3D Animation Demo Reel 2023

Hey, everyone!

Thanks so much for checking on my entry to The Rookies Awards.

I am very happy to be part of the CG Spectrum 3D Animation community and excited to finally share my work.

Have fun exploring my demo reel and happy Animating!

As my second acting shot, I wanted this bar scene to be something special. My plan was to really create a focus on subtle acting, rather than large movements. At first it was hard to shoot reference for that movement, as most people tend to overact in front of a camera. The moment it finally worked was when I stopped acting with the audio, but started to freestyle and talk to myself about a similar topic without following the exact audio. This didn’t give me reference for the lip sync, but for the subtle acting and movements, which was priceless for my progress!!

Another challenge in this shot were the constraints that I had to set up for the “Leo” rig. He had to be able to grab and release the Shaker, the glass and the bottles in order to look like a busy bartender. For that I created my constraints as usual and added an automated constraint switch in my Attributes under the channel box with a Driven Key. There I was then able to simply select the area I want to constrain to (Shaker, Glass, Bottle, World) and key that Attribute, which made the process a lot easier.

The lighting too was a challenge that I am still working on. While the current render looks very much like an outside environment, I am currently adjusting the light situation to be more cozy and warm to match the situation better. Some test renders are attached down below!

For this scene I modeled the environment myself, to tailor it to exactly the shot I wanted to have. The “Leo” rig was made by Wonderwell Studios and the “Penelope” rig by anim_matt.

One of my favorite shots I did is this one, the leopard. As I have always loved to animate creatures it was great to get to know those cats even more and recreate their motion.

I started my process by searching for videos of leopards and building up my animation on top of the first reference, by piecing together more than six videos as reference. They did not only serve as an idea of what I wanted to animate, but more of a guideline to see what movements are possible and usual for leopards. I always feel like the movement of cats is very fluid and that flow is what I wanted to display in my animation.

In the end I pieced it all together in this shot and rendered it in Unreal Engine 5 to embed the animation in an environment. I did it by exporting the animation, as well as the camera as an alembic and recreating the textures directly in UE5.

This is the reference I pieced together for my leopard shot!

In my dragon scene I planned to work on not only my choreographing skills, but also on how to display a difference in weight.

The scene displays two baby dragons who play-fight together and are finally interrupted by their giant mother. In this shot it was a challenge to differentiate between the fast flight of the small dragons and the slow and heavy flight of the mother. Choreographing the wings and making the flight look natural, but simultaneously playful was the next challenge.

In addition to that, there was obviously no real life reference for a dragon. For that reason I went out and took a look at references of polar bears, as well as parrots and budgies. They did not only give me some ideas for the choreography, but also wing and weight reference.

In the end it was great to see it work out and I hope you guys like the shot as much as I do! 

This shot was my very first acting shot and I am stoked to share it with you. The special thing here was that the viewer thinks the main character is talking to another person all the time and wondering why he is only wearing one shoe, until the camera switches to the perspective of his dog, who has nicked the shoe.

It was a challenge to shift the attitude of the man to be amused about the situation, contrary to the audio, where he describes a criminal.

My main focus for this scene was getting to know lip sync and playing around with it.

All the reference for this scene I shot myself to get the most control over the movements. I also modeled the environment and rendered it out, but am still working on a final render.

Thanks so much for checking out my entry!

If you stuck with me so long, I would be very happy if you left me a comment and a High Five and if any of you have a question about my progress, don’t hesitate to contact me.

Happy Animating