Morgan Loomis: What Makes a Good Rigging Reel
Disclaimer: The information, views, and opinions expressed in Steammate Publications are those of the individual authors and do not necessarily reflect the views and opinions of Steamroller Animation and the affiliates of Steamroller Studios. The content is meant to share the thoughts and experiences of the many different people who work at Steamroller Animation and does not constitute professional advice or services.
When I was finishing up at university circa 2005, our instructors impressed upon us that the culmination of our entire education wasn’t really our degree, it was our reel. We were warned in somber tones that if we didn’t come up with a dazzling showcase of our work, we may as well burn our degrees to keep warm in the unemployment line.
Applying to a studio back then was a bit different. It’s hard to imagine now, but this was the pre-YouTube days, when sharing videos online wasn't really a thing yet. In my case, getting a reel in front of a studio involved spending precious student loan money on a fancy video card that could plug into my VCR, so I could record to VHS tape before driving 8 hours to SIGGRAPH to physically hand out cassettes to recruiters. The application process these days is a lot easier, but what hasn’t changed is the importance of your reel.
Fast forward and my job now involves watching reels, and so I finally have some context about why my instructors were so insistent. Hiring unfortunately means rejecting most applications, and as much as I’d like to, it’s not really practical to respond to everybody about why they didn’t make the cut. So if you have applied for a rigging position and were “regretfully informed” or never even heard back, I wanted to write this article to hopefully give you some perspective, and some ideas about how to make your rigging reel stand out.
When putting together a reel, you’ve hopefully heard some variation of this formula: Keep it short, best work only, most intriguing shots first. This is totally valid, and encourages you to think about your reel as a product: basically a short advertisement about yourself. But I’d like to suggest a slight change of mind, and consider that the real purpose is this: to communicate directly to your future supervisor two important things:
I understand this job, and I can do this job.
After all, it turns out that’s pretty much the only thing we’re looking for. So keeping that in mind, let’s get specific:
Let's get the most basic advice out of the way, which an unfortunate number of applicants can miss: Have a reel. Not just a portfolio site, not 2 reels, not a gallery of clips of everything you’ve ever done. A single URL to a single video that I can copy into my notes. This is not me being old-fashioned, this is me having to work with spreadsheets. And at the risk of sounding obvious, I must stress that it should be a rigging reel. If you like to model, that’s really great and I actually want to know about it, but you should share that information in the context of the job you’re applying for.
Not how animation works
Ever since the very first rigger carved the first rigging reel into their cave wall, we’ve all struggled with the same question: “How do I show off my puppet?” The first thing that usually comes to mind is “just wiggle all the controls,” but I’m here to discourage that instinct because it turns out that’s not how puppets are actually used. Puppets are posed, and they’re animated. By wiggling an industry-standard reverse foot, you’re only showing off the bare minimum requirements, while also telling me that you may not understand what’s important. Showing control interaction is fine, just understand you should really be showing how those controls facilitate appealing posing. Props can be great for this, don’t skip them just because they’re not fancy main characters. Props can be an opportunity to show off a novel solution to an interesting problem. A cleverly rigged crossbow or saxophone tells me so much more about your range than a standard biped.
Interesting non-humanoid rigging
The next thing to understand is the scope of the job you’re applying for. One of the main things I’m usually looking for in an entry-level applicant is good deformation. Don’t take this for granted! Showing your autorigger tool is great, because let's be honest it’s a rite of passage, but just know that the studio you’re applying to probably has that covered already. A character sitting down without any geometry collapsing can earn you more points than an autorigger, believe it or not. When you highlight good deformation, you’re telling me that you understand why this job opening likely exists: probably not because we’re looking to rewrite our rigging pipeline, but because we have a lot of characters who all need to sit down at some point.
Appealing poses, clearly presented range
Deformation includes faces, which can be one of the hardest things to do well. Face rigging is more than managing deformation issues, a face needs to be appealing and convey emotion in order to be successful. If you’re putting a face on your reel, and you’re not comfortable with your own ability to pose it, get some help from an animator friend! (They’re always looking for rigs). The whole point of a facial rig is to produce appealing poses, so if you’re not showing good posing, then the rest doesn’t matter.
Next, many of you have written scripts, and I absolutely want to know about that. It can be hard to show off a tool in a short video, so again I want to reiterate what we’re trying to communicate: I understand the job, I can do the job. We write tools to make work easier for ourselves or others. A ten-second tool demo should tell a little story about how there once was a problem that made everyone sad, and then one day this new tool appears and solves the problem, thus saving the production a bunch of money. (Producers love this story!)
Another thing that rigging TDs may be called on to do is simulation. This isn’t a requirement for every application, so again, make sure you understand the job you’re applying for. But if it's relevant, then showing cloth, hair or muscle work can be a nice addition. These skills can be harder to come by, especially in entry-level applicants, and even if I don’t need that skillset necessarily, it’s nice to know you have range.
Finally, perhaps unsurprisingly, the best indicator that you understand a job is to show that you’ve actually done the job before. Finished work can sometimes feel like it’s not focussed enough, because you’re not showing workflow or controls, or most of the work seems like it was done by other people. But seeing final renders tells me a couple things: First, you worked with other people! I don’t know the details, but I can guess you probably got notes from animators, had to update a model halfway through production, sat through dailies, used pipeline tools, wrote emails. And the other important thing it shows is that you actually finished something! If we want to hire you it’s probably because we want to finish something too, and we can’t do it without you.
Picking what finished work to show is still important. Once again, it’s all about deformation. Choose shots that show characters looking good in extreme poses, or shots that show all the dangly secondary bits you rigged. It doesn’t need to be the coolest action shot, in some ways it’s better if it’s just a single character waking up and stretching or something. Show clips that invite scrutiny, and then hold up to it. Even if it isn’t flashy, you’re saying “I know what’s challenging, and what’s important.”
One last thing before we wrap up, since this always seems to come up around the discussion of reels: No, the music you choose will not have any bearing on your chances of getting hired, but yes you will be quietly judged on your taste.
Good luck everyone, I hope to see your reels some day!
