So some bum named Mike asked in a comment to this post on art careers in gaming, "What do I need to do to stand out, with my reel?" The answer is almost tautological: don't show weak work. Be good.
But that's hardly actionable by Joe Q Random. Here's what I mean by that.
First, don't pad your reel. Don't put work in there that you're not completely happy with, because if you see problems, you can bet any Art Director worth their salt will be seeing those same problems, and then some. Short reels of your best work will work a lot better than long reels of so-so work, especially when that so-so work might be showing things that you don't really want to do.
Part of the point of my first post was that I see a lot of portfolios with a ton of work in all areas, but only a tiny bit is any good. The candidate is trying to say, "I can model, I can texture, I can rig, I can animate, I'll do anything, give me a job!!1!" The reviewer is saying to themselves, "This guy is all over the place. The textures and shaders are nice, but look at all that terrible animation. Wow, there's a lot of animation, and it's awful. It looks like they want to animate, and they may not be happy just texturing." So they go on and think better of someone clearly showing off texturing as their main skill, and they bring that person in for an interview.
It's about showing judgment, and clearly communicating your skillset. If you're a great rigger but lousy modeler, don't do your own models for your reel, use someone else's. Bob's reel that shows off a rig with a screen overlay saying, "Character model by Frank," is so much better than one that obscures the quality of the rig with a bad model. Frank can come along with a reel that has an overlay that says, "Rig by Bob." Being in a school situation, you can often negotiate this sort of trade to improve each other's reels. (And reels with rigs should show models with them in places, to show how well the rig handles deformation in areas like hips and shoulder joints: you can't show just a skeleton and controls.)
You want to show good judgment. A reel that shows weak work shows poor judgment, despite whatever elements of skill may be present. Scenes of massive complexity, or which are obviously a sign of having worked with a team, need to have called out which bits the candidate was personally responsible for, so the reviewer is not confused, or ends up thinking that the candidate is trying to take credit for more than they should.
You're trying to impress the reviewer with your skill, and to make them think that they could trust you, trust you with a job, where a team of people are going to depend on your work. The individual scenes within the reel might have "skill" as their main communication, but how it's all put together into the entire reel is what demonstrates "trustworthiness".
