5 Second Projects + Showreel Critiques

GreyscaleGorilla is a site that I stumbled onto in my regular internet wandering and thought that it might be a good one to share with the rest of you. It's a site run by Nick Campbell, who works as a motion graphic designer - amongst other things - and has done so for six years, he posts about various techniques and has recorded many videos all viewable on his Vimeo page.
The two things that I found most interesting on his site were the firstly, Demo Reel Critiques and secondly the 5 Second Projects.

The Critiques are where he takes four or five submitted showreels per episode and watches them through, either on his own or aided by another industry professional. They take about ten minutes for each showreel, going through everything from the music used to the pieces chosen, and really explain why certain parts should be cut or even time altered so as to avoid the reel dragging. I recommend watching Episode 4 and Episode 5 as they are the ones where he isn't solely going through them and you get a bit better feedback as there's two of them to bounce comments off each other.

The 5SPs are great and so far he's done sixteen, each one gives you a new topic and a deadline for you to submit a new animation, there are now 'Official Rules' as some of the earlier attempts hadn't been too stringent on content it seems, this is what you have to obey in order to be eligible;

1. Submissions must be five seconds long!
2. Only animation is accepted. Video only submissions will not.
3. The animations has to do with the theme in some way.
4. Original Work only. Don’t cut out 5 seconds of already made work.
5. Link back to GreyScaleGorilla on your Vimeo Post

It's a great way of producing content for your showreel that isn't infringing on other people's copyright, only making five seconds means it doesn't have to take up heaps of your time if you don't want it to and by getting given a theme to work with you have a springboard for ideas, here's a list of the project themes from past months;
I'm Drunk/Something Good, Something Bad/Kick The Bucket/Old Video Games/Summer in Space/Upside-Down/Modern Monkey/Good Night/Circles and Spheres/Fast Food/Spooky Scary/Start with a Photo/Home Sweet Home/Milk and Cookies/Fail

The most recent was Self Portrait but the deadline was Feb 28th, so keep an on the site for the winners of that one and the next theme to be announced soon, and when there is something new then;
1. Create a five second animation based on the theme.
2. Upload your video to Vimeo. Don’t forget to add a link back to the theme's blog post.
3. Post a link to comment thread and he will add it to the Channel.

In the meantime, if any of this interests you then have a practice creating something short using the old themes, remember it's only 60 frames at 12fps or 125 frames at 25fps, simple!

Good luck and be creative!