When making an animation reel one of the most common mistakes made by student animators is to bite off more than you can chew. When it comes to short films, or acting shots – or any piece of animation, it’s very easy to be too ambitious. 

It is almost always much better to do a great job on a short piece of animation than to struggle to complete something long and complex.

Animation takes a long time to get right, so allow yourself the luxury of being able to add all the bells and whistles and still make your deadline. Keep it short and sweet. 

Keep your Animation Reel Short

If you’re making a short film, try to keep it to a minute or less. That might seem too short, but even a minute is a lot of animation. Anything over two minutes is starting to get very ambitious indeed. Likewise, if you’re doing an acting shot, try to keep it under ten seconds. The 11 Second Club is 11 seconds long for a reason – even 11 seconds is a lot of work, especially if you are going to put the work into refining the shot, and giving it a studio level of polish.

Keep It Simple
So the moral of the story is – keep it simple, and keep it short. And if someone takes a look at your rough idea and says: “that is very ambitious”, don’t take it as a compliment. Take it as a suggestion to simplify it, make it shorter, make it more manageable.