your show reel is the most important
thing you can use to attract new paying
clients and I'm going to show you 20
techniques to craft a perfect show reel
motion design and animation and at the
end of this video I'm going to show you
how you can submit your own chair reel
for a view on this channel
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linked shorter is definitely better
between 30 and 60 seconds is ideal
people watching your reel that are
actually gonna hire you can probably
tell within the first 20 seconds of your
reel whether you're good for the job
and they're generally pretty busy people
so we'll definitely appreciate your not
taking up as much of their time my first
show reel was almost 2 minutes long and
it had no right to be that long if
you're a beginner or a student that
doesn't have as many projects to fill
out a real keep it even shorter no one
complains if a reel is too short
only if it's too long keep them wanting
more I only include your best work you
don't need to show off all the projects
that you've done to show that you're
capable of every different style of
animation that's not that important
what's more important is the quality if
you've got a bunch of 9 out of 10 that's
made out of tens don't include your
sevens and sixes keep it tight and
whoever sees it it's gonna see an
overall high quality the weaker projects
just bring down the average so cut them
ruthlessly and I know that's not only
include work you want to get more of if
you've got a lot of maybe 3d type
animation that look really good but you
don't have any interest in doing anymore
of those projects and you don't want
them don't put them in your reel because
that's what people will expect if you're
looking to get a start position in a
small studio they are probably running a
Swiss Army knife who can jump between
lots of projects and has a lot of
different skills so you might want to
include some broader projects there but
definitely make sure the quality is
consistent structure start with your
best work first and end with something
strong as well and definitely front load
all of your best animations so that if
someone only were just half your reel
they say the best stuff and hopefully
that encourages them to watch the rest
of it but you also want the last project
to leave a good impression
if your reel starts really strong but
ends weak whoever's watching it will
think wow this reel it's pretty good but
it's not as good as I thought it was
when I first started watching it you
want to leave the best impression
possible you need to make your role
clear if you did the design but not the
animation for that clearly in the
description under the reel you don't
want someone to inquire about your reel
wanting to hi you saying we love the
character animation you did and then you
have to kind of awkwardly explain oh
actually I just did the backgrounds in
that show and you may want to avoid jobs
like that altogether
you don't want someone else's work being
the highlight of your show
fill it up with personal work it's not
cheating at all my last show reels from
least 60% personal work and no one
really cares for your animated it for
they care that the animation is good
having a big brand or client in your
show real can be good because it shows
that you've been vetted by the industry
and can be trusted with known properties
but it's not as important as the overall
quality music choose something that
suits the Tony for animations and mood
that you want to convey with your work I
personally like tracks with a faster
tempo and a lot of percussive elements
so I can cut on the beat a lot easier
and if something has a breakdown in the
middle as well you can play with the
variety of tones now pretty much
everyone uses copyrighted music that
they don't have the right license for
I've done it in the past because it's
kind of hard to find royalty-free music
that's good for a show real and it's
expensive to pay for your own custom
music you won't be crucified in the
industry at all using copyrighted music
but I can't in good conscience recommend
it if the roles reversed and a musician
was using your animations to promote
their stuff you probably wouldn't like
it
update your reel often once a year is a
pretty good time to aim for although not
all motion designers do it you can also
update your reel sooner maybe every six
months but it's really when you have
enough work to justify it I'd say as
soon as you have 40 seconds of animation
that's better than your previous reel
that's the time to update it show you
the process I don't see this a lot in
reels but I think it's really
interesting whenever I see a bit of a
work in progress of a certain shot where
maybe someone sees the roughs and then
the blocked in animation and then it
cleaned up or maybe the animation
without the effects those can be really
interesting and help the clients sort of
imagine how you might work with their
products show personality you're only
going to get hired for two reasons if
you have great work or you're great to
work with now most of the time the
clients haven't worked with you before
so you've got to convince them of the
second one and a good way to show that
is to add some individual Flair of
personality into your show reel because
they're probably watching 20 reels
back-to-back and if you can show that
you're not just a robot that's gonna
help and you could do that with maybe a
custom intro say you're really into
monkeys have a bunch of monkeys swinging
across the letters of your name or
touches like that can help you stick out
in the mind of the client show you a
design if you do some design who don't
animate those results all the time it's
fine to include some
frames the awesome art director Nydia
Diaz included a whole bunch of style
frames in her real sort of interweave
between the final projects and it's
absolutely awesome I don't see this
nearly enough so you can definitely
include your design work Taylor you're
real Taylor you're real to a specific
job or a specific client if you really
want a job at this studio but they only
do 3d work and no 2d maybe duplicate
your real remove the 2d projects and
include more 3d work that's gonna be
more relevant to them I wouldn't do this
for every single client but if there's
one job offering they really into and
want to give yourself the best chance to
get it it might be worth customizing
your reel a bit treat it like a client
project artists aren't terrible it
didn't work for themselves whether it's
creating a new website or even updating
your portfolio it often gets pushed to
the very lowest priority because there's
no outside pressure for you to do it so
I definitely recommend blocking out time
for you to specifically work on your
reel maybe set a deadline 12 months from
when you updated your real last and work
towards that goal and just make sure it
gets done and I'm also terrible at this
so I'm not a mutant by any means get
feedback from your peers what you think
might be a really strong animation might
be pretty weak to someone else you might
want to include something because it
took me so long to animate and the
client was really awful but you got
there in the end
and it looks great but in reality it
might not look that great and maybe
you're projecting all of your hardship
onto that and that's not really gonna
matter to whoever's watching it so find
someone that you trust to be honest with
you to give you feedback the worst
feedback you can get is someone saying
yeah great real ask them to offer you
specific improvements they think that
could make it better don't include work
that's obviously straight from a
tutorial if you include work where
you've just followed a tutorial and
maybe tweaked the color slightly people
are gonna know not only do our directors
and producers watch some of these
tutorials but even if they haven't seen
that specific tutorial they'll have seen
someone else copy that tutorial two
times that week certainly use things
you've learned from the tutorials but
use that skills and the techniques
you've learned not the actual assets and
design from that example take what
you've learned and make it your own no
dragons no robots no space
okay there might be a bit extreme but
I've heard that from a lot of people
that review three-d reels typically
that's what students make first because
they're pretty easy to get looking cool
seeing a shot of spaceship doesn't
really tell you an awful lot about the
skills of who made it because there's
not an awful lot of animation there's
not a lot of weight going on and it's
become a bit cliche of reels these days
although I love a good robot dragon or
spaceships any of those privately
anytime no long intros we don't need 20
seconds for you to explain what year it
is and that this is a show real we know
that before we clicked on it get
straight to the point what we're here
for which is your animations
I have legitimately seen reels where
half of the animation is just the intro
and it looks good but it wasn't what we
were there for and it was kind of
confusing for the first 10 minutes use
editing software
this may seem enormous ly obvious to
most of you out there but I edited my
first reel in After Effects and it was
painful the next year when I updated my
reel within one minute of opening
premiere I could hear angels singing it
was if this software was made exactly
for clipping clips together so use an
editing software whatever you need just
don't use After Effects time remapping
if you have a shot that you really want
to include but you want to hit a really
specific beat and include a few extra
frames of your animation you can speed
it up by 20% or slow it down by 10% I've
done that a whole bunch of times in my
previous reels and it's impeccable
nobody notices can even I can't tell the
difference anymore ctrl or command R is
the shortcut in Premiere to speeding up
your clips reanimate your shots if you
see a shot you've already done anything
if I had next hour I could improve it
improve it if it's on a client project
double-check your contract or with the
client to make sure you're allowed to
make changes to it because sometimes
it's down there in small print that you
can't but if you can definitely go for
it it's gonna make you real look better
he's an example I did this was a gif I
made for the Dropbox blog a couple of
years ago and it's just a pretty static
animation but for my latest reel I just
added a position animation so it slides
from screen left to screen right and
just help keeps the pace and doesn't
grind it to a hold for this release taxi
and a bonus tip is upload it natively
everywhere of course uploaded to Vimeo
but also upload it's linked in to
YouTube to Facebook to Instagram any way
you can upload it specifically in that
platform don't just link it to that page
on Vimeo
all of those platforms will help promote
a natively uploaded video way more than
a linked one because they don't want to
risk people going off their site and not
coming back I'm gonna be doing a show
real critique in a couple of weeks on
this channel so in the description
you'll see a forum where you can submit
a link to your reel and maybe it'll get
featured on the channel I'll be
reviewing a reel and how to improve it
it doesn't matter how advanced your
animation skills are this isn't about
the animation it's about the reel itself
but I will be ruthless constructively
ruthless to discover the best ways to
learn motion design I've created a show
playlist of videos that'll think you'll
enjoy if you made it this far please
like the video and consider subscribing
if you'd like more of these videos every
week I'll see you in the next video
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