Showreel Update – Feedback from Margaux Tsakiri-Scanatovits

With my project winding down, I’ve been looking at editing my showreel so I can apply to more studios. Above is what my showreel looked like before our talk with Margaux Tsakiri-Scanatovits, co-founder of Moth Studios.

Margaux provided not only a really interesting and practical talk, but her feedback really helped me push forwards with cutting out clips, putting my best work forwards and understand how employers may look at my showreel and the dos and don’ts of editing a showreel together.

I took down quite a few notes from Margaux’s talk which I’ll share. Much like with what my mentor said, she recommended that we students should create multiple showreels tailor specific to job applications. Whether its a personal introduction to the studio, or clips that are relevant, its important to make it less general if you’re going for a specific studio and showing why you’re a good fit for a studio. It doesn’t matter if you’ve only got a little bit of work, whether its 15 seconds or 30 seconds, as long as it fits and is relevant.

It’s also important to research the company in detail. Who are the directors? What style do they use (handdrawn for Lupus films for example)? Identify their target audience. What music and fonts do they use? And what are they after? If you apply for a compositing role, there isn’t much of a need to show off character animation. If applying for a 2D animation role, showing animation breakdowns may be more important than the editing.

Keep your showreel under a minute – employers may look through dozens of showreels before yours, so 30-60 seconds of catchy stuff will help you stand out. Be mindful of what clips you put in – what do you want to say to the employer? What’s my style? What do I want to work on? These are often reflected in the showreel. Don’t add clips for the sake of filling time – a weak shot will stand out for the wrong reasons in a powerful showreel. Margaux showed us plenty of showreels, and how effective it is to time with music and keep it short. Industry veterans have plenty of work under their belt, yet some of theirs was only 40 seconds long, and the timing was sharp and snappy.

If you share work from a collaboration (e.g. the LIAF animation), put what roles you had, and you can put the client and other members’ roles in the description below. Use a font that’s easy to read and long enough that it can be read.

It’s also worth trying to email a PDF of your process of work. Stills, character designs, the way you work. Having recently created an art book for my graduation film, it seems like a good idea to add this in emails if the role goes beyond animating.

The showreel at the top was the one I showed Margaux for feedback. Aside from trimming out clips that were time filler, she also taught me to show off my best work. For my showreel, I went in with the mindset of trying to show I could do a range of motions: sword swings, walk cycles, followthrough etc. But it became apparent that my showreel’s quality would teeter off in the middle after a series of strong clips. I also had way too much wordy stuff on screen, credits to other team members and what not. Whilst its nice to do this, Margaux suggested to remove these, switch my roles in and put those credits in the description. She was also impressed with my Demon Slayer animation, saying it was nice that it came about from wanting to set myself a creative exercise, but suggested to credit the character designer and make it clear that it was inspired by said series. I did this with all my clips which used copyrighted designs to avoid legal trouble.

My new showreel is below, now slightly shorter and putting snappy clips mixed in with loops.

For more anime/action-oriented studios, I’ve got this alternate showreel using more of my anime-inspired clips and exercises:

And lastly, I’ve got a 2D rigged animation showreel for places like Studio AKA, Sun and Moon studios and other studios that specialise in rigged animation. As Margaux said, I don’t have as much animation with this process so the showreel is much shorter as a result: