Cgtuts+ Workshop #40 Neil Jones Demo Reel
tuts workshop

Cgtuts+ Workshop #40 Neil Jones Demo Reel

on Feb 6th 2013 with 4 comments

After a short time away, we’re back with another fantastic entry in our weekly workshop community project, where we post a render or animation created by a member of the Cgtuts+ community, and ask you to provide feedback and constructive criticism on their work. It’s a great way to learn more about the intricacies of computer graphics, express your viewpoint, and have your own content critiqued by your fellow artists!

Quick Ground Rules

  • Be nice! We’ve deliberately chosen work that isn’t perfect, so please be constructive with any criticism.
  • Feel free to offer any type of advice on – Modeling, Texturing, Materials, Lighting, Rendering, Composition, etc.
  • You can also link to another render or animation that you feel offers a great example of this type of content done exceptionally well.

So let’s take a look, here’s this week’s entry created by Neil Jones!

Neil Jones Demo Reel

A Little Background

Hi my name is Neil Jones and I just finished up my Game and Interactive Media Design degree. This is a little demo reel I put together showing some of my work and I would love some feedback. So please take a look and let me know what you think.

This is Neil’s second Workshop submission, so be sure to check out his first entry “The BlackTrap” as well.

Also be sure to check out more of Neil’s work on his Website
Please let us know what you think in the comments – how would you have approached this project or done things differently? Any thoughts on how it could be improved or taken to the next level. Chime in below!

Interested in submitting your own video or 3D render? You can submit your own work here to have it featured in a future Cgtuts+ Workshop!

 
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Rollover to read this author's bio or click through to see a full list of posts by this author.

Ben is one half (literally) of the editor duo here at Cgtuts+. Ben has over eight years of experience in the computer graphics field and although he's primarily a hard surface modeler, he's also experienced in the fields of uvmapping, texturing, lighting and rendering. He has authored many tutorials and training materials focused on 3d Studio Max and hard surface modeling. You can check out Ben's website at bentateonline.com to see more of his work.  

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  • John C

    i think it´s ok . Maybe you should try to make it a little more dynamic. Use different cameras to show the models, and if you made your own textures make a close up….- NIce job

  • Spencer Tweed

    A better track for this would be “Intro” by The XX. It would accomplish a similar thing, but without being so distracting. I found myself more interested in the audio than the reel!

    - Spencer

  • http://www.facebook.com/designertoo.rh Designer-Too Rh

    I like the speech ^^

  • http://www.facebook.com/weber.an Andres Weber

    Hey Neil,

    While you do have some nice pieces in here I’m going to give quite a harsh critique, please take it as constructively as possible!

    The reel is quite slow paced and difficult to keep my interest. First off the audio, while interesting, is quite distracting. It’s quite hard to make an honest thoughtful critique of your work while thinking about what that guy is saying (I love the speech and remember hearing it awhile back). It’s a great idea for giving some character of yourself in the piece, however overall I really think it detracts from being able to showcase your work. I have a feeling you will keep it though, but it’s really personal opinion and most times we review work it’s done silently anyways. Overall the reel seems to lack cohesion and the pieces do not follow the most obvious job path. What is it that you’re trying to get a job doing? If you’re trying to do 3D print work then this might be a start at a portfolio for that, however it looks like you need to showcase your specific skills a little better.

    The models need full turntables or some variation of; we can’t tell the quality of your shading/lighting or really any of the texturing. There are no closeup shots of anything which doesn’t provide us with that much needed closer look at your work (you have some possible closeups in the real time building, but it’s still not quite close enough; imagine we want to be able to see it like a game character would). You tried to make the images more dynamic by moving the underwater ship and the claptrap slightly, however I think the effect was just distracting and took away from being able to focus on the work but with a turntable these issues would be void.

    If you’re going for a games position (I’m assuming from your degree) then let’s see some texture sheets, let’s see it in an engine with a turntable or marmoset toolbag, let’s see some poly counts or wireframes that are either tesselated or non tesselated (I personally prefer looking at untesselated since you can see the edge flow better, unless you’re going for a job that requires a pre-tesselated mesh which seems uncommon). Just so we can get the idea that you can put your models in an engine and get a good idea that you know the workflow. It would help to have an organic character to show your versatility but that might not be something you’ve done yet so no worries if not. The sci-fi interior deserves a fly through at least or something detailing a bit more about the space, it’s a wonderful piece and it needs to be more thoroughly explained.

    The boat piece…I’m not sure why you chose to put your work in a cropped box off to the side however I would suggest that you fully show your work. It comes off that you don’t want us to fully inspect your work and not be able to tell the quality of the craftsmanship. I’d love to see all these pieces full frame.

    I’m not quite sure what the piece on the faux iPad was however I would remove that from the reel as it seems to be of lower quality than the other work, you don’t need filler with a 1:40 reel as that’s quite long anyways. Speaking to that as well you should keep ANY end tag intro tag/bumper to a maximum of 5 seconds as NO reviewer wants to stare at a static screen for your end tag’s duration of 13 seconds.

    Well…I know it was harsh but I’m just trying to help and I wish you the best of luck!