Showreel

[pickle]

This is our latest Reel compiling our best animation projects from 2007/08.

I wanted to share this as I feel we have reached a milestone in our ability to produce quality creative animation work and that this Reel encapsulates it perfectly.

 

http://pikcells.co.uk/News_Reel_1/

 

Editing by Martin Crosbie.

 

Comments and critiques welcome.

 

Rich

[blowback]

I am a little apprehensive about camera jitter......The only time I use it is when I am hiding something. BUT the quality of the models, lighting, camera movement, and animations look great. Awsome work!

[alrawli]

The quality of the models and the lighting is amazing, i had to turn off half way through though just a bit too much jitter and too many changes in speed for me.

[Tommy L]

Watched it without sound, was thinking "this should be played at half speed, it would be great", then turned on the sound halfay through and thought, "AH, I get it now"

Id be careful, most people have the sound disabled when surfing the web because theyre in an office environment. This movie doesnt work AT ALL without the music IMHO.

[Chad Warner]

I like it! My only wish was that there was a lull in the music somewhere so there were some slow parts--it's so quick it's hard to get a feel for the projects.

[Trevor Tizard]

Really nice work, and a great idea...........but it moves way too fast.

[alfienoakes]

I really like it..Its punchy.. up to date sort of feel. Like you would be working with someone who was really on the ball, really current high tech feel..

 

Agree that if defo needs the music .. would be a wasted without it.

 

Very good.

[Tommy Burns]

Really good well done I watched it first without the music and thought what the heck is goin on, I thought my internet connection was dodgy. Then I put the music on and it all made perfect sense really liked it.

[Horhe]

Lot of work went into those... good job!

[jvlive]

That was really awesome! Congrats! I'd like to know, if it's ok, did you do the post production/editing over the music or did you use a customisable soundtrack(e.g. cinescore, sonicfire), or both? Just curious 'coz it seems like hard editing work if you follow a fixed soundtrack, and almost impossible to do (from what i imagine) to start without one.

cheers!

[nymn]

Thats incredible, great job! The music definately holds the peice together though, it sets the pace.

[own1221]

Around the middle of the showreel, there was a bit showing a real person and a stick figure animation from that, do you guys actually have an inhouse motion capture setup?

 

The animation was quite interesting some pretty cool stuff, definately make it a bit slower .

[Crazy Homeless Guy]

it is a very nicely done piece. the camera work is interesting, and i liked the editing with the exeption of the ones where the effect was that of scrubbing back and forth on the timeline. i liked the ones that were quick cuts that close to the same position, but the ones that were scrubbing i felt were a little dated and not very fresh feeling. the other part that bothered me was the 'x-ray' or film negetive looking sequence where it was blue on a black background. i felt that part was dated in style also.

[FlyinHawaiian]

Nice editing work! I was quite impressed. I watched it twice, the first time, I was looking at the work and saw a lot of repeated project work and it kind of bugged me for some reason. Seemed like around 3/4 of the way through, the gray interior shots could have been cut out along with the exterior shots with the bamboo in the foreground. That's being super picky though, because I really liked it overall. Loved the unique shots traveling up into the atrium and through the floors. Not sure how it would have looked if it weren't sped up in a demo reel, but the way it was presented was really impressive. Also liked the shots with the parallax of the lighting fixtures? hanging from the ceiling. Not really decided on what I thought of the xray buildings, they did get a little long on the tooth, but, I did like the reveal from the xray to the real building. Great job overall!

[pickle]

Thanks for the comments, we appreciate the feedback.

 

own1221, we have a few good universities around us who have mocap suites and we have an arrangement with them to allow us to use them. I think we will eventually get one though as they are very useful.

 

With regard to the music I didnt think we would get any comments on there actually being some, I cant remember the last time I saw an animation without it. Comments about speed etc are noted and we will have to consider these for next time.

 

jvlive, we felt that a good showreel depends on the sound track so we picked out a good one first then left it to MC to mix and edit the animation clips together. The song was not edited at all apart from shortening it.

 

The xray stuff fit with the theme of the original animation it was used for but I know what you mean about it appearing dated, RIP opacity falloff. [Nerd alert]

[CarlAhearne]

Really nice reel; a little fast for my personal liking, but it works really well with the music. It doesn't really show a lot of any particular thing, but just enough to get the viewer intregued to find out more... Certainly made me want to have a look at the rest of your site.

[Devin Johnston]

It's nice however it was way to fast for the average person who doesn’t spend their time looking at animation work. Some of the lighting is incredible, very realistic I would have liked to see some of those projects for a longer period of time.

[landrvr1]

I gotta be the Simon Cowell here, sorry.

 

I hated it.

 

Okay, hate is way too strong, lol. The quality of the work is amazing. Utterly friggin amazing. But it's getting lost in the rather uber hip quality of the editing. It's a bit too much like the beginning of an episode of MI-5 (Spooks in the UK?), or Torchwood.

 

The film concept itself is great. Love the graphics and the transmission cues at the start and end. But the fast rewind cuts just become nauseating (and boring) after the first few times. That's a trick that should be used ever so sparingly. The entire thing has one speed, really. Like the DJ mix that's being used in the soundtrack, there's absolutely no highs and lows - it's just all one tempo: Hyperspeed. The film itself has become more of a statement than the work, and I'm not sure that's what you'd want.

 

It would be great to re-edit that sucker. Take out most of the rewind cuts. Then take 1 or 2 segments - the ones that you think are the absolute money shots, and just SLOW those suckers down. At the second that the shots/animations get slow, cut all the hyperbeat tracks down on the soundtrack so that you just get an ambient drone with maybe a slight rhythm that reminds you of the main theme tempo. When the slow clip ends, BAM! Get that beat going again...

 

Variation in tempo (as in camera movements and editing) creates great highs and lows; real drama.

 

Just my 2cents.

 

Man, after seeing some of the amazing stuff in that clip I'm really depressed, haha.