also did last semester, so all those ideas are still fresh in my head and plus I got notes. But generally you want each shot to kind of represent a different skill, but that I mean, if you do a really good weight assignment, then why have another weight assignment later on in the reel? So why repeat yourself? So generally I will look at something where you show weight. You want to showcase body mechanics and weight, weight shifts, lifting something, pushing. So something that really shows the grasp of animation principles in terms of portraying different type of weights. At least that to me, that's the minimum. You show good quality, but it's all weighty stuff and that doesn't have to be a big creature walking around. It's could be again, a box lift or a character lifting someone or pulling on something, just something that's weighty, which segues into a good full body mechanics shot, which then of course you can combine those two. It could be something lifting weight and that obviously in a wide shot, you see the full character and it shows weight and the full body mechanics and weight shifts and all that good stuff. So anything that I mentioned, of course you can combine things and make it more like a shot versus just an exercise highlighting one single skill or one single aspect that you want to show. But anyway, I will look at weight, I will look at full body mechanics and then I will look at performance and performance. I will break up into pantomime and then lip sync. Now pantomime again, could be full body and then it gets closer to camera or however you want to do it. If you want to cut and just do a close up, but I would do something where it's emoting without the help of audio and then you have lip sync and then lip sync, I would look at potentially two different shots, something that's a bit more extreme. So it doesn't have to be all super sad and all super happy, but if you just do multiple shots that always show the character with the same emotion, then again, it doesn't show enough variety. And speaking of variety, I would showcase female, male, kids, old people, bigger, skinnier and also creatures and not creatures in terms of photo wheel and your rotoscope, like a horse gallop or something, but something that's kind of more like Zootopia or the dog and Coco or just there are many, many movies nowadays that are showcasing humans and creatures, but I would definitely not neglect creatures and only have humans on there. But understand it's tricky to get a good cartoony creature rig that's free online or even paid. So I'm going through my rig list and I'm posting things in animation before I'm trying to find something really good in terms of creature for feature animation that you could use for your reel. And if I find something, obviously I'll do something here and then do a post and let people know. Now, if you know something comment, please let other people know. If you find a good rig for creature, cartoony animation, including that good facial stuff, but circling back again, variety is key. So I would show if you do a wide shot, nice, good body mechanics with weight. So you can right away show I can do animation properly with all the right polish and everything moves with the right principles, applied and good weight. But on top of that, you do want to show performance. And that's why it said pantomime and lip syncs. So you can act just through body poses and pantomime, Mr. Bean style, chaplain or whatever you want to add there. And lip sync where you have the audio that kind of defines your timing and also the mood. But of course, you can see all my acting analysis clips where you can kind of take that and maybe change it to make it a bit more personal, a bit more original. And all these points to me warrant a different FNA. So something that's just about body mechanics, something that's just about performance and so on and so on. So different, different examples. But I want to just quickly say that within your reel, you got to tailor it towards the company you're sending it to and show different skill sets within each shot. Obviously, you can combine different skill sets into one awesome monster shot and then have multiple of those. But again, a variety is key. So you don't want to do performance, performance, performance where it's always the same thing, what's kind of a close up and kind of the same emotion. You just kind of repeating yourself and you're not showing off enough different skill sets. That being said, whatever you do, your strongest shot has to be first. So when someone looks at your reel, they're going to go through that first shot. And if it's not up to snuff, they're going to go and then click it off. Now, I'm exaggerating, this might be worst case scenario, but still, you want to look at really the best shot up front. So it shows right away, this is what I can do. Stay with this reel and look at the rest. And to me, this is across the board. So VFX feature, games, TV, whatever you have, the strongest shot has to be first. You don't want people to kind of wait and go, is this going to be okay? Oh yeah, this was okay. You don't want to risk that people click off your reel or just stop playing because they don't have the patience or the time to wait for the good shot. So first shot has to be fantastic. And the last shot has to be really, really good. And the middle part has to be really good. Obviously everything has to be really good. It's better to have a short reel, that's awesome. Then a longer padded out reel with kind of okay shots in the middle, it was, you're going to get kind of judged on the worst shot on your reel. But going back to what I said, this is going to be the focus of this part one FNA. The first shot has to be awesome. And one of those examples that I showed to my class is a reel by Stefan Trumache. He's an animator at Pixar. And a long time ago, he was at the Academy and his reel is still online. And I show it in every class. And even though it's old and dated, it still holds up really well. And all the things that I point out for demo reels, do's and don'ts are all in this reel. So I'm going to scrub through the reel so you can see kind of quickly what's going on. I will have a link in the description to his reel. But that is the reel in short. Now I'm going to talk mainly about this for a shot. But one of the things you want to do when you have a reel, you do want to scrub and kind of see visually what is going on. So here are the things that I will point out. A lot of people do a waist up acting shot. Usually it's a character in an empty scene and that's kind of the framing and there's nothing there and they can just do their performance. If you watch my channel, you know another massive fan of this. At the same time, if you watch my channel, you know that there are many examples that contradict what I said. But again, this is waist up and even here to some degree, waist up. Now, why does this work for him? I think at the very beginning, this is a really, really good shot that shows so many different body mechanics and pantomime and just so many complexities I'll talk about just in a second. But because of this, this shot right away shows I can animate. And then after that, it's okay. And even he actually have the complexity of someone turning around. It's a 180, he has a walk towards camera. You don't see the weight shifts, but still in this shot, he already showed what he can do. So now he can concentrate on different performances. But then going back, there's still this. And again, I'll talk about this later on. But then you have something that's full body, full body with creature. And then back to pantomime, waist up and lip sync, waist up with two characters and with a small interaction there. So as a whole, really good. And this has secondary action. This has reacting to something that's, you know, you can have something that's outside. It could be a sound effect or whatever or another character in the scene, but it's not just a singular character. And what I like about this one is that you have a pretty real depiction of creature behavior there, but I like that he has still a human character. There's a connection there. She prepares things and has that little human connection at the end. She likes her horse. So lots of little things that I really like in this reel. Same with this one, using the space and the mechanics. So I think this reel covers a lot of different things. But let me go back to this first shot and let me play it and tell you why I like this so much. So you got this little kid up there, jumps into this swampy things and that's it. All right. Now, the first thing that happens is this. It's just purely mechanics. There's no thought process. There's no pantomime, but right away within the first seconds he shows off, I can animate a character moving from A to B, but with these complexities, the set or the set piece is angled and thin. Because one of the things that people do in many, many shots is that the surface is always flat. And if again, if you watch some of my previous clips, you know that I like a set that could be a hillside, in this case, a tree trunk, whatever you have, because the uneven ground will force asymmetry, potentially in your character, depending on how uneven the ground is, but it gives you a variety and how the character will move from A to B if it's branches or jungle stuff they can go underneath. It just kind of forces you to think about how will the character move and all that good stuff that I like. So in this shot, right off the bat, the character walks from A to B on a surface that goes up and it's not very wide, it's not very safe, which then again forces the character to think about balance, which then goes into this. This is moment of off balance and then adjustment. So because of that, there's already change in timing. It's not just a cycle of someone walking up from A to B, a pause, so there's contrast in timing and just visual poses. So a little hop up there into this. And this to me is kind of a smaller version of having a conflict in your shot. I know I was a big fan of a conflict. I was like when the character is exposed to a problem, because then the character has to make a choice to fix that problem and those choices reveal character. So one of the kind of mean examples that I have but it kind of illustrates the points to be exaggerated. You have the puppy that's on fire, you have the computer that's on fire, which one are you gonna save? The computer. And then people either go, oh, or yeah, whatever it is, but it always kind of causes some sort of reaction. But I think that to me is a really good thing in your shot when your character is presented with a problem or conflict and the character has to make a choice and the choice reveals character. And again, it doesn't have to be, and I say again because of previous clips, your character doesn't always have to be a good person. There can be an antagonist, there can be a villain, there can be an evil choice because movies have antagonists and evil people and all that. And I think that should be something you could focus on in your reels. It's not just always good people. So going back to the shot, that the tree trunk is not safe and wide and uneven presents a potential problem for the kid and he has that with slightly off balance and has to rebalance himself and then continues on. So it's not a mental challenge, not something where he has to fight or a dialogue where he fights verbally with someone, but it's just a small thing that shows that he can fix something and it also forces the character in you with your animation to give it some more contrast. I'm just a big fan of this. Then after that, he switches to actual pantomime. So you have full body mechanics and then thought process. I love it at a little moment. Again, change in timing after all the big movement and the bigger moves here and with the timing, you have him slow down, the shot slows down and you can see he thinks about that, thinks about where he has to step and is ready to jump. So after purely mechanical things from a body mechanics point of view, there's more now a thought process, which to me is really important in your shots. If you just have movement, it could be potentially boring. And again, if you watch my things or you're one of my students, you've heard this, I'm not a massive fan of characters dancing or doing martial arts or that type of finding. Not because it's not cool, but a lot of times it's just movement. That being said, again, if you follow yourself that I retweet on Twitter, there are many, many awesome shots where people just fight and do martial arts. But I usually like to stuff where the style is a bit more pushed. There's interest in timing and the poses are pushed. So if it's just kind of something where you look at reference and you kind of replicate the reference, it's just not that interesting. To me, if someone would be dancing, but then maybe halfway through the pants fall down and the character has to decide well, I'm gonna continue this dance, that to me is adding conflict. And then it's interesting to me because I wanna know how the character fixes that situation. And all of this is kind of couched within a dance move. But I understand if this is completely subjective. But going back, thought process to me is key. You wanna show that the character is thinking and is alive. So after this, he decides and jumps and holds on to this and falls into this swampy water. What I like about this too is that you have a hard surface element. So the way your character walks on this, barefoot on something hard like this is going to be different than when he jumps here. So there's a different gravity aspect to this. Hanging on to this is gonna change how he moves here. And then as he falls into this, this is again a different location, different outside environment that will change how he moves, the timing and how he goes from A to B. Now going back again, like I said, barefoot on something wooden, something a bit harder. And you can expand on this and what if it's, I don't know, the whole set is somewhere snowy and you have someone in ski boots or something walking across snow. And if for those that have walked in snow, you know that little step and then go down and step and go down. Frozen is a good example of all the snowy stuff and all the influences of snow on the character with wind and all that good stuff. So many examples are out there. But that's something, again, I wanna highlight is that, well, if you have your character, think about what are they wearing and what are they walking on? And maybe you can change that and change that to your advantage to push either comedy or just to push the poses or whatever you wanna do. Now on top of that, if you look at this, you have set pieces here, set pieces here. I think the composition is really nice. You have nice elements there with a bit of a gradient there and it's not crazily rendered. You don't really need a render in your scenes. Of course it looks better. But here's my thing. And again, this might be subjective, but I just wanna put it out there. If you see a shot, that looks really good in terms of rendering. It's got the lighting and the textures and all that good stuff. But the animation is kinda, it's not quite there. My thought and from what I hear from other people is also, well, why did you spend time lighting this? Why didn't you spend this time animating and fixing it and finishing it? Many people might roll their eyes and go, well, maybe someone else did the render for me or maybe I didn't know that the animation was not good enough and I just wanted to make it look pretty. I understand, there are many, many reasons. I'm just saying. All the time should be spent into making your animation fantastic because that's what you're applying for is an animation position. Not lighting and texturing or modeling and all that. Yes, all of that will help elevate the shot potentially visually and make it potentially also more professionally looking. I know all those pros and cons. I'm just saying, I think this works because it's a nice presentation, but it's not too far out there. It doesn't distract from anything. The focus is still animation, but it's better than a character in its default outfit or gray on a gray background. The other thing that I like is when you look at the shot, look at the camera work. Follows the character. It's very subtle to the end here. And I also like that it goes down with the character seeing somewhere on the water stuff and going up. Now, but what I like about this is that the camera work is actually really nice because you have just subtle movement to give it some life, but it doesn't distract from the shot. And when the character jumps here, you have this moment. The character breaks frame. You don't want your camera to move ahead of the character unless there's a very specific choice or story point or wherever. Obviously, there's always an exception, but usually the camera person does not know what an actor, actress or creature, whatever it's going to do. So I like this. It doesn't have the character too far out or we miss something where we're confused and the camera still catches up and has that end. With a real expression at the end and again a different type of movement because he is in a different kind of environment. So you have water, then you have air, but also air holding onto something got that nice little foam with a nice pose in there. Then you have the hard surface elements. Then you have the pantomime. Then going back into just full body mechanics with a little bit of a contrasting move because of this setup of where he walks on too. All in all, I just love the shot. And to me, that as your first shot, I look at this and go, this is really good. There's so many elements that are really good and thought out. Then again, Stefan, if you watch this, you can comment say, I never thought about any of this or I thought about all of this and more. So let me know if I'm projecting things into this. I never know. This is how I take the shot. This is what I take from the shot and that's what I try to tell my students. Again, I might be wrong or not, but this is kind of what I'm taking out of the shot. And it's a really strong beginning piece because like I said, it shows body mechanics right away, full body. It shows thought process and different complexities and even a bit of camera work. So after this, I think you can do all those performance shots where it's waist up because why do another full body shot? Unless of course it's something a bit more weighty. So maybe this type of composition but the character is pulling, pushing or lifting something. I think that's totally valid. So there you go. Your first shot has to be awesome. And I'm gonna show different examples in future FNAs. So this is only part one. I have different reels, different types of shots when it comes to EFX, cartoony and different do's and don'ts and tips and tricks to really round out a long list of this is what you should be focusing on. And again, I'll try to cover EFX and games as well as future animation. So hopefully this will be a good series that covers as much as possible, but I will obviously miss many things. So if you know something as you watch this and you go away, he missed this. Comments, the comment section is open so anything you wanna add, feel free. I think everybody will profit from that and learn from it. And I will close this part one with that. So if you watched this whole thing till the end, as always, you know this. Thank you so much. If you liked it, you can hit the like button. If you have not subscribed yet, subscribe and hit the bell button because I do upload almost every day except the weekend. So if you want all notifications, hit that bell button. You know the typical YouTube ending. But that's it from me. Thank you for watching and I will see you next week.