Why Animators Need Walk Cycles on a Demo Reel

Character walks with "Monty" by Neil Whitman

Every animator should have at least one good walk cycle on their demo reel.  It might seem too basic, but a walk tells a recruiter a lot about your animation skills — timing, weight, character, and appeal — all in a few seconds of motion. 

You can have a number of walk cycles on your reel, as long as they show character and personality, and as long as you keep them short.  

Animators: Embed Your Demo Reel Atop Your CV

Why is it important to embed your demo reel at the top of your CV or resume? Because when a studio is sifting through the applications for a new animation role, it will likely start with a stack of CVs. 

And, since the single most important factor in impressing a new studio with your talent is your demo reel, a link to this needs to be front and centre at the top of your CV.  If it isn't, the danger is that they move on to the next candidate. 

Make your work easy to find, and easy to link.  No special passwords, no dead links. Do this one thing and you'll be ahead of 50% of the competition. 

"Bring Your Own Animation" in London's Green Man Pub Tonight.

The Green Man Pub, London

"Bring Your Own Animation" is an animation event that takes place every month at the Green Man pub in London.

Anyone can bring their animation or just come to share their passion and have a few drinks.  

If you are a student, or a professional who's working on a shot or a reel, bring your work and get feedback from Professional Animators. Bring your work in a USB or external harddisk. They won't have a good internet connection!

The Animation Apprentice Student Demo Reel - Animals & Creatures

Animation Apprentice is still a very young animation school. We launched our website in September 2012, and we are still polishing and tweaking our methods to make sure that we live up to our goal: to provide the best value, highest quality animation training anywhere in the world.

Student Showcase - Giuseppe Candido gets into deep water

Not all jobs in the animation and visual effects business involve making movies. Giuseppe Candido worked hard to polish his demo reel at Animation Apprentice, going through many iterations to take his reel to a professional level. His hard work paid off and he found work in an unusual place: Ceona, a leading offshore oil and gas exploration company.

Ceona needed an animator with all-round digital skills to create and animate 3D representations of their heavy industrial products - a perfect job for an ambitious animator keen to showcase his many digital skills. We asked Giuseppe to tell us how it all went, and what was involved.

Student showcase - Wild Horse animation by Giuseppe Candido

Giuseppe Candido was an early student at Animation Apprentice and has done some beautiful work on animals and creatures since starting our course. Much of the animation work done in London visual effects houses tends towards the super-realistic; studios like Framestore, MPC and Double Negative compete with one another to produce the most elegant, hyper-realistic animation, so subtle that you can't tell the animated version from the real thing. For an animator, that's a big hurdle to leap, arguably much harder than the broad cartoony animation that we all grew up with.

Cinesite explains what make a great student reel

One of the most common questions asked by students is: how do I get a job? The answer, of course, is to be really good at what you do, and have a great demo reel to showcase your talent. But what makes a great animation reel? After, all, different companies have different priorities, and everyone is looking for something a little bit different.  Luckily, many companies, including Cinesite (which offers the excellent Inspire internship for budding visual effects artists) have posted a lot of information at their website about what, exactly, they look for in a graduate's demo reel.