Comments on: Demo Reel Critique Episode 6

By: Antonio Marcato

Antonio Marcato — Tue, 14 Jun 2011 04:35:13 +0000

Hi Nick, so I decided to base my intro on one of the tuts you posted. I think it maybe exemplifies what you always stress about moving past the initial tut and making something kind of unique with it. thought I’d share with the community here.

Would love to hear a few honest words. thanks a bunch.

Lastly, since you asked, I’d love to hear more of your thoughts on IDEAS in these critiques. You have extensive feedback on execution but it seems like you could talk a bit more about the concepts behind the reels.

By: Nicolas Auger

Nicolas Auger — Tue, 15 Feb 2011 10:49:17 +0000

Hi from Paris Nick,
here is my 2010 reel:
http://www.vimeo.com/17334034
all comments are welcome!
thanks

By: Matt Radford

Matt Radford — Wed, 11 Aug 2010 23:57:13 +0000

figured I’d throw my student reel out there for critique:

http://vimeo.com/13110077

thx !!

By: H

Thu, 05 Aug 2010 15:13:41 +0000

Oh thanks for answering so quickly! I got it for the Dodge one, it looks like animating noise with a bit of transfer/blur/glow or something? Nice result by the way. I’ll put an eye on your tutorial, (I missed this one). The thing is, it’s still very tricky! (Which is good in that case). I am currently working on compositing a flying steel can picture in a slow motion shot and as the can spins out and around, I was wondering about how to be as realistic as possible, I mean by following the light source and animating the actual reflections, which are, obviously, realistics because part of the original picture. Well then, I should probably be working on it, I just hopped that you, crazy experimenter (I love your 3D “what-ever-the-time-I’ll-spend-on-this-rollercoaster”) would have experiment on more realistic way of animating reflections on more detailed and “moving” still frames! However, I’ll do my best to achieve and may give you all feedback on that if I succeed, I mean if I succeed enough! :p Have a nice day folks!

By: The Gorilla

The Gorilla — Thu, 05 Aug 2010 14:49:54 +0000

Believe it or not… On my first Reel Critique, I did a “Your Hired” “Your Fired” thing and I stopped doing it since. People can get work at different levels of work for different jobs with different expectations in different cities. Plus, connections and attitude is a HUGE part of hiring that has nothing to do with reels. I could say “Digital Kitchen probably won’t hire you.” But that’s not too helpful either. So, I decided to just give everyone a hard critique and tell them what was great and what could be be better. I think this is more helpful overall then telling them that they wouldn’t get hired.

By: The Gorilla

The Gorilla — Thu, 05 Aug 2010 14:41:38 +0000

Right, you have the right idea. It’s going to be hard to fake for sure. Any time you have a reflective object as a still that you are trying to pretend is moving, it gets hard. I do a bit of this fake reflection in my car tutorial and in the Dodge piece in my reel. Overall, if you push stills to far it will look fake, but there are things you can do to help.

By: H

Thu, 05 Aug 2010 13:18:39 +0000

Great as usual Nick! I have a question about one of your critic on the compositing of the sport car, when you’re talking about animating reflections. I do a lot of videos based on compositing and animating photographs but I have to say that I am very confused about what you mean by “animating reflections”. Is that something like painting out all the brightest surfaces on the car and then trying to emulate new ones with an adjustement layer with higher contrast or a layer based on HDR-like photograph to suggest the environement around? To me it sounds like trying to make the hardest part of a realistic lighting on a still 2D frame and, even if I would really looooove to be able to animate reflections that way, i definitely cannot imagine that it could be done efficiently by a standard human being! And more than that, on a car picture for example, if the car turns, reflections won’t follow a linear path along the car but every “illuminated” part of the car would behave differently, delaing with the material and the shape of each of the reflective surfaces! My english might be a little rough, sorry for that but, Hu, it’s probably worth “chewbaccing”! If never you read this and have any suggestions about how to achieve this technique, i would definitely be your padawan for ever!

By: John Cook

John Cook — Thu, 05 Aug 2010 06:04:19 +0000

Hey Nick, new to your site, very cool.

I like the premise of no nonsense critique.

Suggestion: Reels are there to win work. Give a conclusion addressing that – would you hire them? Would you not? Perhaps a glimpse into the arena they might play well in, ie, local spots, ad firm, not yet commercial enough, etc.

This may be more hardcore than you want, I know you don’t want to beat anyone over the head, but we’re all watching for YOUR opinion. I’m interested in learning that point where “good” becomes “I’d use him (or her)”.

By: Manuel Aguilera

Manuel Aguilera — Wed, 04 Aug 2010 18:58:24 +0000

hey amigo nick you r soo hyper on this tutorial LOL! wath happened to you? what are you drinking? thanks for this tutorial is very useful

By: Luis Lopez

Luis Lopez — Tue, 03 Aug 2010 15:38:47 +0000

Excellent…. Those things you say about the tutorials examples on demo reels are so true, but are so everywhere on demos, even mine would have something made from a tutorial. But Ill twist it out to something new