|
|
 |
 |
 | | | | |
 |
|||
 |
||||||
          |
 |
 |
||||
|
Show Your Best Stuff First
Do not show your work chronologically, oldest to newest. Your demo reel has to capture interest and dazzle immediately. Show your absolute best work first and consider ending it there. If I see chrome balls first, I may not stick around to your best and most recent stuff. And although I don't write much about this aspect, I would consider this the most important advice I have to offer and the most often repeated mistake I see made. Don't Mistake F/X for Content Don't showcase
features of your application. I know that combustion, volumetric fog,
volumetric light, reflection, refraction, and particle systems are cool,
but don't send me a tape of a spotlight in a sea of volumetric fog and
expect me to be impressed. If you have an effect in your scene it should: b) Show signs that you have tweaked, played with, and can control the effect. Default settings in most applications are crummy and it's obvious when they haven't been changed.
Don't Resubmit Material You are wasting your time and money. If your work was good, it's on file. If it was thrown away the first time, it will be thrown away the second and third time as well. If you are sending updated material, indicate that and explain what you changed if it's not very obvious. Credit Anything You Use Chances are, if you found that model, texture, or tutorial, we did, too. It's okay to use a free model in your resume if you are not showcasing your modeling talent. But you had better mention where it came from. If you don't, it will simply make you look like you are trying to take credit for its creation. When using free models, free textures, application standard materials, tutorials, anything not created by you, you should question what the impression will be from the other side. Will it look like you're trying to take credit for someone else's work? Will it look like you didn't tweak the scene? Will it look like you copied someone else's design? Even if you are modeling an asset based on a movie prop, go ahead and mention it. It is better to look like a good model-maker than to raise any doubt that you may be trying to pass off that prop as your own design. Beware the Class Project When fifty students at the Acme College of design do the same project and then all get the same hand out with the same companies listed on it for their job search - guess what happens? I get fifty copies of a chrome ball floating over a checkered field. I will not hire you. But it is not your fault; it's your instructor's fault. If possible, try to do your own thing or ask the teacher if you can change the assignment in some meaningful way. I get at least 50 tapes from one Canadian school every year with the same thing on each tape. I don't watch tapes from that school anymore. As soon as the tape is queued up and I see that all too familiar opening scene, I push eject and move on. I attempted to talk to the instructor once. He seemed greatly disinterested in helping his students. Beware the Tutorial If you are going to do a tutorial and plan on putting it on your demo reel, then at least learn the lesson the tutorial is teaching and change up some stuff in the model or texture. Or better yet, apply the lessons you learned to your own original scene. And now that you know what to do and not to do, on to the pressing question . . . |
|
|
Features
