Uploads

Once I felt I had the website and showreel more or less complete, I researched and found a webspace provider and domain name package that suited and began the process of publishing my site to the web.

I bought the domain name http://www.jdohertyart.com/

Originally I wanted to use iWeb to complete and upload the website, however I needed to be able to finish the website shortly and had no access to the programme so I looked around and found a programme called WebEasy which was similiarly intuitive and didn't take too long to learn.

Before long I had uploaded my website and embedded the showreel onto it. I had to embed the showreel in .flv format as for some reason it would not work with .mov or .mp4.

There were a few other issues such as the profile page not scrolling properly and the page resolution being incorrect that it took a while to sort out  but eventually it was completed.

Below are the final pages...

Music

Once I had the showreel more or less locked down, I needed to start focusing on the music I would use.

I looked at several websites which had royalty free music such as...

http://www.openmusicarchive.org/

http://www.opsound.org.org/

http://www.jamendo.com/

http://www.soundclick.com/

http://www.sounddogs.com/


Many of their samples were 60 secs long at least but there was still a good collection of 30 sec clips.

I wanted the music to compliment the images as best I could and not just be cool music for it's own sake as this would detract from the focus of the images. Many showreels I found on the internet were often overpowered by their soundtrack which was often chosen because of the artists taste in music rather than it's suitability for the piece.

This became tricky as most of the short music clips were either too short or too long and I had to stretch or edit them to make them fit, this often distorted the music too much. It was quite a search until I found a piece of music that I thought worked well, not too fast or too slow and in sync with my showreel.

Adjustments

I made a few minor adjustments to the showreel such as the images used. I chose a few images that I didn't originally select and removed some of the ones I did. I did this because I felt that I although I had to be as focussed as I could on the field I wanted to enter, I also had to show a range within that field so that potential employers/clients could see I was adaptable. I paid attention to Lecky-Thompson (2007) who explains that a showreel needs to show a scope of style and images as there is just as broad a range of clients as there are styles of art. (p214).

I also removed the more cartoon like images from my showreel as I thought that even though they showed a range of style, they were not my best work and instead I used them in the gallery on the website where I could showcase more work.

I wanted to include more images but I couldn't enter any more into the 30sec showreel without making the images that are included already go by too quickly. Most showreels lasted around 3-4 minutes but then most professional showreels had far more art to choose from.

After Effects

After Effects was something I had used very briefly a long time before and it took a lot of practice to to get to a point where I was happy with the results.

The animations as mentioned in my previous post I wanted to keep simple such as zooms, fades and side scrolls. The more flashy effects I tried with the artwork the more the focus was taken away from them and as Darkin (2010) states "The focus of the showreel must be on the artwork and not on the effects." [online Computer Arts]. I thought this was vital and that anything to visible in the way of effects would detract from the art itself.

For some of the pieces I decided that it would look good in the showreel if the centrepieces of the art appeared before the rest of the piece so I made layers in Photoshop and tested out how that would look before adding the effect to my final showreel.

The chosen pictures

Below are the pictures I chose to use in my showreel...

As advised by Carlin (2010) who states "Beware of using cheap simple effects in After Effects or other programmes as the people you are sending the showreels to will know them off by heart" [online, Fuel Your Motionography] So I didn't want to try and do anything flashy.

The Selection Process

The first part of creating the showreel would be to select my best pieces of work to include. King (2010) states "Although the showreel should geared toward a particular type of art, it should show the artists versatility" [online, careerFAQ]. I felt this was important as although I wanted to show my best concept design work, I also wanted to show my best comic page layouts as hopefully it would be seen by both industries in the future. For this reason I re-named my website and showreel 'Illustration' and not just 'Concept Design'.

With the above in mind I began selecting the best pieces of my work, in concept design and comic illustration. As advised by my tutor and corroborated by Garing (2009) who states "A good showreel should only include finished and perfected artwork, no works-in-progress" [online, VFX].

The showreel had to be at least 30 seconds long so I made a random collation of images and set them so that they changed at timed intervals, I then asked several people which time they thought best i.e should the images change every 2, 3 or 4 seconds.

According to the data collected, the best time for each image was either 4 or 5 seconds. So with that in mind I worked out that I would need about 10-12 images.

I decided that I would use 5 of my graphic novel images, 5 concept design and perhaps 2 environment designs as I wanted the showreel to play to my strengths.

Showreel

Along with the website we needed to create a showreel which would display our best work.

I tried to find as many research books as I could but I soon found that there were little or no dedicated books on the subject, there were a few books I found that had a chapter or so that were helpful but no books dealt with the subject alone. The best resources I found were online resources such as tutorials and art websites that had discussions on the subject.

I was more nervous about the showreel part than the website as I was not sure that I had enough exemplary work to display on a showreel and as Darkin (2010) writes "If you are unsure if you have enough work to put in a showreel, then maybe you should reconsider if you are ready enough to make one" [online, ComputerArts]. However I felt that perhaps, I was just too crtical of my own work as several other people including people on forums felt that my work was good enough to use in a showreel. I also had to remember that my showreel could be updated at a later date when I added more work. Jordan (2007) agrees and explains that a good showreel needs to be updated as often as possible when material of a higher quality or more relevance is completed (p154).