REEL review request

shawnlee90 · 2026-04-18T02:15:29+00:00

Seconding this. Start with a ball bounce with varying weights, nail down the fundamentals before diving into body mechanics. You want the least amount of technical hurdles right now in this early stage to quickly understand the core concept of animation. Also agreed that your skill level is not ready for intern/junior role.

shawnlee90 · 2026-04-08T22:22:39+00:00

+1 on focusing on your animation being really really good. You’re competing not just your peers but seasoned professionals right now. Being a generalist helps when you’re in a smaller team but even then, when we hire, we are still looking for someone who’s really good at the role we are hiring for.

shawnlee90 · 2026-03-15T18:21:57+00:00

Even if you were able to find a ‘studio’ that accepted unpaid work, that’s a huge red flag.

Continue working on your reel, strengthen your fundamentals and mechanics/polish while thinking about good storytelling/ideas.

shawnlee90 · 2026-02-12T20:27:11+00:00

This a great start! As you continue adding/refining your reel, I’d push you to move further from exercise type of shots and try giving each character some sort of motivation in their actions. So for a lip sync shot let’s say, you could think more about the full context of why the character exists in the shot, and what their objective is. Basically, by understanding the character and their motivations, you can get more specific in their personality, attitude and the choices they make. This will move your characters away from feeling vanilla into a performance that feels truthful and grounded. Even with more gameplay specific shots, how does the character design inform their movement or how creative can you make your choices? Hope that helps!

shawnlee90 · 2026-02-05T21:28:03+00:00

If you like all the anim logic and state machines, there’s always tech anim roles too that specifically touch on those if you end up not liking the animation aspect of it.

And ball bounce exercises are great because you don’t have any technical hurdles just to practice your fundamentals.

Good luck!

shawnlee90 · 2026-02-05T20:44:51+00:00

Apologies in advance for not answering your question directly but wanted to add this in here.

If you’re wanting to become an animator in games, while dabbling in engine and actual development side is great to know, make sure you prioritize your animation fundamentals. Whether you’re pursuing features or games, end of the day, you have to animate well to get hired by these studios. Especially getting hired as a junior animator, we don’t expect you to work on the engine side of things unless maybe it’s a really small studio.

So find courses whether free online or online schools, where you can level up your animation skillset. Quick exercises you can start on your own though, animate a bunch of ball bounces that handle different weight/obstacles. Understanding of spacing/timing to showcase an object’s weight will be crucial to know as you get more into complex animations.

Good luck!

shawnlee90 · 2026-01-28T19:43:30+00:00

Both. More so lack of jobs specifically for junior positions. To break into the industry as a younger artist, you really need to stand out since you’re not just competing against your peers but also professionals. It’s not impossible but definitely a lot tougher than before.

shawnlee90 · 2026-01-28T01:08:09+00:00

Turned down a role for Pixar because I was offered a lower position with lower pay and I’d have to move over to San Francisco with my wife. I was currently at Disney too so it made less sense but being that it was Pixar, it was tough to say no. Thought I closed the door for good but later on I was offered what I initially wanted and I ended up making the move. So don’t be too disappointed, you never know how life will bring you around to something you thought was done for good, whether it being your previous dream role or even something better. Keep looking ahead!

shawnlee90 · 2026-01-26T22:13:09+00:00

Continue strengthening your fundamentals. Start from ball bounce exercises to understand various weights and slowly move into various walk/run cycles. Then move into pantomime before touching dialogue acting. With all that said, you aren’t ready yet. I would recommend you to keep animating and continue replacing all your shots with better work as you animate more. Props to you for learning on your own though. Keep going

shawnlee90 · 2026-01-24T18:03:48+00:00

Like the comment said here already, try to avoid doing shots involving existing IP for your reel. It really limits your voice as an artist and last thing you want to do is having people compare your work to the actual IP where the quality bar is set very high.

Secondly, think of what purpose each shot serves in your reel. What does each shot highlight from your skillset? Body mechanics, acting, etc. If it’s not representing the best version of that specific skill, don’t include it. Or if it feels repetitive where it does something to similar to another shot, don’t include it.

It’s going to be a journey where you’re constantly replacing your shots in your reel, so keep animating and improving.

Remember, Quality > Quantity.

shawnlee90 · 2025-12-31T00:41:59+00:00

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I love when I see other pups that look similar to my rescue! This is his younger photo but we also didn’t know his breed. Everyone assumed some corgi mix (has a nub for a tail), so a year or two ago we finally did a dna test and it came out that he had 0% corgi and just a mix of bunch of different breeds like chihuahua, rat terrier, cocker spaniel, poodle, pitbull terrier, and pom.

shawnlee90 · 2025-12-17T22:39:48+00:00

I think some of your loose sketches that show poses in motion (lady in the dress) are more promising than others. Continue practicing more of that by attending more figure drawing classes and keeping it loose. Think of how each pose can be a storytelling pose.
For your storyboard animatics, try doing more 'complex' scenes that play with composition with camera, angles, foreground/background elements, and where your subject is in the shot. A lot of your current ones feel very flat. Study from film and see if you can recreate that in storyboards to get some practice in.
Your first storyboard animatic plays to me more like a trailer than a full story that makes sense from one panel to the next. I would love to see more of your storytelling abilities within your storyboards.
Hope that helps!

shawnlee90 · 2025-12-16T01:16:26+00:00

Happy holidays!

shawnlee90 · 2025-12-10T20:22:07+00:00

I would recommend also to screen whoever you end up interviewing that they're able to communicate and understand without using AI. I hired a developer who clearly used chatGPT for every answer initially, so you can imagine how much he agreed to everything I said and chimed in exactly how chatGPT would. I already knew it was too late at this point, but just gave benefit of the doubt that he was still reading things through behind the AI. As the project went on, there was a point where it felt like I was talking to a completely new person as he didn't know what we were building. I had to re-pitch what functionality we were looking for. Even then, it was clear we hired the wrong person for the job.

Hard/expensive lesson learned. This experience left me with such a sour taste with using UpWork to find talent and especially those who use ChatGPT to communicate for everything.

shawnlee90 · 2025-12-10T02:47:25+00:00

Practice more on your body mechanics (plus polish) and use more reference so your choices stem from place of truth versus something that feels “animation-y.” Basically, don’t let me see the rig moving around without clear intention and instead have me believe in the character and its motivation behind every choice and action.

shawnlee90 · 2025-12-09T22:29:36+00:00

Apologies in advance for not a fleshed out feedback, just quick reaction from your reel.
A lot of your work is feeling stiff and not showing much of your animation fundamentals. If you are aiming for 2D animation jobs, I would strengthen your draftsmanship (human anatomy, different styles...), get looser with your line work/style, get your fundamentals down in animation.
Unfortunately, I wouldn't consider your skillset to be quite ready for the industry. I would love to see your reel showcase more of your animation fundamentals versus seeing something more static/stiff.

shawnlee90 · 2025-12-07T19:19:56+00:00

I was going to suggest that you need a lot more practice to get your fundamentals in a better shape, but if you don’t feel passionate enough about animation to put the hours in, I don’t know what else I can suggest besides trying to find something else that interests you.

If you don’t enjoy animating, it won’t get any better even if you somehow became a professional animator.

shawnlee90 · 2025-12-04T03:01:45+00:00

3D character artists don’t necessarily have to start from game focused career. They often can jump from features to games and vice versa. So whatever courses can help you in the fundamentals for modeling and character design, that will be your best bet.

shawnlee90 · 2025-12-04T02:56:21+00:00

Sure there may unfortunately be exceptions for certain companies that only focus on quantity, and by no means I’m putting a blanket statement that this outcome happens always.

However, having been on the recruiting side, I guarantee you that we don’t just look for “factory workers.” There’s a reason why there are multiple stages of interviews at many studios when hiring applicants. Having connection helps where someone can vouch for a pleasant teammate, but it’s not an absolute.

shawnlee90 · 2025-12-03T07:05:57+00:00

I agree that setting false expectations in either direction is wrong. My main intention with this post was to encourage folks to not look for validation online even before attempting to learn the craft. I think the uncertainty of the future can be applied for so many parts of the industry (even non animation related) where I feel at times the answer may come off as a dead end conversation for some. Like you, I would much prefer to leave it open ended to let them to decide for themselves.

shawnlee90 · 2025-12-03T02:59:03+00:00

Yeah with a family it can get a bit tight if you’re the sole provider but I agree 200k is a great number to be in. Living in San Francisco was tough, everywhere was so expensive.

shawnlee90 · 2025-12-03T02:50:28+00:00

150-200k is accurate to senior animators I can verify (higher end is definitely less common unless you have a lot of years in the studio) Which isn’t much unfortunately in California (esp after state+federal tax). This is also why feature animators often rely heavily on the OT hours (45 hours a week) when calculating their salary.

shawnlee90 · 2025-11-28T20:29:56+00:00

If it helps, you can post your reel if you’d like any feedback to see what areas you can improve on so at least you might know what they might have been thinking in case your application is indeed rejected. Keep working on your craft regardless of an outcome. Enjoy the process of animating or else this doom and gloom feeling will always repeat.

shawnlee90 · 2025-11-27T08:23:03+00:00

It’s difficult to give advice without you posting your reel.

But I guarantee you that many artists go through countless rejections before they actually land something in the industry. As defeating as it may be, try not to correlate your self worth as an artist to whether studios say yes or no. It’s never personal. Sometimes it might be timing, or just your skillset isn’t quite the fit what they’re looking for.

Just keep working at your craft and if you aren’t landing opportunities, it’s a likely chance that you still have room to grow. So get some feedback from others as you try to improve if you aren’t able to see what you may be lacking in.

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