Portfolio review, zero to hero! Update: working on Portfolio, sharing progress
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@Jordi-Ventura Hi Jordi, welcome to the forums
I know just how you feel, I left a studio job 3 years ago to become a full-time freelance illustrator, and it's rough out there! There is very little information on the business side of things, and most of it is out of order or contradictory. Most all advice I've seen centers on social media as the main strategy to get work, and in my own experience that's not great advice. Social media is both a a long game and a very passive strategy, so it's best to use paired with other strategies, NOT as your main strategy, so that can get you work NOW, not 3 years from now...
For what it's worth I've been able to make it work, and this year for the first time my full time freelance income has exceeded my last annual salary at the studio! So it's definitely possible, especially for someone so skilled as you. Lately I've been thinking of starting a Youtube channel to share advice on how to get started and thrive in freelance illustration. I'm trying to gauge the interest for such a channel, as well as learn how to make videos.
Your portfolio specifically confuses me. For one thing it's a PDF document. Nowadays when art directors ask for a portfolio they mean your website. If there's anything to download, a lot of them won't bother. They might also doubt your experience or your savvy if you don't have a website. Do you use Adobe Creative Cloud? If so, you're entitled to use their Adobe Portfolio platform for FREE to easily build a top notch portfolio website. Then you buy a domain, link it and you're done in one afternoon! That's what I use for mine and I love it.
For another, your portfolio is a... joint portfolio for you and this Ellen lady? I don't think I've ever seen such a thing. Are you a writer and illustrator team? I think this would confuse the heck out of publishers. Are you trying to get illustration work for yourself, or a book deal for you and Ellen? Trying to get a book that your two would make together published is an entirely different (and more complicated) process than just getting hired for illustration. You would need a literary agent, and then you'd need to write and submit a manuscript/book dummy. If accepted by your agent, this would get sent to publishers who would have the option to bid on it. For illustration work, you can just email your website and get matched to a book that needs illustrating. I've personally had a lot of luck with cold emails. But I think people you've sent this too might not know what you and Ellen are about. Your portfolio looks like a story, or like you're pitching different stories. A publisher might think they're asked if they're interested to publish any of those stories, not if they're interested in hiring you for a book they already have in the works.
@Nyrryl-Cadiz has provided great advice about what to put on your website portfolio and about agents
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Hey Nyrryl and Ness thanks for the extensive answers! Everything you said is really helpfull! Also I check your works and they are really really amazing!!
@Nyrryl-Cadiz Ok, so I should work on a specific portfolio for children Illustration right? I will start working on these images. I was thinking to do some images of classical stories, is that a good idea? Like hansel and gretel, simbad, cinderella etc.
Yes, as you see Im a total newbie in the business area haha.
I really need to do a website, I tried but looks quite dificult also I dont know what to put on it etc, I will check Adobe Creative Cloud and follow your advice!Yes, I team up with a friend, we worked in the last job, She is a teacher/writer and we had good synergy working togheter. For what I heard was a good idea to go like illustrator+writer, but now Im not that sure haha. The idea was to find a company that wants to hire us doing Educational resources. And the portfolio we just wanted to show what we did and what we can do!
Yes, probably the portfolio can be quite confusing, anyways in the mail we specify that is job we done, and we just want to show what we did.
Awww...looks like I have to start over again, probably I focus the whole thing wrong!
Im really interested to find a coach, teacher,someone who can help me in this process.
Subscribing to svslearn you only have acess to the videos and podcast? or you also recive some kind of personal feedback/critique? -
Hi @Jordi-Ventura , for the website, I use Wix (I know there's also Squarespace and some other similar sites) and it's really easy to set up. You don't need to do any programming or nothing similar, you just pick which looks you want to have (regarding menu, gallery, etc...) and place them on the website. Regarding on what to have on your website, I honestly just looked up other illustrator's websites, and mostly there were few categories - porftolio, books, about, blog, contact. My personal choice is to keep it simple and show your best work - someone more experienced might have a better insight into this. But as @NessIllustration said about having a Adobe Creative Cloud and making a free website, I would definitely suggest that as a first choice
, as for the other sites I've mentioned you need to make yearly payments. -
@Jordi-Ventura I think having a joint portfolio will only make it more difficult to get work for both of you. Typically, publishers don't like when authors submit manuscripts that already have art, or already have an artist picked. They take great care and pride in picking themselves an artist that is most suited to illustrate the story. Having your portfolio together means if they're only looking for one type of work they'll likely pass on both of you. The very fact you have a portfolio together might confuse them, and since they're such busy people who receive so many submissions daily, usually anything that's even slightly confusing goes straight in the trash bin.
As for educational publishers, from my understanding their methods are very varied. Some of them hire authors and illustrators in house. Some hire authors in house, and contract out to freelance illustrators. I've had educational gigs as a freelance contract before, but it might be interesting to note that all of them were through my agent. I think a lot of educational publishers like to use agencies to find their artists because some of these are really big projects and that's easier. I'm currently working on one that's so big, the publisher had to hire several artist to make the illustrations of the one manual and I myself only got a small section of 30 or items and spot illustrations to create. They used the agent to distribute the work between their artists and act as the go-between (I haven't even talked to them directly).
In general, educational gigs are more restrictive, less creative and less paid than picture book gigs. If you're able to get picture books, I don't think there's any reason to restrict yourself to just the educational market.
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@Jordi-Ventura yup! Any story would do actually as long as you show consistent looking characters through various illustrations. Publishers want that.
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@Jordi-Ventura hi! I’d have to agree a lot with @NessIllustration Most educational publishers nowadays turn to illustration agents when looking for illustrators. My first 2 books with my agent were educational books for kids. And yes, they were very restrictive and pay quite low. Are you really set in only illustrating educational books or are you open to trade books too?
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@Jordi-Ventura also, if you’re looking for a coach/teacher, you can approach pro illustrators and ask them if they offer mentoships. Sometimes they’d take you on for a fee. Or you can continue posting here. Sometimes Lee, Will and David poke their heads in here and offer some useful advice. Most of the time you’ll have us. I think our combined experience and gut feel make up for a well-rounded pro illustrator.
feel free to ask us more questions. We’re happy to help. -
@Jordi-Ventura I know that illustrator Stephanie Fizer Coleman offers some classes and advices, so she might be doing individual portfolio reviews/mentorship as well. Here's the website if you want to take a look https://www.learnwithsfc.com/ . But I also agree that people here are super helpful
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@Nyrryl-Cadiz @NessIllustration @TamaraDomuzin thanks for all the feedback!
Im going to use this post to show my portfolio progression. So anyone is wellcome here to share their opinion and feedback!
I started working on fairy tale as Nyrryl told me, I choose cinderella. Probably I will do more fairy tales was funny but challenging.
I share here what I did also If you can help me to choose what version of the 3rd images work on I will appreciate it. Thanks for all the help awesome forum!
1 - This for me is 100% finished
2 - This one still need a little bit of work, but Im quite lazy to finish it
3- Here I dont know what image will work better, if you can tell me what version do you like more i will appreciate it!
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@Jordi-Ventura Looking awesome! You’re so fast! As for the third illustration, I prefer 1. That blue background compliments nicely with the yellow carriage.
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@Jordi-Ventura This is amazing!! I really like version 1
Is the cat in illustration 2 the same as in the last illustration? If it is, the cat looks inconsistent and not "on model" so be careful with that! Make sure we can recognize the characters from one illustration to the next. I do like that you did include the cat as it adds a little "story inside the story" feel to the illustration. You could include the cat in the first illustration as well so it's a constant presence accross all 3 illustrations, and have the cat do a secondary action in the scene (like hide behind Cinderella, scratch at the step-sister's dress, etc).
I think it's interesting that you took a spot illustration approach for these. But since all 3 are spots it makes me wonder, do you plan to have full bleed illustrations in there as well? It's important to have a variety
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@Jordi-Ventura I think the 1 is better because the blue background makes everything pop more. In the 2nd one you can see her hands a bit lost in the green. If you put a black layer on top of everything and turn it into Color mode you can tell which values are right between colors so you can avoid that overlapping (if you want to). Keep in mind that if they are complementary colors they will make a contrast even though the values are the same.
And from the other ones I really like the one with the fairy! I think maybe it's because of the color scheme and the lighting.
Hope this helped. You are doing great! -
@Nyrryl-Cadiz @NessIllustration @cristamay Finally I didnt finish that illustration I thought about what Ness said about spots illustration and its true that I have too much of them, maybe I will redraw it and make a "normal illustration". Anyways thanks for the feedback!
I have a bit update! Finally I got my website, a friend of mine help me to do it! Is code copypaste, and upload to amazon it only cost me 9€/year so its cool for starting.
So here it is! https://jordiventuraart.com
Any feedback is very wellcome. I divided the webiste in two sections, one for Children Illustration and other for educational resources. Children illustration shows more elaborated art, other side the educational resources is also cool but more simple and easy. I prefer not to do to many changes in the layout-structure of the web, but Im very interested if you think I need to work in more diferent topics or Im ready to go.
So, do you think Im ready to go to start looking for an agent? I was thinking to do 3-4 more images in Children illustration portfolio. What do you think?
Is agust a bad month to looking for an agency? I mean usually this month people do vacations, I was thinking to take this month to do more illustrations and learn and wait for september, is that wise? or I just start sending mails and contacting with agencies?
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I will like to add some personal reflection I had these past weeks.
My brother is a music composer and works for a videogame company in Barcelona, called Social Point. He told me that they opened a position for concept artist, and he encourage me to give it a shot. At frist I was very excited to give it a try, but that means start working in a new whole portfolio and changing totally the style I been working on. I did some master copys to catch up with the style of the company and start drawing and painting in the style they have.
But I dont know, I didnt feel it at all, Also it means doing a lot of work and start over a new portfolio, working on diferent styles from scratch, looks like a titanic work, also I dont have expirence in working on videogames.
I spend some months working on my children illustration style and I already finished my website. And I think Im very near to start looking for an agent and have a good feedback from them.
I like children illustration, I mean, as an artist I think its important the value and the impact that your work have and what service you put on. I like the idea that the children that will read an illustrated book by me can be fascinated by the magic of illustrations, that the story awaken something good in them in some way.
If I put my service on the videogames for me the meangiful and constructive impact that you can do on children get lost, is just feeding a money maker machine that encourages wasting time and "kill" creative. I mean if you are playing you are not devoloping some hobbie or talent, and I speak for personal expirence! So many time lost!
I think Im just starting at children illustration, is still a lot to learn, last day I was checking the Wizard of Oz contest and I saw really amazing illustrations and very good ideas but one of them shock me! the illustration @carriecopadraws did was just to much! I realized "Man, I dont know nothing! Still to muuch to learn!!"
I think drawing can be the "easy part" of children illustration, the most important is how to conceptualize an idea, how an image can explain something, make you feel something more than wow its a good drawing...as we say here...A picture is worth a thousand words
What I want to say to excel, to master something requires sometimes a life commitment. Jumping to one thing to another doesnt feel right for me anymore, I did a lot in the past, I think it has good things to know a little bit of everything but at some point you need to focus and specialize in some area.
Sorry for the wall of text, but I need to take this out hehe
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@Jordi-Ventura cool! great job on the website. i'm actually working on my new site myself and I think we have similar layouts.
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Hi Jordi,
You have lots of potential!
Relax, and keep creating.
Best of luck!
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@Nyrryl-Cadiz I just checked your website, you already update it, right? Looks really good! Amazing illustrations
@jsnzart Thanks for the kind words, yep, relax take it easy and keep creating!
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@Jordi-Ventura Thanks! I finally switched to Adobe portfolio and bought my own domain. It's still not finished tho. I still have to add a tab for the previous books I worked on but I just wanted it to be up as soon as possible for any potential clients. I'll just have to work on it again soon.
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@Jordi-Ventura That's awesome news. Before going into illustration, I must warn you that you will receive very few and low paying projects at the beginning even if you have an agent. You'll definitely have to supplement your income with a side hustle. Maybe you can work in that game company or some other part time job for the mean time.
I do understand the struggle of learning a new art style and redoing your portfolio. it's not easy. It might take you months. I also understand your dilemma in making games. I'm not a gamer because I think they waste a lot of my time and to actually work for a company that makes games is not something I'd want to be a part of as well. I was considering being a concept artist a few years ago but after learning that most jobs are in the mobile games industry, it just kinda turned me off concept art all together.
Whichever path you choose, choose the one that will provide for your needs for the time being and will allow you enough time to work on your portfolio while you wait for your big break.
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@Jordi-Ventura Aw, thanks!
It sounds like mobile game illustration is not a field you are interested in. You have a goal in mind and that type of job will not move you forward in the direction you want. That's great! A lot of laypeople will hear you're an artist and assume all kinds of jobs are right for you - graphic design, logos, etc. Mobile games tend to have their own look. It was smart of you to try the style, even if the outcome is that you don't like it. Keep developing your skill/portfolio for the job YOU want.
I have a slight issue with the general phrase that video games are a waste of time. It's like saying reading a book is a waste of time. I'm a gamer, I'm fascinated with art in motion and storytelling. I AM developing my talent by experiencing games. There is a huge range of video games out there. The ones I play I study:
- their art direction
- the way they use color
- how they make you care about characters
- costume design
- prop design
- environment design
- how time of day and weather affect the mood
The recent Ghost of Tsushima is so beautiful, I'm constantly taking screenshots for reference on colors and composition ideas.
That said, I don't put time into mobile games because they don't have these qualities I'm looking for. Just like you noticed for yourself.
Your portfolio looks strong, your use of shape and color is very appealing! I think if you keep going you will get that agent and the work you want!
