After doing research on other show reels, I had a clear idea of how I wanted my show reel to be, with upbeat music, best animations at the start and end and only putting in my best stuff rather than trying to fill it. This made making my show reel tricky because I haven't animated much this year - my focus is the design side, so much of my material is from our first year. I wasn't confident with a lot of my first year animation since I didn't feel like I had time to learn how to animate properly as well as finish whatever length animation it was by the deadline, so really a lot of what I had isn't really that usable.
I managed to find a few parts, like scenes from my Young Avengers opening which I did find fun to do last year. Other than that, I used second year work like a scene from our cake film - I didn't animate it but I cleaned it up, and since Johnny turns around, I feel like this is a good example of showing that I can keep characters on model when cleaning them up. The other thing I used from this year was my Context of Practice Turnaround - I do like the design that I created for that, and the character moves much better than my other turnarounds in my first year show reel so I feel that it is a good idea to include it. I also put in another animation I did in my spare time, that is completely coloured in and shows hair animation which I really like. This still only got me around 25 seconds though.
I know that my other animation work just won't look good in my show reel, so I decided to spend a few hours making some more to put in. The new animation only lasts 2 seconds, so it didn't really make a difference and it would have been easier to make something longer in After Effects that would help, bu I had fun and it was something entertaining for my friends so it was worth doing. It makes a nice, cheesy ending for my show reel anyway, and that works for me.
For the audio, I wanted something upbeat - if we didn't have to worry about copyright music and all of that, I would probably have considered using the Pacific Rim soundtrack again just because it really does make you all "YEAHHH!!!" which would be a great atmosphere for showing off work. Sadly, I can't do that, so I had to look on the Free Music Archive. I really couldn't find a lot that I liked, and the ones that I did like had vocals which would be too distracting from my reel. Eventually I found two - the first one that I tried had little bits of words throughout the music which I didn't realise, so I didn't use that. The other one if the one that I used - it did have vocals, but it also had a just under 30 second intro which is just about how long my animations lasted for, so it took me a while with a lot of cutting to get my animations to fit exactly with the instrumental bit. I think it works well, with a lot of the animations appearing right on the beats of the song, and the end does finish at a good place. I am a lot happier with my show reel than last year, and I think my animation skill has improved a little bit, considering how little 2D I have actually done since last year. I think that it accurately represents me too as a creator, with bright colours, upbeat music and bits of silliness.
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