Hi guys

I wanna get me a job as a houdini artist and I know a lot of you guys are involved in the industry.

I really really need a change so, please help me out here.

What do you guys wanna see in a demo reel?

I haven't used houdini in production so I don't have any shots I've done, I been using the apprentice for a while now, and I think I can do a lot of stuff now.

I do have a few years experience in the field, been working for about ten years doing pixels, everything from modeling, sketching, texturing, rendering, compositing, even some VFX supervising.

So what can I focus on?, make a short?, make some sample scenes?, python?, VFX? etc

thanks a lot for your help

Personally I'd like to see flying sharks, that are on fire, with pirates riding on them. I think I saw that in a book report on ‘To Kill a Mockingbird’.
I don't know if that would impress anyone but me, so take that advice with a grain of salt.
Apparently dragons, orcs, laser beams, and Fonzi make for pure awesomeness as well.

Now some of these ‘experts’ might say something like, ‘You should tailor your reel for the kind of job you’re going after.' or ‘Only show your very best work’ or ‘Don’t use the music from the Pirates of Penzance ‘cause I’m just going to turn the sound off anyways' and ‘keep it short’, but pffft….what do they know?

Orcs and laserbeams! That's what people wanna see!
(and flaming sharks)

I'd hire you if you did an animation of Ash vs. Ninja Pirate Zombie Robot 2000.

Of course I just get coffees for people so you'd be my latte minion. But ya gotta start somewhere.


Flaming sharks are so 4:00 pm.

thank you for your comments

I don't know if my question sounded dumb, but I'm really serious about this.



thank you

Seriously: Don't put too much cubes on your reel.

varomix
thank you for your comments

I don't know if my question sounded dumb, but I'm really serious about this.
thank you

We're just screwing around.

Seriously though, what you put on reel depends on what your goals are. If your goal is to work a small VFX boutique and be a jack of all trades then have samples of effects, animation, scripting, etc. If you want fill a specific role at a larger company then you'll need to focus your reel on that one specific thing.

Put together some samples of your work and put them on a reel. I wouldn't bother doing a short. Its way too much work and doesn't really help. IMHO.

Seriously. I would hire someone with Ash on their reel.

Also, focus on what you want to do. Python and animation skillz aren't the first things I would expect to see together, particularly. You need to decide what you're aiming for - TD, FX animator, lighter, shader…

Cheers,

J.C.

As a houdini artist, you don't need a reel, just show up on the spot. Just kidding.

Seriously, the theoretical part is really easy: put your nicest looking work in a non-disrupting edit. In the case of VFX artists, don't forget the breakdown part that mentions exactly what you did and using which tools, in the case of houdini a short “used so-and-so DOPs etc.” is also nice and helps in finding out if you're the right person for the job. For a nice example see http://www.msalek.com/ [msalek.com] .

Dragons and flying sharks definitely help.

cheers,
Abdelkareem

I've never been happy with the whole idea / standard of a demo reel. I don't see it being used anywhere in any equivalent feilds such as science, programming, etc etc.

I'd really like if employers would look for long-term investments in hires. To real experience or artistic motivations .. instead of very short term can you show this/this/ and this.

Presuming everyone here are visual artists the notion of producing artwork solely to get a job with seems very wrong/pointless to me. Art projects are almost always long term investments and may cost more than the sum of the work you'll get with it, or at least the first few gigs.

So, I tried a few times, struggled with it .. never successful .. and eventually just started splicing in my own personal projects into something that looked like a demo. Most of the projects aren't even done yet but were enough to get some Houdini gigs.

There .. I said it. :evil:

For me, the number one factor in evaluating a reel is the quality of the WORK itself.

Save the fancy editing and shiny packaging – it only makes me suspicious that you have far too much time on your hands.

Put your best stuff up front. Make it short – I can't stress this enough. Less, high quality material, is far better then a lot of mediocre material.

Include a shot list for each shot describing your contribution. I also find it handy to know how long a particular shot took to execute. This number makes it easier to mitigate schedule constraints against a potential employees abilities.

From my perspective, this is true of all reels. Others may (and probably do) think otherwise.

With houdini people in particular, include a brief write up of particularly clever HDAs that you created to help with the execution of a given task. If you've created particularly handy workflow, by all means, discuss it briefly. If you've written a clever bit of code that helps push the shot through the pipeline – by all means, include a paragraph describing the problem, and how you chose to solve it. Do not include code.

The caveat here is that the shot-list/resume/brief write up will ONLY get looked at if the work on the reel has managed to catch a potential employers attention.

Finally, know a little about your potential employer. Don't send a reel filled with character animation when responding to a posting asking for FX artists – and vice versa.

Good luck in your search!

G

Thank you guys

this has been very very helpful, I got a better idea of what I should do now.

hope to show you guys very soon the reel I been doing and receive your comments and critiques on that.

thanks again, and hope to work with some of you soon