[DarrenCullis]

hi there everyone..

i have recently re-edited my animation showreel, as my previous one was at tad too slow, can you let me know what you think of this new version please..

[url]http://www.deecee.tv/images/2_3d_ga...shoreel2005.mpg[url]

the reel is 20 meg and is an mpeg file..

i have also done a modelling reel as well and could use a bit of feedback on that too..
[url]http://www.deecee.tv/images/2_3d_ga...reel-sound3.mpg[url]

this file is 15meg and is also an mpeg file..


please could you let me know what you think of them both, and let me know what i could change to improve on to make them better...


My last employment was for Warner Brothers as a Pre-Visualisation artist working on ?Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire?. I have over five years of 3d industry experience, three of which were spent solely as a character animator . i am currently looking for work to start as soon as possible..


thank you for your time


darren cullis.....



[url]http://www.deecee.tv[url]

[Edited on 29/1/05 by DarrenCullis]

[Edited on 29/1/05 by DarrenCullis]

[Sunstar]

There seems to be some problems with the links, try adding a space after the link.

[DarrenCullis]

hi there again....


sorry that the link didnt work here, i will try em again

animation
http://www.deecee.tv/images/2_3d_gal...horeel2005.mpg




modelling
http://www.deecee.tv/images/2_3d_gal...eel-sound3.mpg


my wesite
http://www.deecee.tv

[Sunstar]

I just saw the animation demo reel, I think its better, but still a little long, there are some works that maybe you should remove, I don't know if they are old, but they look old.

You have some excelent shots there, congratulations, I really like your work

[Sunstar]

I think your modeling reel is excelent, you show all your avilities in modeling, and some great characters, I don't think you'll have problems finding a job, you are very talented

[DarrenCullis]

hi there


i just wanna say thank you sunstar for taking the time to look at my work. thanx for the feedback please could you let me know which animations i should take off my reel please...

and id be interested in knowing which animations you liked the best


thank you for your time.

cheers...



darren cullis

[Zamolxes]

very interesting. the animation is good, especially on the muscle-man, but indeed you have some not-so-good animation on your reel, and according to... those reel-making standards... that's not a good idea. you should have only your very best on the demo reel, and if it's just 20 seconds long... it's OK.
I think your characters' acting is not so believable, and you could work on that. as I see, you've improved a lot from those earlier (I guess they're earlier, based on logic ) animations. A lot! but you still have default-ish character acting (sorry), and that can be improved with guts and sweat... you need guts to animate a scene really well, I think, because you can't hide behind what's cosy, easy to do, and hope to achieve believable acting. and you have to plan it really well, and not be afraid of making your character do stuff you can't figure out how you'll animate it... yet.... don't worry. you will. just chalenge yourself into animating real-life sequences. I saw some subtleties in the characters' motion and that's awsome. that's what makes animation great. observing life, basically, and not relying on curves/splines to "do the job".I guess you've seen the work of Cameron Miyasaki, and if you haven't... you need to, believe me. It underlines 2 points here: one - that 1 second of brilliant animation is worth more than 3 hours of default-ish animation; and two - that accuracy in detail, also known as "subtleties", is 'the name of the game'.
Your modeling reel is nice too, but I found the animation reel more impressive. Basically, because of those little things, short moments of super-cool stuff. (to get from super-cool to great animation is still a long way). So... which way do you want to go? Be a good animator? Or a good modeler?
(I don't want to influence you.... although I'm sort of evil creature of the night, right now, when I say that... good modelers - you can find them everywhere. But really good animators worth their weight in... well, let me see... diamonds, I guess that'll work ) You can't do everything very very well. But that's just my oppinion and I might be wrong.
If you feel like you can do it, then you must absolutely follow that, don't mind me, and listen to yourself because you know best. No one else can know your inner-workings as well as you do.

[Zamolxes]

Get "Stop Staring" by Jason Osipa, if you didn't read that yet. It's fantastic.
Short example: when the woman comes in, and before she lifts that heavy metal bar, she smiles - that's not a natural smile, and Jason's talking about that in depth.
Another thing (I did like your facial animation in XSI presentation btw, but there are some issues: see Jason's book and his way to model shapes and handle the whole thing) - I thought that the muscle-guy walking, in the beggining, after showing off his "muscles" is lacking facial animation: man, his face is absolutely still. Refer to Cameron's work for that. Man, those faces are workin'
The way I see really great computer animation is through intense keyframing and not letting those goddamn splines rule. Same for facial animation - people do weird things with their faces aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaall the time, and those weird things (very few have been used yet in animation, I believe) are the salt & pepper of acting. That's why I'm talking about Cameron Miyasaki. Because he's a master of doing amazing things with characters' faces.
And by "amazing things" I mean things that are very real, not only weird. You can deform that face in countless ways, but not everything has a meaning, or works in a certain context (Context!!! A BIG thing in taking animation to the "next level"!). And most important, because it's probably the hardest thing to do: when animated, certain poses normally go with certain actions - striking a fantastic pose but not relating it, in context, with the right kind of action, and not having real meaning for it... yuck. Useless. A simple example - a girl bites her lips, especially the lower lip maybe, and then uses the tip of her tongue to wet them, and her eyes are pretty snappy, running around like crazy, but looking at very specific things (just watch a movie to study a scene such as this in detail - like Eternal sunshine of the spotless mind, for ex.), and etc. etc., you name them, but keep it very very specific - that means that she wants to be kissed and all, etc. etc. Right? Now use all that great motion in another context, where it makes no sense... and all magic has gone. To Honolulu.

[DarrenCullis]

hi there,



first of all i just wanna say thanx to Zamolxes for the great critt and advice on my reel. i will certainly be looking up all the points mentioned. i also wanna say that the animation on my showreel is about a year old now, as im not allowed to show any of the the stuff i was working on, whilst i was working for warner brothers until to final film is released in november 2005. so for now, i will just have to use the animation i have. i will indeed try and do sum new animation to show off my new and improved abilities but finding work is my main priority... could you please outline which animations you liked the best for me so that i can go back and re-edit my reel to use its full potential


once again thank you for your time...



cheers



Darren cullis