After Effects: Showreel
After 5 weeks of creating mini projects it was time in this 6th week to bring them all together into a show reel. We all know what a basic show reel is so we were shown some alternatives that were made more creatively joining visuals and music. We were first shown the montage by Adam Gult in 2011. When this show reel was released it caused quite a stir because although he had cut work to music like a normal show reel he had reedited it to make a completely new piece of work. The piece really highlights how important the music is to a show reel and how it all fits together.
After watching the show reel we have being encouraged to think about showing your own strength and diversity as well as your interests and personal work, a show reel is designed to represent you as a person so reflect yourself in the style, music and visuals. Usually show reels last from 30 seconds to 1 minute, our show reels will be 30 seconds or under to showcase the best of the work we had produced.
Reflect yourself
When doing these projects weeks at a time, I never questioned what relevance they had but there was a reason we learned what we did, the projects were designed with consistency and rhythm in mind. the first session on loops was a slight recap from last year, looking back this was an easy technique and could be made more complex using other visuals. The rotoascope was one of the most technical skills we learnt, it’s important because in a motion graphics job it’s likely that will be the first job they give you. This was a technique that I did not enjoy I didn't get the hang of it and don't have the patience, I’m not an animator but through time I have learnt to like animation, however rotoscope is something I hope to not revisit.
a technique that I really enjoyed was the hand drawn image animation. My collide piece in based on m hand drawn and hand made materials and this could really come in handy for me. Working with more visual aspects in motion graphics ways seemed to work well because of the fact I'm a graphic designer and find the visual part easy, the animation was quite simple. The 3d project was one that was more complete in itself, we had preparation time over Christmas and the visuals and animation process were done separately. The last workshop seemed strange to me, I didn't understand what the storytelling animation was about but found that it was designed to make us work at speed and generate material quickly. It did this as we had to make graphics quite quickly but I enjoyed this ad found that I made some graphics I was happy with although some not so much.
We were told to place our animations in the show reel in a particular order, to start with the best, then move onto your favorite, maybe not the best but that you enjoyed or represents you, then you can slowly drop the standard before bringing it right back up to the best at the back, this is the piece that they remember last and will probably be a talking point when shown.
Here is my order...
1. Hologram
2. Orchard
3. Statistics
4. Rotoscope
5. Cheryl
6. 3d
7. Animation ball
8. J type
I decided to add some animations in rom outside the after effects lesson some from workshops in workshop week and some from a cinema 4D lesson we took part in. I did this because I preferred some work from them lessons and I thought it would pad out my show reel a little bit. The next thing was to find music and this was important, it had t reflect you, go with the images and be easy to edit to. I choose some louder techno music, this represents me in some ways as I like the music however the main reason I chose this was because it was easy to edit to and worked well with the visuals I had. I imported the audio and cut down the parts of music I wanted and edited out the parts I didn't. I had to use two tracks to be able to cut out a section in the middle I didn't want. We placed markers in the track so we knew where the change in music appeared and were shown some keyboard shortcuts to ensure quick editing.
We first made start and end screens containing our name and university, as if this was a real show reel we would show to industry, I decided that because have a brand myself I would place my logo on there using my colour scheme and added in effects that I really like for example the page turn effect, to ad to this I added a page turn noise that works really well before the music really kicks in. I made my pages in illustrator and pre composed them in a different composition making it easier for me to animate, when done I paced the titles into my main comp and started to edit to the music, because I had placed markers it was easy for me to see where I wanted each animation and I had cut the animations down to the parts that I liked and thought were worthy of being seen. I was happy with my animation because at the beginning it starts slow in music and the hologram video I used replicates this well. The animation then picks up in speed and pace and then comes to a stop with the letter animation breaking up, which is a piece that I would be most interested in.
I think if I was to do this again I would maybe use music that wasn't as harsh although I do think it works for what I created I think that toned down a little it may have had a better more calming effect and reflected my personality better.
Below is my show reel...
