Hi Guys,
This is my first post over here
I recently made a Character TD reel. I would be grateful if I could get some critique from the experts from here, since I would be doing the good old job hunting with this reel.
http://pritishdogra.com/Reel/Rigging.html
Thank for watching
Pritish
Let me start of by saying one I know very little about rigging and two what I say below is just my personal opinion.
Its quite hard to critique this one for me, I’ll go with the first thing that I tend to comment on about reels is the length. There is always some debate about how long it should be, but I personally think 5 minutes is to long.
Its tricky as you have a some cool and detailed tools. The first part of the first rigging tool, where you show the UI and the various build settings. I find this goes on for to long, as its speeded up its difficult to see whats going on. Id cut this down or even cut it totally and use bullet points to detail that part of the tool. I really like the fact that you showed several outcomes of using the tool, ie different rigs you created with it.
With the face rigging and other tools, I’d only show stuff that makes yours different, the moveable pivot for the feet for example. Stuff like foot role and ankle twist, finger twist I dont think are that important to show as there nothing new.
You have limited time so you only want to show the best parts of it, what makes yours different, what makes it stand out.
If it was me, I’d send the company I am applying to one animation of my reel, and another animation thats a detailed overview of the tool, including the tool itself. Dunno if this is acceptable, but its the way I would like to do it.
I like the first shot of the character and the muscle set up, its nice to see the final result rather than just someone moving something in the view port.
As I said these are just my personal opinions, I found it really hard to critique this one Ill be honest so I may be way off with some of the things I’ve said.
Hope this helps.
+1 to Atom.
Also the muscle stuff isn’t that impressive. At least not from what you’re showing. Getting that range of deformation would be easy without a muscle sim. Maybe some pose deformers, but definitely no need for muscles.
If you wanted to show off good use of em you should have the character make some very dramatic poses to show off how well it deforms using the system. Otherwise it’s just a hugely inefficient rig.
Even rigs without muscles have to have a very strong range of motion without breaking.
Definitely shorted it up a bit. The only reels I know that go 5 minutes and don’t cause onset of boredom are professional reels with a lot of feature work and such.
Just as an example. He shows off his rigging automation by saying that he used it for all the rigs on the reel and then showed a very fast demo of different variations of the rig. Something like 10 seconds total gets the point across.
You can always have far more detailed breakdowns and such on your website, and if you catch the viewers attention with a very short teaser of what you’ve got they can always go look at the rest of it.
Your reel was selling your autorigger as a commercial product far more than it was selling yourself as a TD.
I agree with supertom (and really, who couldn’t agree with someone with a name like that), in that it’s a tad too long. Decide on the strongest features of your rig system, demonstrate those technically, then show the feature you are demonstrating being applied to an animated character.
Remember that even the most well-to-do project leads get bored pretty easily, so splitting up your reel into small, munchable segments that peak a viewer’s interest is a must!
Thank you guys for input. I took some of your suggestion on board and cut the reel down to 3 and half minute from 5 minutes.
Would definately work on the others as they would take some time
Regards
Pritish