Animation Demo Reel Breakdown

Animation Reel Breakdown

In this entry I'll walk you through 3 of my favorite shots from my animation demo reel, and break down the intentions, process, and references for each shot!

All rigs from Agora Community. Audio clip from 11 Second Club.

"Who Hired You?"

For this first shot we have a relatively long dialogue between two very different characters. I carefully chose these rigs in order to tell a story that fits the audio, as if it was a clip from a movie rather than just an animation exercise. The Mercenary is a broad, grim sellsword who was hired to do some ugly work. The Squire is a bit naive, but senses that something is off, until he asks one question too many:

I wanted to highlight the contrast and power imbalance between these two characters both in acting (one is heavy and confident, the other more nimble and reserved) and in staging. The camera is angled so that the Mercenary always towers over the Squire, and especially when the dialogue becomes tense, he takes up more and more space on screen, leaving the Squire almost no room to breathe.

The facial animation is also meant to convey the characters' inner thoughts; while at first the Mercenary is more expressive with his big eyebrows and head movement, he becomes still and cold as soon as the Squire gets suspicious of him. The Squire himself is always attentive and carefully listening to him, and we see his doubt turn into worry when he asks the wrong question, "Who hired you?"

I animated this shot with the layered method, that is, animating the pelvis and main torso first to establish weight, and later adding the limbs, head and accessories. Hopefully this made for a more subtle, realistic animation.

Aang Flying Parkour

As soon as I learned that Aang's staff rig also doubles for a glider, I immediately wanted to animate a cool gliding sequence:

For reference, I filmed myself pretending to ride a flying hoverboard. This was quite difficult, as I do not own one. I have some silly footage of me jumping and unbalancing on the floor which I will not show here, but it proved quite useful for the animation actually.

On a more technical note, I cheated with the camera a bit -- Aang isn't actually traveling, but rather it's the set which scrolls past him while he only moves vertically. This way it was easier to place obstacles without him clipping into them, as well as getting a smoother camera animation.

Since this shot is more cartoony than the first, I worked mostly in pose-to-pose blocking to get the timing right.

Robot Ballet

For our final shot here I wanted a smooth, elegant movement such as ballet, and decided to use a robot rig for the contrast:

The reference is from this performance of Swan Lake (timestamp 2:08).

I love the juxtaposition of a seemingly stiff, mechanical character moving with such grace and fluidity. Additionally, I noticed that the hands aren't attached to the arms, and intentionally animated them with extra overlap. I imagine they're magnetized or something, so the hands trail behind during sudden movements.

And for a bit of fun, I made the robot blast into the sky and swoop back into the camera like a superhero.

That's it, I hope you enjoyed the breakdowns!

Here's my full demo reel in case you're still curious. Thanks for reading!