Great article! I've been meaning to put together my portfolio website and after reading this I just decided to do so. Soon as it's online I'll link it to you. Thanks for the advice!
this was posted on Newsarama and most of it seems relevant to us too.
ONE STEP: PORTFOLIO HORROR by Jim Zubkavich
This bi-weekly column is meant to give advice from me and eventually other people in the industry about how to break in as an artist. This will include tricks for the formal submission routes as well as a bunch of informal elements you may not have realized.
Although Id given critiques to students at an art college in Calgary where I worked from 1999-2002, nothing could really prepare me for giving feedback to hopeful comic book artists as a Project Manager at Udon.
Once my boss realized that I could do some pretty sharp critique of peoples portfolios he enthusiastically handed the reins of looking over submissions to me. At first I was honoured to be given such responsibility. That happy glow quickly faded. Now I have so much more respect for patient and polite editors at conventions because I have a clearer sense of what theyre going through.
Okay, here we go. Your portfolio should NOT include:
Scary Anime: I think Ive seen every terrible anime-style portfolio imaginable. Pictures of giant breasted devil women or ridiculously submissive innocent girls who look like theyd blow over in a stiff breeze, designs traced from famous Japanese artists, over-sexed anthropomorphic anime animal people - the works. After an exhausting convention day I sometimes go back to my hotel and utter a silent curse at every Japanese artist who influenced these people.
I had a lady show me smeary crayon drawings on lined paper that shed done of Sailor Moon and the other Sailor Scouts. This wasnt some 13 year old looking for artistic encouragement; this was a woman in her late twenties genuinely wanting to know if she could leave her current career to find work as an artist.
Porn: Unless youre showing a porn comic publisher your work, you should keep the porn out. Opening up a portfolio and seeing (almost always terribly drawn) huffing and puffing between characters does not inspire or titillate. Heres another hint sort of connected to that- if youve never actually had sex before you probably wont be able to draw the act convincingly.
As if regular porn wasnt bad enough, Udons reputation for sexy anime-centric art means I get to see the portfolio of every terrifying anime porn artist in North America. Trust me when I tell you that its not edgy or impressive, its actually just sad. I wish they could change the Adult category that people use to define porn to something more fitting like Juvenile and Incredibly Annoying.
Demons and Angels: Okay maybe its just me, but no matter what combination of horns, wings, claws, hooves, tails, fire, auras of energy, flaming weapons and fangs youve come up with its probably not as cool or ingenious as you think it is. Just leave the demon and angel stuff alone. 99% of those pieces come across as derivative and lame. Even if its well drawn it tends to come across as been there, done that. Im tempted to add Wolverine wannabe claws to this category as well.
Ego: Having confidence is good. Being an egotistical prick is not. If Im taking time to look over your work while our booth is hopping and were moving product and making money, its probably not a good time to act like its my privilege to see your artwork. Negative bonus points if you interrupt other conversations Im having to thrust your portfolio in my face. Extra bad points if you come around the table at a con without being asked and proceed to use one of our boxes full of inventory as a seat.
Giving negative feedback and critique is stressful for both sides of the evaluation equation. Getting angry, scowling or pointing out flaws in work weve published isnt going to bring me to your side. Practically crying when I point out problems in your work also makes things pretty darn awkward.
Promotion Whoring: Tying in to the ego thing above is ridiculous self promotion. I know you have your own story and character ideas; Many of us do. Having 30+ drawings of your cool characters many, many costumes comes across more obsessive than useful. Insisting that your creations are the great new heroes of this emerging millennium also doesnt have the impact you think it does. Neither does a Power Point presentation outlining the movie, video game, toy and merchandizing opportunities for Cool Character X or whatever his name is. The fact that these characters invariably involve demons, angels and badly done anime art to boot is really just icing on the cake.
If you want to make an even scarier impression, make sure you dress up like Cool Character X while presenting your portfolio.
Glaring Weaknesses: Making sure every character in your portfolio pages is wearing a mask because you have trouble drawing faces and expressions doesnt instil me with confidence that you can be a reliable comic artist. Doing 5 pages of sequentials without a single background other than a starry sky also tends to jump out at me as a problem.
Photos: Your comic art portfolio should contain artwork, not photos I know this comes as a tremendous shock to you all.
Photographs of your fine arts installation exhibit is not useful to me. Photographs of horror make up youve applied to actors in B-Movies is not useful to me. Photographs of your graffiti art is not useful to me. Photographs of tattoo designs you created are not useful to me. Photographs of you standing next to famous people is not useful to me. Photographs of you looking cool wearing sunglasses and a trenchcoat is not useful to me.
Out In Left Field Material: If youve come to a comic convention and are showing around your portfolio, expect an editor to want to see the kinds of material they publish in your submission.
I had a guy bring up a portfolio full of movie star caricatures all done in pastel. Some were good, some were middling, but I still had no use for any of the stuff he brought up. When I explained to him that Udon publishes comics and that many of our books have an anime flare to them, he sealed his fate with Oh man, I totally hate that Japanimation crap.
Art doesn't have to be your job at all. It can be just fun doodling your favourite things, 100%. But if you're going to make it your job and your life then it's going to be judged compared to your peers. The fact that so many would think the above stuff is what an editor would want to see, let alone the basis of an art career, amazes me.
I was just looking through this page to get myself aware of mistakes i shouldn't commit in the future...
it says that i shouldn't use frames in my website. I was just wondering why that would be a bad thing? i don't think frames necessarily cause a problem...
Some great points and interesting perspectives here, useful stuff No-one seemed to mention contrast, for me it's important to have the right amount of contrast between the subject matter and the background so the two can be distinguished rather easily but still flow together. From seeing a quite a few folio sites I found that alot had backgrounds which were purposely made to try and blend with the art content, this made things stand out less and failed to have that impact that is required to atrract the right level of attention.
I don't mean to sound rude, but your portfolio is really lacking in what other artists probably send (Company name removed). If you really want to impress them, your gonna need to push your artistic skills a little further.
Excellent post man, I just built my port sight and thought I knew a few of these things already, others I didnt know, I will defently take this to heart and work on my site more before I finally site back and say "finished"
That's a shame you don't like flash Jon. I was trying to keep mine as 'simple flash' to get right to the point. And I chose it because I could expand the art tailored to any resolution size the viewer has when you "click to zoom".
Junkie_XL: there's no way to right click and save an image from your site.
The load times are annoying, yes they are short but it still took 7 seconds longer than my portfolio
(no I won't link it, it's full of old crap but it did get me a job)
Good thing I didn't put a flash image gallery option on mine then, heh. Thanks for the info, showed me some things that didn't seem right to me on my site but couldn't quite identify them.
Junkie_XL: there's no way to right click and save an image from your site.
The load times are annoying, yes they are short but it still took 7 seconds longer than my portfolio
(no I won't link it, it's full of old crap but it did get me a job)
okay good point about the right-click save-as. The loading at the beginning is only 166KB or so. Is that what took a while for you?
junkie: the way flash rescales the images turns them into a jaggy aliased mess so I wouldn't call that an advantage. You also cant middle click to bring up links in a new tab, wich I like to do while browsing.
How important is it to have hi-res images in the gallery?
Im thinking about whether or not to add it and how to solve it technically.
i really like this single page idea without having to click stuff.
(actually did it before reading this thread)
Thanks for the tips, I've bookmarked this page for when I come to set up a website. Is it a good idea to have galleries of different years to organize it a bit? EG. 2007 Work - 2008 work - ect.
I'd say for someone looking for their first job, there isn't really any point in splitting your folio into years. You should only show your very best work, and you really don't need to show large volumes of stuff that would warrant arranging your folio into years.
Also, don't just put a date on your work so you can show how far you've come since <insert year>.
I've been recreating my portfolio site as I'm on the job hunt again.
And after reading this I could see a lot of painful flaws in my old site especially on the navigation front.
I decided to use this.... http://www.carbonmade.com/
It's not perfect but the main advantage is that it has an interface for adding images and editing the layout. My old site was all hand written html/php and it was a pain to change things then add the files over ftp etc.
So I thought someone else might find it useful and like I say it doesn't tick all the boxes like a site you do yourself but it's a massive time saver.
no I won't link it, it's full of old crap but it did get me a job
Not like it matters sense your site is just a big 'under construction' sign atm
nome_sane: You've got some really nice work up on your site, but as is you can't right click to save any images, and the loader seems to hang sometimes which wouldn't be a huge issue if it weren't for the fact that you have to load the images in order to go through and see the rest.
Not like it matters sense your site is just a big 'under construction' sign atm
yeah, I took the old gallery down because it was full of lame! I could update it but everyone would start crying about not posting flats or wireframes.
you know what? I effing hate making websites, is there anyone that would make an easy to update website for cash? It seems like all the plug and play solutions are less than optimal. I could google it but everyone and their cousin says they are a web designer and chances are they know less about web design than I do.
Stop being so lazy I can make some basic thing for free if you want, but you'll need to specify how you want the navigation to be like -
a big page full of images, no buttons, just scroll
or seperate pages for each piece
or use lightbox (the image popup script thingy)
or a mouse-over-thumbnails-to-change-image style
or something different
I doubt you want a big page with no buttons though since you'd be able to make that quicker than reading and replying to this post -.-
Really liked this thread. I'm a senior in college going for Game Design and I'm taking Portfolio classes right now. We've addressed most of the things that are mentioned in this thread, but it's comforting to see them validated.
Anyone have any insight to this trend I'm seeing of Simpleviewer to display a large amount of images? I'm personally not a fan, but it is very upfront and to the point. I was just curious.
I still think Pior's website is the best portfolio site ever. just a page of thumbnails. when you click on a pic it just opens it. So simple, but if your art is good, i t will stand out. watch out though if your at work. he's got some nudes up there so it might not be work safe where you are. www.pioroberson.com/
Pior's site is great. He has a megaton of work so it's probably best to set it up with a page for each piece. I've overhauled my site about 4 times in the past year. I think I've finally gotten it to a point where I like it and I don't have to use flash, scripts or much else. www.environmentartist.com
Some nice artwork on those portfolios, maybe it's just my opinion but some presentation would have been nice instead of a blank white background and basic text.
Hi - I built a template portfolio for just this kind of thing. If you need a job application level portfolio site that's really easy to update and doesn't look all that bad (if I do say so myself) you can grab a copy with all the source files for free from my site. I'm using a slightly modified version, so you can see what it looks like and how it works up front. Feel free to ask any questions or post and comments or crits.
You can also use PhotoShop Bridge > Output > Web Gallery
Or you can do it the oldschool way, Photoshop > File > Automate > Web gallery.
If you have CS4 or 5 you'll need to download and install the additional plug-ins to get those options that where in older versions normally.
Very helpful. Just found this thread via LinkedIn. I'm curious to know what you think of free hosts like blogspot. In my view if you can format it to look like a professional site, it works just as well as a paid one. Do you ever do portfolio reviews? I would be interested to know what you think about my portfolio site and how I can fine tune it. http://courtt3d.blogspot.com
I've reworked the same template for 4 years now, It wasn't getting the attention that it used to so now I got to rework the whole thing. Adding a brand to each image, Previous and Next and put everything on one page. Time to get to work.
Replies
Gallery > Resume
That's all we ever see in that order. Everything else you put on a web site is for you or someone that isn't going to hire you.
The simple portfolio is greatly appreciated.
ONE STEP: PORTFOLIO HORROR
by Jim Zubkavich
This bi-weekly column is meant to give advice from me and eventually other people in the industry about how to break in as an artist. This will include tricks for the formal submission routes as well as a bunch of informal elements you may not have realized.
Although Id given critiques to students at an art college in Calgary where I worked from 1999-2002, nothing could really prepare me for giving feedback to hopeful comic book artists as a Project Manager at Udon.
Once my boss realized that I could do some pretty sharp critique of peoples portfolios he enthusiastically handed the reins of looking over submissions to me. At first I was honoured to be given such responsibility. That happy glow quickly faded. Now I have so much more respect for patient and polite editors at conventions because I have a clearer sense of what theyre going through.
Okay, here we go. Your portfolio should NOT include:
Scary Anime: I think Ive seen every terrible anime-style portfolio imaginable. Pictures of giant breasted devil women or ridiculously submissive innocent girls who look like theyd blow over in a stiff breeze, designs traced from famous Japanese artists, over-sexed anthropomorphic anime animal people - the works. After an exhausting convention day I sometimes go back to my hotel and utter a silent curse at every Japanese artist who influenced these people.
I had a lady show me smeary crayon drawings on lined paper that shed done of Sailor Moon and the other Sailor Scouts. This wasnt some 13 year old looking for artistic encouragement; this was a woman in her late twenties genuinely wanting to know if she could leave her current career to find work as an artist.
Porn: Unless youre showing a porn comic publisher your work, you should keep the porn out. Opening up a portfolio and seeing (almost always terribly drawn) huffing and puffing between characters does not inspire or titillate. Heres another hint sort of connected to that- if youve never actually had sex before you probably wont be able to draw the act convincingly.
As if regular porn wasnt bad enough, Udons reputation for sexy anime-centric art means I get to see the portfolio of every terrifying anime porn artist in North America. Trust me when I tell you that its not edgy or impressive, its actually just sad. I wish they could change the Adult category that people use to define porn to something more fitting like Juvenile and Incredibly Annoying.
Demons and Angels: Okay maybe its just me, but no matter what combination of horns, wings, claws, hooves, tails, fire, auras of energy, flaming weapons and fangs youve come up with its probably not as cool or ingenious as you think it is. Just leave the demon and angel stuff alone. 99% of those pieces come across as derivative and lame. Even if its well drawn it tends to come across as been there, done that. Im tempted to add Wolverine wannabe claws to this category as well.
Ego: Having confidence is good. Being an egotistical prick is not. If Im taking time to look over your work while our booth is hopping and were moving product and making money, its probably not a good time to act like its my privilege to see your artwork. Negative bonus points if you interrupt other conversations Im having to thrust your portfolio in my face. Extra bad points if you come around the table at a con without being asked and proceed to use one of our boxes full of inventory as a seat.
Giving negative feedback and critique is stressful for both sides of the evaluation equation. Getting angry, scowling or pointing out flaws in work weve published isnt going to bring me to your side. Practically crying when I point out problems in your work also makes things pretty darn awkward.
Promotion Whoring: Tying in to the ego thing above is ridiculous self promotion. I know you have your own story and character ideas; Many of us do. Having 30+ drawings of your cool characters many, many costumes comes across more obsessive than useful. Insisting that your creations are the great new heroes of this emerging millennium also doesnt have the impact you think it does. Neither does a Power Point presentation outlining the movie, video game, toy and merchandizing opportunities for Cool Character X or whatever his name is. The fact that these characters invariably involve demons, angels and badly done anime art to boot is really just icing on the cake.
If you want to make an even scarier impression, make sure you dress up like Cool Character X while presenting your portfolio.
Glaring Weaknesses: Making sure every character in your portfolio pages is wearing a mask because you have trouble drawing faces and expressions doesnt instil me with confidence that you can be a reliable comic artist. Doing 5 pages of sequentials without a single background other than a starry sky also tends to jump out at me as a problem.
Photos: Your comic art portfolio should contain artwork, not photos I know this comes as a tremendous shock to you all.
Photographs of your fine arts installation exhibit is not useful to me. Photographs of horror make up youve applied to actors in B-Movies is not useful to me. Photographs of your graffiti art is not useful to me. Photographs of tattoo designs you created are not useful to me. Photographs of you standing next to famous people is not useful to me. Photographs of you looking cool wearing sunglasses and a trenchcoat is not useful to me.
Out In Left Field Material: If youve come to a comic convention and are showing around your portfolio, expect an editor to want to see the kinds of material they publish in your submission.
I had a guy bring up a portfolio full of movie star caricatures all done in pastel. Some were good, some were middling, but I still had no use for any of the stuff he brought up. When I explained to him that Udon publishes comics and that many of our books have an anime flare to them, he sealed his fate with Oh man, I totally hate that Japanimation crap.
Art doesn't have to be your job at all. It can be just fun doodling your favourite things, 100%. But if you're going to make it your job and your life then it's going to be judged compared to your peers. The fact that so many would think the above stuff is what an editor would want to see, let alone the basis of an art career, amazes me.
See you again in two weeks.
http://www.thejonjones.com/2005/10/07/your-portfolio-repels-jobs/
Very bad things happened to my old domain and I may never get it back, so there's the latest valid link to the article. Sorry for the trouble.
it says that i shouldn't use frames in my website. I was just wondering why that would be a bad thing? i don't think frames necessarily cause a problem...
the site:
http://www.webpagesthatsuck.com/does-my-web-site-suck/does-my-web-site-suck-checklist-part-two.html
Frames were a hack to keep navigation on screen.
Frames make it hard to bookmark a page - because you always locked into a frameset and the page you want to bookmark isn't what you get.
There. Let that be an end to it. No frames. Don't use them.
I am still working hard though!
Me?
The load times are annoying, yes they are short but it still took 7 seconds longer than my portfolio
(no I won't link it, it's full of old crap but it did get me a job)
okay good point about the right-click save-as. The loading at the beginning is only 166KB or so. Is that what took a while for you?
Im thinking about whether or not to add it and how to solve it technically.
i really like this single page idea without having to click stuff.
(actually did it before reading this thread)
take care
Also, don't just put a date on your work so you can show how far you've come since <insert year>.
And after reading this I could see a lot of painful flaws in my old site especially on the navigation front.
I decided to use this....
http://www.carbonmade.com/
It's not perfect but the main advantage is that it has an interface for adding images and editing the layout. My old site was all hand written html/php and it was a pain to change things then add the files over ftp etc.
So I thought someone else might find it useful and like I say it doesn't tick all the boxes like a site you do yourself but it's a massive time saver.
This is my new site btw http://www.patrickanderson.co.uk/
(shameless pimping)
Not like it matters sense your site is just a big 'under construction' sign atm
nome_sane: You've got some really nice work up on your site, but as is you can't right click to save any images, and the loader seems to hang sometimes which wouldn't be a huge issue if it weren't for the fact that you have to load the images in order to go through and see the rest.
http://www.bungie.net/News/content.aspx?type=topnews&cid=12496
yeah, I took the old gallery down because it was full of lame! I could update it but everyone would start crying about not posting flats or wireframes.
Second, I can't post wires of 99% of my work. It's all arch vis. Is this much of an issue?
Personally I think Dynamic HTML is a great way of doing practically all you would need
http://www.w3schools.com/dhtml/default.asp
a big page full of images, no buttons, just scroll
or seperate pages for each piece
or use lightbox (the image popup script thingy)
or a mouse-over-thumbnails-to-change-image style
or something different
I doubt you want a big page with no buttons though since you'd be able to make that quicker than reading and replying to this post -.-
www.isaacoster.com
Or you can do it the oldschool way, Photoshop > File > Automate > Web gallery.
If you have CS4 or 5 you'll need to download and install the additional plug-ins to get those options that where in older versions normally.
CS4 additional plug-ins
http://www.adobe.com/support/downloads/thankyou.jsp?ftpID=4048&fileID=3767
CS5 additional plug-ins
http://www.adobe.com/support/downloads/detail.jsp?ftpID=4688
Thank you Jon for sharing such article with us, i found great point from your article.
http://courtt3d.blogspot.com
http://karolmiklas.sketchfab.me/
Do you think it might impress people or turn them away?
great article BTW.
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d