When showing my showreel to potential clients and industry professionals, I often received feedback that it did not feel “commercial” enough. This made me think carefully about what commercial animation actually means. Does it mean including more character acting? Does it refer to the style commonly seen in advertising and motion design? Or does it suggest that some of my shots lack the level of polish expected in professional work?
My previous showreel contained many projects that I created during my undergraduate studies. Most of these were experimental animations that focused heavily on visual design, composition, and artistic style rather than character performance. While I am still proud of those works, I understand that they can be less accessible to a wider audience. Even friends and family outside the animation industry would often tell me that the work looked impressive but that they did not fully understand it.
At the same time, I did not want to abandon my personal visual style simply to make my work more commercial. Instead, I decided to focus on developing stronger character animation skills while maintaining the artistic qualities that I value. My goal was to create work that felt both visually distinctive and more appealing to clients and employers.
In my one-minute project last semester, I began taking steps in this direction. While keeping the visual style that I was comfortable with, I introduced more character acting and performance into the animation. Although some of the drawings were completed under tight deadlines and certain perspective issues remained, it was an important step forward for me.
During my graduation project, I pushed this development even further by experimenting with a different animation style and creating a much larger amount of character performance animation than I had attempted before. This project helped me gain confidence in character acting and strengthened an area of animation that I had previously neglected.
Alongside these larger projects, I have also been creating small looping animations in my spare time. Because loop animations can be completed relatively quickly, they provide a useful opportunity to experiment with new visual styles, brushes, and techniques. Including these smaller pieces in my showreel also helps make it feel more varied and dynamic.
As I hope to find work in the UK, I have also noticed that many animators and motion designers maintain personal portfolio websites in addition to their showreels. During the production of my graduation project, I did not have enough time to begin building my own website. However, I have already organised my portfolio materials, researched website-building tutorials, and collected examples of artists’ websites that I admire. I believe that a personal website is an important professional tool for an animator, and I want to approach it thoughtfully rather than rushing to create something purely functional. In the future, developing a strong online presence will be one of my priorities.
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