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just do what you want to get jobs for. so for instance if you don‘t want to get character jobs, don‘t include character work. if you want to create colorful shiny organic mograph animations, do mainly that. if the ultimate goal is to get gigs from agencies and studios, you should probably do a mix of rather popular trendy styles and some really original stuff, so people know you can create stuff in styles that are en vogue right now, but also come up with something different and truly original. there really is no recipe, some people are specialists and they really focus just on one thing, and everything in their reel looks quite similar, while a generalists reel will look much more diverse of course. the only general rule is to keep it short and interesting.

Everfresh's post is absolutely on point. Show, what you want to get jobs for. But also consider what kind of jobs are more common and which are absolutely niche. What can help is to give yourself imaginary Jobs. for example a technical animation for the function of coffee machines. or a super hip advert for a lifestyle product. Use imaginary products, so that you don't get problems, but make them feel real so that any viewer can belief it. Give yourself a time budget and define the wished outcome. just like with any regular job. And while you make it just think about the result and do not hesitate. Be harsh to yourself don't be happy with the result to easily. And take your time. A show reel from scratch takes month. The better it is the better jobs you will get. best luck Jops

I want to make my own video showreel (I don't even have a portfolio) but I don't really have any inspiration of what to include. I've seen a lot of showreels in youtube (individual artists that are not working in studios) but they all seam to my eyes too mainstream. They all have these same elements. Showing some kind of choreography of clones A bunch of balls flowing around attracted by an invisible attractor Some softbodies colliding with each other Some voronoi fracturing Some abstract Volume Builder melting thing Maybe some minimalistic/miniature architectural assembling thing All the above rendered using soft pastel lighting and colors I'm watching videos and I'm like ... yes, I know how that was made, yes, done that, yes that's voronoi with a matrix, that was made with that plugin, that is made using X-Particles... Either there is a specific trend that hasn't faded yet, Either my eyes have been trained too well recognizing the C4D "look", Either most freelancers using C4D start with low-end hardware and end up using it for the same reasons, (I'm not referring to well established professionals like most people here, their demos probably contain things they already done for clients, I'm talking about beginners (professionally) like me ) Or I'm just watching shitty videos. Character modeling/animation isn't my thing so I can't compete with that... Maybe a chubby cartoon character but nothing more. I'm not sure if I'm really out of good ideas or blinded by the fact that I know enough technical stuff that have made me difficult to be impressed. (I still get impressed by things I don't know well like Xpresso and Python scripts) What makes a good looking portfolio video for a C4D user ? I've been monitoring jobs from ArtStation and they all need senior artists. These days there's a high demand for AAA content creators. So how can one start ? I think this is a nice topic for anyone with zero professional experience interested on getting out there.

Anything that Carey Smith and Division 05 puts out is worth watching. Here's a 4 part series where he takes an existing show reel and re-edits it and talks through the process to improve it. Then look through his Design Crit series to step up your work. Also 002 Storyboarding is my fav and I make all my students watch it.