Part of being unemployed means you have to time assess what you've done and see where the deficiencies lie in your portfolio.
In creating my new website, I first dumped everything I could think of on there, only to be given a soul-crushing critique by the great Horia Dociu (Art Director at Sucker Punch Productions), after which I pared it down to the bare essentials that sell me as a senior animator:
http://bhopanimation.carbonmade.com/
I've still got holes to fill there. The Life Drawing & Sketchbook section is extremely lacking, and I hope to remedy that by attending some life drawing sessions this weekend and next week.
More importantly, there are still some things I want to do to sharpen up my reel. I'm working on an extended action sequence featuring a soldier and a big robot, since it seems everyone wants to see a guy with a gun doing acrobatics.
And after doing
11 Second Club's February competition, I really would like to do another acting animation from an audio clip from the great '80s comedy, "A Fish Called Wanda."
Once I do those two things, I'm going to try to get some feedback from fellow animators and see if they can help me identify any other ways I can improve my reel. I do feel that if I do a good job on them, however, my reel will be in a good place.
For shits and giggles, I've also put my various graphic design-related projects onto a separate site:
http://www.benhopper.portfoliobox.me/
I sometimes have as much fun doing graphic design as I do animating, I just don't get as much practice as I would like. Hopefully that changes with all this free time I have now.
