Score: 3
"It was alright."
date: April 15, 2007
You seem to know enough about Flash to be able to make short, simple animations, but I would practice for a few more years before attempting to find a job in that field. Most companies that are looking for Flash animators are also looking for people with a strong background in design.
The actual animation looked as though you "fell back on your talent." In other words, it looks as though it was quickly pieced together, even for a film reel. The graphics in the clips vary from being poor to somewhat good in what I can assume are your later animations. This is generally a no-no. Clients don't want to see all of your work, they want to see the best that you can produce. It's like a fine artist putting unfinished sketches in their portfolio and calling it "concept work." That being said, the poor quality clips drag down and take away from the rest of the reel.
Like I mentioned before, the whole reel looks as though it is quickly and randomly assembled due to what I'm assuming are the time constraints you mentioned. In the future you may want to plan a little better when assembling reels such as these, especially if you are planning to get hired. I couldn't get a feel for any of the clips shown, as they are shown quickly and sparingly. I couldn't tell what I was suppossed to be paying attention to, the inserted graphics, the text, or the clips themselves.
As a side note, I'm surprised that no one else in your class was able to turn their assignment in, you were really the only one?
Author's Response:
Thanks for the tips, thats what I was trying to tell my teacher. I wanted to spend more time on creating new work for what I can do now as well as editing the reel to have better transitions and get rid of the different sized framing problem, but time crunches are a pain when your a full time student and working, and my dell 5100 laptop is not quite up to quick rendering of larger files.
As for the people who finished on time, im one of two, and the other one I helped finish. The project didnt have enough time. Fortunately for me and the one other who finished we were only animators. The people who did film editing had a hell of a lot harder time.
As for getting hired, I already have an offer for when I graduate so thats going to make up my mind to concentrate strictly on animation for my final semester. Im also a freelance illustrator. Fortunately my buisness license was for both. You can check out my illustration at http://lordjay.deviantart.com /gallery if you would like.
