Building a Strong Portfolio
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Art by Tanner Garlick
Our newest episode dropped today, you can click here to listen to it. Enjoy!
Portfolios. Everyone talks about them, works on theirs, and knows that they are important. In this episode we go over how to add focus to your portfolio, the importance of a business plan, and offer advice on how you can beef up your portfolio, and become a more focused, well rounded creator.
Please use this thread to share your thoughts and questions about portfolios and what we talked about in the podcast.
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This is perfect! I was just googling this topic this morning!
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I haven't listened yet but I just want to say how much I admire Tanner's illustration for this episode. Absolutely Awesome!
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You know I am still part way through How To be A Good Art Student lols - I thought I would practise before moving on. But this would be a good one now that I have an actual focus -Children Stories -though I still like my epic and dreamy environments.
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Great episode! The ever so popular Cheshire Cat analogy. Doesn’t matter which road you take if you don’t know where you’re going. I feel like I learn something more about the industry everyday and my path gets more focused. I veared away from children’s lit a bit, because of all the information I’ve learned from you guys. go towards the path you gravitate towards and what you can actually execute. Having a business plan is huge. I loved the courses lee did already and this just expands this. The more times you hear something and adding the perspective commenting helps emensly. I bet you may have a lull in reviewing portfolios at comicons while we all now rush to create new work to actually follow all your advice.
You guys may need to stop being so awesome because you’re going to teach your way out of a job! You make the artist world a better place! GREAT POSCAST THIS WEEK! No fluff this week at all. But I like those too!
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This podcast came in the perfect time for me
I just started to build a new portfolio and this was field of golden eggs . Now to put it in practice.
and the best portfolio advice I`ve heard so far imo.
Great episode!
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@Jake-Parker great podcast, I never though there was a diffence between childrens books and animation art... They look very alike to me what am I missing?
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@Jason-Bowen They can be quite similar because they're both targeted at children (thought not always for animation) and have a focus on visual storytelling. However animation art tends to have to be simplified for animation. It will often have lineart, or flat shapes with minimal shading. The look in general is very clean, polished, commercial. Whereas children's books tend to look more artsy. Sometimes there will be a big difference in style between the animated characters and the static backgrounds. Children book art have no such restriction and can use as much textures, details and media as your style demands. In can be in watercolor or pastel or coloring pencil, or whatever you like. It's also good if you can show in your portfolio that you can lay out illustration in a page spread format, and be able to choose wisely what image to illustrate from the text (because not all the action will be shown, as opposed to animation). In short, animation and children books can be similar in some aspects but they are different media. When doing your portfolio, always try to ask yourself what media you're going for and make sure to demonstrate abilities required for this specific media.
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@StudioLooong likewise! This podcast went into more depth than the Googled articles and filled a lot of gaps. I feel a bit apprehensive about the required leg-work - what about you?
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Hi! Long time listener/1 year subscriber (quit to save money)—I've learned so much from you guys. Thank you. I will be back.
Portfolio topic is getting clearer by the yearer. I still have questions - and you guys touched on it briefly when making the point to figure out what you want to do and put that in your portfolio. I wanna do character design. However, in the meantime, I need stuff in my portfolio that will get me work right now. For example, I have a degree in graphic design and am trying to traverse to the illustration world. Do you recommend I create multiple portfolios for multiple jobs (how is that possible?)? Or is it acceptable
to organize it in a way that will appeal to a multitude of fields? For example, my categories are: "Animals/Creatures", "Humans", "Cars Machines Robots", "Print Layouts", "Lettering/Logos", "Environments" and so on... I'll throw the link down there if anyone is feeling like taking look.
Basically, I have a feeling I need to just put in characters and character turn-arounds and character lines, etc if that is what I REEEAAAALLLLY want to do? But what about immediate work (my graphic design biz)?
Thanks! You guys are the best.
Best,
Abe
Portfolio - abewitz.com -
@Qi yes it's a bit intimidating! I'm to the point where I think i'm ready to start asking for critiques but I like to do my research and make sure that I've done as much as I can to eliminate any obvious issues with my body of work before asking someone else to spend time looking at it and giving me advice. I took the SVS class on what should be in a children's book portfolio and I feel like there was some overlap there (as far as the list of things to include) but Lee's point about the business plan was a great one. I was like - well duh - that makes complete sense and is something I hadn't even considered.
I was a little nervous when they said that you should pretty much have a brand new portfolio every 6 months. I have a full-time job and try to devout a few hours each night to my illustration, it takes me about 12 months to cycle all the older work out of my portfolio. I though that was a pretty good pace but maybe not
@abewitz1 I'm also a designer trying to make the jump into illustration. I think you'd benefit from taking your first 6 galleries and separating them from the last 5. Personally, I found it best to have two completely different portfolios for design and illustration. My design is very corporate and my illustration is geared toward children. I found that the presence of one, on the same site as the other- even in sub-categories- detracted from my overall appeal. I was applying for a new full-time design position last May and I put up a portfolio completely devoted to design on a separate URL from my illustration. If you look at my site now (www.studiolooong.com) you wouldn't even know that I'm a designer except for the line in my bio where I say that's what I do. Another great example is Blake Stevenson. He's a full-time designer at Shopify, I'm sure his design work is fantastic but you won't find it on his website (http://www.jetpacksandrollerskates.com).
You have to put yourself in the perspective of a potential client landing on your work for the first time. If they are looking for the right person to wireframe their new app, they don't care how well you can draw a baby or a robot. It might even turn them off to see that stuff because they think you have too much going on and they are looking for someone who lives and breaths graphic design. If you don't want to maintain two domains and URLs, I would pick which focus is less important to you at the present moment and move that body of work to some sort of free platform like a Behance or Art Station account or a free wix page.
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I’m really curious by what yuo guys, @Lee-White @Will-Terry @Jake-Parker, meant by your style being Animation looking. Got any examples? I always fear that mine looks like so.
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@StudioLooong thank you! that is super helpful! I appreciate your time. Your site is great. Simple and I know exactly what you’re aiming for.
Best,
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@nyrrylcadiz Here is an example of what I think of as "animation style". This is brittney Lee and she is amazing! BUT, it's very animation looking and many people followed her in this style. If you go to ctn or other animation conventions, you will see many images/characters that look like this.
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@NessIllustration Thanks for the answer, interesting to know
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@Lee-White wow! Thanks Lee! This is very helpful. Now I see what you mean.
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New subscriber here, hi!
This one hit pretty close to home as I’m literally focusing all my energy on my portfolio for my first SCBWI conference in LA this summer.
I totally understand the importance of the business plan, and knowing your market, but at the same time it seems like a “cart before the horse” sort of situation.
I don’t mean to play the devils advocate, but what about someone like Kadir Nelson? His work doesn’t fit into a box, he’s done everything from book covers to album covers, to fine art shows.
Instead of making your work “fit” into hyper specific subcategories of publishing wouldn’t it be better to develop your personal style and vision and then decide where you fit best?
I don’t want to compromise my “artistic vision” so to speak. To me it seems a bit inauthentic to create work in the way described in the episode.
Thoughts?
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@Sean_H I wonder if you're simply articulating two different approaches to a developing a career... There are many artists that first develop a style and then apply that style to specific projects. But I would venture a guess that those projects are probably presented to them from others, not necessarily the other way around where they pursue those individual genre opportunities.
The one approach depends on the capacity of others to think outside of their boxes: an Art Director sees an artist's work and thinks "This style would be beautiful in a children's book!" The other approach caters to an Art Director/Editor directly by eliminating the need for them to think outside their box too much.
What frustrates me is the box itself. I would imagine life as an Art Director is rather like a studio head making a film: you look for directors and projects that fit a predetermined, safe formula that has a proven track record of success. I would imagine it's the rare children's book publisher that takes a chance on artists that haven't demonstrated their capacity to "play it safe" at some level.
There's only so much risk publishers are willing to take. Much like film studios, they seek a formula for repetitive success, and taking a chance on an artist's style requires them to have a measure of success with that style in other ways. That's why so many movies are adaptations of books, or cast successful musicians in starring acting roles.
And the ripple effect is profound--my field is theatre and can I just tell you it has always been less risky for producers to mount theatrical productions based on existing IP and movies? That's why we currently have a musical of Tootsie on Broadway, and why The Tale of Despereaux as well as a stage version of Almost Famous are being mounted at the Old Globe in San Diego. It goes all the way back further than adaptations of Harriet Beecher Stowe's novel Uncle Tom's Cabin (which, in the mid 1800s was the most popular theatrical piece in the US with over 200 touring productions country-wide). I could make a mile-long post of theatrical pieces developed from famous musicians (The Who's Tommy and Duncan Sheik's Spring Awakening, or Cyndi Lauper's Kinky Boots and Sara Bareilles's Waitress) to Intellectual Properties (The Hunchback of Notre Dame, The Little Mermaid, Tarzan, The Lion King, Aladdin, Spider-Man: Take Back the Night...) to novels (To Kill a Mockingbird, The Wizard of Oz...)
Making original work is hard, but selling it is harder. It's pathetic, but now casting directors are more likely to cast actors with a large social media following than someone with authentic talent but unknown. Famous movie star wanting to go back to the stage? You're practically a shoe-in.
Having the vision to embrace work outside of the box is both celebrated and disdained in a number of different professional worlds. That's why Sony's style of animation in Spider-Man: Into the Spider-verse was so risky and so successful. Purposefully breaking the mold to catch lightning in a bottle is both brave and foolish. Breaking even on risk-taking projects isn't something the-powers-that-be desire (can afford?) to do because it's more likely to fail than succeed.
Seriously, I can't imagine what it's like to be an Art Director, straddling that line between the new and the tried & true. It simultaneously makes me absolutely livid that there aren't more brave ones out there taking chances on the fresh or bold, and chastised & humbled that any of them are brave enough to put forth anything different enough to garner the attention of something like the Caldecott committee that is supposed to celebrate the fresh and bold.
Ultimately it's a catch-22. An artist does what they can and becomes as informed as they can, regardless, right? At least that's my justification for learning as much as I can about the different illustration and art industries. They're vast. And as much as there are rules, there are also no rules.
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@Sean_H I’m no pro but as a counter argument, I would like to ask “How many Kadir Nelsons are out there? How many illustrators get to dabble in a myriad of industries?” Kadir makes amazing work but it’s evident to me that he’s more of the exception to the rule. He’s an illustration rockstar. As for most of us beginning artists, we might find a safer route by focusing in one field and then perhaps branching out in the future.
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@Sean_H Thanks for the reply. I'll try to elaborate on this a little:
Kadir Nelson is a great example of an artist that actually emphasizes the point we were making on the podcast. Kadir's work is highly usable in almost all commercial applications, so that he why he has had success in so many different genres.
The key is finding where personal interest (style) overlaps with commercial viability.
But let's try your example out and we can see where it might not work out so well. If I were to try and find my style by just following whatever I wanted to do, what happens if the work I arrive at ultimately has no commercial possibilities? Then you are right back at the beginning and need to start over if you want to make a career out of it.
Note, there is absolutely nothing wrong with doing work you want to do and NOT becoming a professional illustrator. But, once you say you want to work, you have to acknowledge what the marketplace is doing in order to succeed.
Anther side note: if making any work feels like compromising your artistic vision, then I'd use that as a guide for changing what choices you are making. You are totally right that if you are just making work that isn't authentic, then it will be hollow and probably wont work out too well in the long run.