I think as long as you're learning it's ok. An instructor at iAnimate once suggested we try to recreate shots from animated movies as case studies. It's great for learning but I wouldn't put it in my reel or in actual work.

I unfortunately know an animator who copied a beautiful hand gesture from a well-known movie and put it in his own shot for a completely different movie. It's not a known case but he got very bad rep from the other animators.

Practice however you want though!

Try to do all the exercises they talk about on the Animator's Survival Kit, and check out lists like these:

http://www.animatorisland.com/51-great- … to-master/

Practice makes you better for sure!

FoonyMoose wrote:

thelittlepenguin84 wrote:

replicating the shot can be a good exercise. for demo purposes, you could be called out for it, if you put it in. this will cause people to doubt all your ideas and maybe prevent you from being hired.

At the same time, I am aware of good animators, in senior positions, who have ''copied'' work/exercises in their reels.

If I modify my walk/run cycles and idle enough (changing the poses, timing, spacing, etc. a little bit), would it still be a bad idea to put them in my demo reel?

Also, I forgot to mention it, I will apply to the Game Animation's introduction workshop at iAnimate. Judging from my actual demo reel, do you guys think this is good enough for application at the school?

How iAnimate works is you send them your demo reel and they tell you what workshop suits you level-wise. I got into Workshop 2 of the Feature Animation course when I applied and I did workshops 2 through 4. I still want to do 5 though.