After Effects - Showreel

Examples:

Montage 2011 from Adam Gault on Vimeo.

Adam Gault – Montage 2011

Shows a mixture of commercial and independent work. The varied project types have a different feel to each other, but within this video they are well woven together. A show reel such as this can demonstrate the range of skills you have, both creative and conceptual work as well.

This video uses an effect called jump cutting – takes a clip and re-cuts it and re-edits it. Typical of motion-graphics reels – cutting and editing to a beat in straightforward way.

My view

Using repeated clips and duplicating them across the scene with staggered sequential playback, he makes the video jump to the music while displaying his skillset in a novel way. 

We were also shown an old showreel of his that was set to slow music. When using slow music it can be much more difficult to edit to, however this example demonstrated that it can be carefully achieved. Unfortunately, I was unable to find this example online when writing this post.

Steffen K - REEL13 from Steffen K on Vimeo.

Steffen K 2013 – Reel 13

The Projects designed with consistency and rhythm in mind leading to five short 10 second videos.

Typically, people start with less advanced design work and work up to most advanced. However in Steffen’s case he has employed the opposite strategy. I feel this works in response to the calming music as it drops off, so does the complexity of the animation. Further to this it demonstrates to future employers that although he has a handle on complex structured animation, he has the ability to create more simplistic design.

Our tutor Sara advised to – “Start with a good solid project, the second being the favourite/best project and drop down again. Drop lower stuff in the middle of a showreel and at the end show something you want to talk about the most.” This ensures your audience gets a good idea of the breadth of work you have created and sets the scene up to talk about your most interesting design.

Plan

I created a rough guide as to how I wanted my showreel to play in terms of how each animation is itemised. This can be seen below in list form.

Sketched_cat / kinetic

Sleeping Beauty

Rotoscope

Dog movement

Kinetic/sketched cat

Loops and living holds

3-D depth

We were advised to think about what sort of thing we enjoy most and what we would like to do more of, when cutting and ordering the piece together. Display aspects you enjoy the most predominantly on the reel.

Editing Steps

Audio – Firstly select the audio track you are using and using the following keyboard keys [ and ] you can cut the track down to 30 seconds. Once you have selected the 30 seconds of clip you want to use, press the asterix key * to mark points of the audio where the sound changes as this is where you will time your clips in.

30 motion tests in 30 seconds from Steffen K on Vimeo.

The example shown above, again by Steffan K is a useful example of how a showreel can be cut together in quick small sections to display a body of work. Notice that there is an introductory title slate, both at the beginning and end. This introduces the reel and ends with contact information.

So for my project the aim is to ensure there is a beginning title, which describes the year of production and my name. On the end a reference to my Vimeo account and a copyright symbol to protect the content. Also I need to include the university status as to give gravity and context to my work. While last but not least, ensuring there are credits to all audio used.

Coloured layers – can be quite easily created in after effects and/or illustrator.

Here I am using the action and title safe guides to ensure all my information is within the viewable portion of the screen at all times.
I also experimented with a few colour-ways.

I decided to go with a more neutral baby blue colour as although I am a lover of the colour pink, I felt this would give the video an unwanted impression of a more soft and cutesy design style, as opposed to my more versatile, open-minded approach using mixed media and varying styles.

After designing the title page, I then brought the sound clip and videos into the library and placed the sound into the timeline. The next step comprised of marking important sound changes in the track and using the keyboard shortcuts to crop each animation as required.

Layers and Positioning

As always, export as Apple prores4444. You can render the file as hd pro-res if you plan to show the animation from own computer. If showing on someone else's computer then use 1080p render using QuickTime, this allows greater quality when showing at interview.

Keyboard shortcuts.I and O on keyboard - (I sends you to the inpoint, O to the output)

The audio track I used within my showreel is as follows: Catmosphere - Candy-Coloured Sky: https://youtu.be/AZjYZ8Kjgs8

Final Outcome

Animation Showreel - 2016 from Nicole H.D.W. Sinclair on Vimeo.


I felt it didn't take me too long to put together the showreel as I was quite intuitive in knowing where to place each clip against the music. However i did spend some extra time on the video to ensure it was to my liking. Due to using the techniques we had learnt in previous After Effects workshops this was easy to get to grips with.