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Perhaps someone can point me in the right direction. Background: For many years I have worked mainly as a print designer (logos, branding, some packaging, flyers, posters and a multitude of projects that lead to being printed either digitally or offset printing), but have little experience with HTML/CSS/Javascript, but I try to keep up with the latest trends and what is happening with that field. I even had projects where someone would sketch out a design for a website that would be coded in Drupal, taking their sketch and fleshing it out in Photoshop. Most of my freelance clients are still utilizing me for those skills that I have, but been outsourcing web design and other social media work, so I was looking at moving toward getting into UI design, mainly because I think it would be the best allocation of my experience in a digital format. A couple of years ago I was taking some classes at a local community college that had Interactive Multimedia, but all they were teaching was Macromedia Director, but it did go into the fundamentals of Interaction Design. Of course, being rather new to the field is tough, since not many people want to risk their projects on someone who is pretty much untested, so that is what I am looking for, some direction on how best to learn and grow in that field.
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Jan 31, 2013 16:23
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I would avoid any "multimedia" program. There was an ask/tell thread for UI designers a while back and I and some other folks posted some good stuff in it, if you have archives look for it.
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Feb 1, 2013 21:04
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qirex posted:I would avoid any "multimedia" program. There was an ask/tell thread for UI designers a while back and I and some other folks posted some good stuff in it, if you have archives look for it. I only took a few courses before I really realized that I knew pretty much all they were teaching. No point in getting an A in everything if I already know/knew the stuff they were trying to teach to me. Another thing was that a bunch of the material they were teaching was a year or more out of date, which one of the professors confided in me at the end of the semester. Thanks for the heads up on that thread, I will have to upgrade to get it.
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Feb 1, 2013 23:08
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I'm not really sure if this is the right place to ask this, but given that it pertains to art school I figured I'd give it a shot. I'm a freshman at SVA and with that comes the usual first year set of courses like Drawing/Painting I-II. I haven't had a trouble hauling my stuff to painting since it's usually pretty compact, but I absolutely struggle getting all of my drawing poo poo to class in one piece. My heavy set wooden drawing board is a good ~30"x40" and doesn't include the ~30"x30" sketch pad and ~40"x40" portfolio I have to carry along with it. Not only do these things hardly fit in my hands since they're so large, but with the winter weather and heavy gusts of wind I absolutely cannot carry all of this poo poo effectively. Just last week i got blown over in the middle of the intersection, had my sketchbook fly open and sent a large portion of my assignments into traffic followed by my portfolio blowing straight into a passing woman's face which ended up with me losing a large portion of my work, showing up late to class and getting chewed out loudly by a stranger on the sidewalk! Obviously I do not want this to happen again, so does anyone have any suggestions as to how I can make carrying all of this large, heavy poo poo a little more manageable? I'm all together new to this so I'm really at a loss. I honestly don't care how janky it is as long as it works! Thank you! Herr Shitlord fucked around with this message at 11:06 on Feb 5, 2013 |
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Feb 5, 2013 11:03
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They sell stuff like this in several sizes, 40 x 40 seems really large though.
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Feb 5, 2013 17:48
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Renting an on campus locker was my saving grace for drawing classes that required huge drawing boards. I just never took the board home, but even if homework required it, I just would've bought another cheap board for home use.
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Feb 5, 2013 18:14
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Making you carry a bigass board to and from class is ridiculous. Do you not have any dedicated studio space? We all had individual studio desks to keep all our supplies at, most people had footlockers with padlocks for their expensive stuff that can walk away. People just came to studio outside class time to do their homework and work on projects. I couldn't imagine lugging my whole lot of studio crap to and from campus several times a week. We all lugged our supplies to campus once in the beginning of the school year (usually stealthily at night, so we could park illegally close to the building) and lugged it all home once at the end of spring semester. I'd find somewhere on campus to keep it, and just buy a second board to keep at home for homework (or do your drawing homework on campus). I guess one of those portfolio backpacks would work, but I imagine it'd act like a sort of a sail when trying to walk in wind and would be really awkward to maneuver around crowds of people.
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Feb 6, 2013 04:44
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qirex posted:They sell stuff like this in several sizes, 40 x 40 seems really large though. Yeah, this basically.
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Feb 7, 2013 08:46
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Not really sure where this belongs, but thought you guys might get the most use out of it. Came across this article on a Cintiq alternative: http://frenden.tumblr.com/post/38693256477/yiynovamsp19u Also a review on a wacom tablet alternative: http://frenden.tumblr.com/post/31659364200/the-little-monoprice-graphics-tablet-that-could Monoprice has a 10x6 graphics tablet for 50$ and a 12x9 for around 90$. I just ordered the 12x9, currently I'm using a 5v4 wacom graphire 2. I can let you guys know how it works. I've used a Cintiq and an intuos 3 back when I was in school. The Cintiq is quite large/heavy and I definitely noticed a delay. A 600$ alternative to a 2,000$ Cintiq is kinda crazy.
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Feb 7, 2013 18:56
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This isn't an immediate concern, but it's looming on the horizon for when I leave this job when I move with my fiancé. This is my first "real job" as a design professional, and when I was hired all I had was my student portfolio. The things we design at this job are all proprietary and we cannot share it with ANYONE, even after the completion of the projects. I feel like I've gotten much better as a designer at this job, but I cannot legally put any of my projects since I graduated college in my portfolio. When I move on to my next job, what the hell can I show them? My student portfolio would not be an accurate representation, but I can't put anything more recent in it. I work 10-12 hour days and on weekends so I don't really feel like doing MORE design work when I get home to pad out my portfolio, but I suspect this is the only way. Advice?
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Feb 10, 2013 02:09
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Aquatic Giraffe posted:This isn't an immediate concern, but it's looming on the horizon for when I leave this job when I move with my fiancé. I'm in a similar position with my current job. I do both GFX and VFX, along with some webwork, for internal corporate usage. I don't know your specific legal situation, but as far as my job is concerned, as long as all sensitive material, logos, verbage, and whatnot are not on the pieces we share, we're totally fine. So in my case, what I do is pick some of the best pieces I've worked on, and re-work the piece to remove any identifiable material. This helps me keep my portfolio up to date with my best work, and avoid any legal issues.
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Feb 10, 2013 04:10
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Our customers don't want their products shown ever, even if we remove their logos from it. We do very high-end custom industrial/interior design, so our customers are very demanding and somewhat unreasonable at times so I'd like to avoid getting on their bad side. I think I can technically take some of our models and change the materials on the rendering, but I want to stay on the safe side and steer clear of any legal gray areas. One of our lead designers makes up fake but similar images to put on generic recruiting materials, trade show booths, etc. so I suppose that's what I'll have to do too. I'll just have to do it stealthily at the office since I don't have the programs we use on my personal computer.
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Feb 10, 2013 07:18
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cheese eats mouse posted:You can get a good overview of CS5/6 through Lynda tutorials. There's some really great online resources if you want to pick up wed coding like Code School and Code Academy. WebTuts is another plus more Lynda. Honestly I would learn how to properly do a stylesheet and get familiar with JavaScript, HTML 5, and CSS 3 if you want to stay relevant and have a job 10 years from now. You need to get some freelancing/experience under your belt too along with a familiarity with Wordpress and at least read/understand PHP. It's been a while, but thanks for this. I started on CodeAcademy and it has proven to me I know more than I give myself credit for. I'm still thinking about a Web Design Cert from a community college because I can get one for around $1000 and I figure it will be worth it just to force me to practice.
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Feb 12, 2013 17:42
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Hey thread, I'm preparing a CV for an artist in residency program at my local comic store. The page detailing the application says this: quote:Applicants must provide curriculum vitae that should not exceed two (2) sheets of standard 8.5 x 11 paper. Am I correct in assuming that the CV should comprise of the objective statement, works being focused on, personal career goals and community work? I've never actually made a CV before and don't really know what's expected for this kind of thing. I'm also going to be applying as a colourist, and I'm not sure if that puts me at a disadvantage. I'm planning on asking a professional colourist who I've worked for in the past to write me the letter of recommendation, and maybe help pick out my best pieces for the portfolio. I know I'm up against some mighty tough competition from some of my other artist friends, but I really want to get in. I think it would be a great opportunity for me. There was recently a write-up about it as well: http://www.gigcity.ca/2013/01/15/comics-art-marts-smart-start/ The terms are 32 weeks now, so if I don't get in on this term, I might not have another comic project going when the next term opens up. Any advice would be greatly appreciated!
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Feb 15, 2013 07:33
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Aquatic Giraffe posted:Our customers don't want their products shown ever, even if we remove their logos from it. We do very high-end custom industrial/interior design, so our customers are very demanding and somewhat unreasonable at times so I'd like to avoid getting on their bad side. I think I can technically take some of our models and change the materials on the rendering, but I want to stay on the safe side and steer clear of any legal gray areas. One of our lead designers makes up fake but similar images to put on generic recruiting materials, trade show booths, etc. so I suppose that's what I'll have to do too. I'll just have to do it stealthily at the office since I don't have the programs we use on my personal computer. You might not be able to put it on your website but surely no one would find out if you showed it in an interview?
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Feb 15, 2013 16:27
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Would somebody mind taking a look at my portfolio? http://rosselas.carbonmade.com/ I'm going to start applying for art jobs, and I want to make sure I'm putting my best foot forward. I've been doing this drawing thing by myself for almost 2 years now, since I graduated from University of Pittsburgh with an Economics degree. I'm feeling pretty isolated and would like some perspective. I have these conflicting beliefs that 1) I'm a good at drawing , but 2) nobody will ever give a poo poo about my drawings in a way that matters ($$$$$), which I haven't been able to resolve yet. My questions regarding the portfolio are: Do I need to make changes? Are there things I should add or remove from it? Different directions I might want to look into? Should I ditch the stuff with copious amounts of blood?
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Feb 21, 2013 22:14
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Arken_ca posted:Can anyone recommend schools in Canada for Photography? Are the two year program schools worth going to? Really this all depends on what you want to do. Are you looking to be an "artist" photographer? or do you have a career in say fashion or event photography in mind? If the Art route is what you want you can go for the big schools like OCAD in Toronto (where I graduated from, not for photography), Nascad in Nova Scotia and Emily Carr on the west coast. Those schools are going to teach you critical thinking and conceptualization within photography so they can train you as an artist not just a photographer. If you want to shoot stuff for a living you might want to look into local schools. I'm in Toronto and almost every college in the area has some sort of photography program. Be wary though as I feel many colleges are trying to sell people their dreams with unrealistic promises. A college could be beneficial to learn the equipment, to learn composition and the basics. You can always move on to another school if you aren't happy. Do you shoot now? Do you work with a pro?
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Feb 22, 2013 00:44
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rosselas posted:Would somebody mind taking a look at my portfolio? Cool work. First off I'd caution you about thinking that $$$$$$ is what matters about your work. Money is absolutely important but if you don't enjoy your work you might as well work at the job you hate the most cause it's going to come through in the art. You have the internet to show off your work to the world. There are countless forums that you can bounce your ideas off and get great input so use those resources. Secondly, I don't like that website. It's dark and makes your art feel even darker. I'd remove the line about "my favorite drawings" as your portfolio should be about your best, not your fave. You have a cool style, but everything is in that style you could use a little more range. Try drawing people from life, adding some more color. Maybe draw some fake ads for products. You want to show that you can draw anything from mickey mouse to a realistic portrait. Minimize the horror/fantasy theme, there is certainly a market for it but you are limiting your work. You're doing good work with the digital stuff, keep at it. Hope that helps.
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Feb 22, 2013 00:59
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The Last Ronin posted:Cool work. I know money should be secondary to enjoyment, but if I'm not making money then to some degree I feel like a failure. I'll work on the website platform. I've seen Cargo Collective recommended in this thread (though that seems more exclusive). Is it ok to put life drawings of people in a portfolio without their permission? I had one life drawing in there, but I took it out because I thought that maybe the model wouldn't want naked drawings of her posted on the Internet. I didn't realize that so many of my drawings were fantasy/horror. I wasn't trying to make things of any category. I guess it's inevitable that when I find something I like, I keep doing it. Maybe what I need to do is try harder to find other aspects of myself to express and that would add more variety to my drawings.
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Feb 22, 2013 05:20
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rosselas posted:I know money should be secondary to enjoyment, but if I'm not making money then to some degree I feel like a failure. If you look at some of the biggest names in art they didn't make money either for a very long time or until they were dead. Make art for you and the money will follow. If money is the most important thing then take some illustration or graphic design classes, people go into those careers for money, not always for the art. Your portfolio isn't a money making product so yes you can use life drawings in it. If they are nudes I would first ask the model's permission and then have them sign a release. Make sure you get clothed people in there too, it's rare to be paid to draw naked people. You want to show that you can draw from life as well as imagination. We draw and create what we like, but to make money from it we have to draw what we're told. Draw your stuff for you and more diverse work for the portfolio.
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Feb 22, 2013 17:43
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rosselas posted:Would somebody mind taking a look at my portfolio? You need to spend more time drawing. A lot more. Don't even think about money for the next 2 years, just think about how you can spend as much time drawing as you can, and draw everything you can.
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Feb 22, 2013 22:05
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Beat. posted:You need to spend more time drawing. A lot more. Don't even think about money for the next 2 years, just think about how you can spend as much time drawing as you can, and draw everything you can. I will. I know my drawings now aren't the best they will be. But I also want to at least try to start a professional career. I believe that I've improved quite a bit at imaginative drawing in the past couple years and I would like to test my skills. I'm getting the message from both you and The Last Ronin that I may not succeed. More time may be necessary. If that's the case, so be it. To some degree, I think I need to be chastened by the market. It's like longing after a girl for months. Eventually you have to ask her out for peace of mind, so you can know where she really stands with you.
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Feb 23, 2013 16:50
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What kind of art are you imagining you will be doing commercially? I have no idea what I would hire you for as all of your stuff is very unpolished/unfinished and looks more like sketchbook work. There's nothing here that illustrates that you are capable of taking direction from a client and producing a finished, usable piece of work.
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Feb 23, 2013 17:30
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mutata posted:What kind of art are you imagining you will be doing commercially? I have no idea what I would hire you for as all of your stuff is very unpolished/unfinished and looks more like sketchbook work. There's nothing here that illustrates that you are capable of taking direction from a client and producing a finished, usable piece of work. I don't think that all of my stuff is unpolished/unfinished. Right now my plans are to apply for odd jobs on eLance. They have an illustrations category there for doing book covers/illustrations for books, personal illustrations, portraits, character drawings, and so on. I've recently tried 99designs.com. That feels like a crap shoot to me, since I do the work first, and only get paid if I'm the one picked out of dozens who submitted a design. And they tend to focus on vector art, clip art, logo, and more design centered things that use stock images/photography, none of which I really produce much of. Still, I found the feedback interesting. I was actually getting similar comments there to what I'm getting here. One was: "Too much fantasy", another was "Too cartoony", another by a University of Pennsylvania businessman said that my drawing would not appeal to "the Chinese labor market" an that it wasn't gender neutral. In the longer term, I'm going to do comics as well as things for videogames. But before that I need to get some sequential art up, work on more dynamic posing, elaborate set pieces, and storytelling. And I also need to draw more besides characters, plus I'll likely have to work on animation. Plus I'm trying to learn how to code in C#, but that's a whole different beast.... Anyways, I thought that eLance was a realistic short term goal.
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Feb 23, 2013 18:18
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rosselas posted:Right now my plans are to apply for odd jobs on eLance. 99designs is from Satan. It is the worst kind of spec work. Never ever ever ever do it.
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Feb 23, 2013 19:49
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I don't think elance is a good idea, but you might as well try. Keep drawing, try to push your art towards some kind of specific look or whatever you want jobs doing. Like if you really want to do commercial illustration for advertising you should make mock commercial illustrations. If you want to do book cover illustration then mock up book covers. Pick some popular books and do cover redesigns. If you want to be a character artist you should gear all your drawings towards that. Looking at your portfolio I see a lot of character work so I'm guessing you want to do character design stuff? I think your website kinda looks unfinished. Try putting your gallery right on the front page so you don't have to click through to find it. You might want to try a tumbler setup, sometimes it's easier than those portfolio websites. Also get a url with your name or something simple to remember that relates to you. having .carbonmade.com on the back of your name doesn't look professional. Here's my website: http://www.levigilbert.com It's a bit old and I haven't updated it. Also I need to setup a blog in it. I think people really like seeing repetition like posting new stuff every thursday or something. Another thing, remember you're not just an artist. As an artist you have to be an editor and a designer and probably a bunch of other things too. Get in the habit of going through your work and editing out the bad stuff. You should only have your best work in your portfolio and on your website. If you're going to do a blog like post thing don't post every loving drawing you ever do. Some of your drawings are going to suck. Draw all week and then when you get to your weekly posting day you should only pick the best stuff you did that week. Even if it's only one little drawing. You also have to show possible clients that you have a basic understanding of design. This means that your website should at least look appealing. Use different font sizes and bolds and italics to add some break up to your pages. Look at the websites you like and try to understand why you like them and then go to your website and see if you can implement some of the same ideas. One of my friends is a graphic designer and has a great website so I looked at her website and tried to break it down into what I liked and what I could do to my website to get it on par with hers. Turns out I just needed to add a little colored text, change some font sizes and it looked a million times better than what it did. That was a lot of words, sorry. Also I should take my own advice... le capitan fucked around with this message at 20:58 on Feb 23, 2013 |
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Feb 23, 2013 20:49
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rosselas posted:I don't think that all of my stuff is unpolished/unfinished. Feature only your best stuff. I have a similar problem, where most of my work is in the form of scribbly, incomplete sketches. I have a WP-powered portfolio (that I've programmed to mimic one of CargoCollective's awesome grid layouts because I'm not cool enough for an invite  ) and use the blog function as a dump for my sketches, WIP, and other incomplete work. Also ramblings. Speaking of which I need to post more often to it because I have a giant backlog of sketches. Even so, I have enough work to not have to throw rough, half-finished sketches in with the main features. (I'd post a link, but I don't like crossing streams between SA and real life  ) If you don't have enough polished awesome work, make more. And if you want to show off sketches, create an appropriate outlet for them like a blog or Tumblr you can use in addition to a static portfolio.Also, stuff like this captioned with, 'These are my best drawings' doesn't make me, a potential client, confident in your ability to produce for me a pro-level, complete illustration. I'd advise removing that piece from your portfolio because it's obviously not one of your best drawings. Just offering some honest feedback  . Keep in mind that we're not being dicks, just trying to be helpful.PS: Yeah, 99designs and other crowdsourcing/contest sites are the worst. Every time you contribute to one of them (or any designer or artist does), you are sabotaging your ability to earn a fair rate for your work. Having a solid portfolio is really important because you use it to apply for one-off projects, contract work, etc, and people will pick you based on previous work, rather than you having to produce stuff you have a very good chance of not getting paid for.
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Feb 24, 2013 01:32
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rosselas posted:I will. I know my drawings now aren't the best they will be. But I also want to at least try to start a professional career. I believe that I've improved quite a bit at imaginative drawing in the past couple years and I would like to test my skills. You are just distracting yourself. What you need to do is build up your core skills. If you want drawing to be the core of what you do, you need to make good drawings. If you don't focus on that, you'll never build any kind of career at all. If you just want to get $5 or $10 commissions or whatever here and there, fine, whatever. There's no reason you can't try to do that, but drawing well is a skill that is learned. It doesn't just come out of nothing, and your best bet is to find a good instructor that can build really solid fundamentals, or in some other fashion meet people who do it well and try to learn from them. Another thing about drawing is that you can get into some really bad habits that can be really hard to "untrain" later down the road if you just do everything on your own, which is another reason I suggest seeking out a good instructor. Seriously: I know people who will spend 12 hours a day on a drawing. Maybe not every day, but if they have a show coming up or a deliverable due. This is the kind of person you want to "compete" with. I mean if you are really serious, don't beat around the bush. If you want to just dink around here and there, it's another thing entirely. Just don't bullshit yourself... better to spend that time making work.
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Feb 24, 2013 06:20
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I'll just help back up everyone's points by posting paintings a friend of mine does. These are commissions of $1-2,000. Oil on canvas. This is your competition if you want to make money from your drawings. It's derby season so everyone wants horses right now.  
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Feb 24, 2013 18:48
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Authentic You posted:You, on the other hand, neglected to make a header or type your name in, and you have one off-center category of work. You don't represent your work well. All you need to do to fix this is to upload each drawing as a separate project, then it will have its own thumbnail on the home page. For some reason you've created one project called "drawings" and put them all in there. Edit: you might have to create custom thumbnails instead of letting Carbonmade do it automatically - I do, because the automatic ones look like crap.
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Feb 24, 2013 18:50
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Beat. posted:If you just want to get $5 or $10 commissions or whatever here and there, fine, whatever. There's no reason you can't try to do that, but drawing well is a skill that is learned. It doesn't just come out of nothing, and your best bet is to find a good instructor that can build really solid fundamentals, or in some other fashion meet people who do it well and try to learn from them. As someone with who's familiar with the comic industry rosselas could do way more than $5-$10 commissions. That would be selling himself short. I personally do $10 commissions for drawings of cartoon ponies and I don't have a tenth of the art skill that this guy has. rosselas, I think you're style is really well suited to comics and that it would have a lot of appeal to those who enjoy horror. Go find out what local conventions are in your area. Go to them and try to talk to as many comic pros as you can, and make sure to have some polished sequential pages to show. Get an artist alley table even and talk to as many people as you can. You never know if someone walking by has the perfect project for you. Also, just start making comics. Build some storytelling skills and some inking skills. Working in comics doesn't net you a whole ton of cash like a $1200 oil painting will, but it's a really fun industry to work in. I'm still trying to get in myself, and the indie project I'm working on is only serving to enhance my skills and make my portfolio even better the next time I apply to major companies, or talk to professional colourists or editors.
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Feb 25, 2013 16:50
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Elance isn't my ideal choice, but it's the best I've got. Your advice to do book cover mock ups,ads, seems sound to me. My hope was that my portfolio would initially consist of personal work, and then it would become more focused to include other things as I completed professional jobs. Perhaps I should I include that stuff right away. It just seemed weird to me to be doing book covers solely for the purpose of putting them into a portfolio, as I normally wouldn't sit down and draw book covers since I don't write books. When I first started, I posted everything I did online. That was a waste of time, and it depressed me and made me angry that no one cared. I don't like feeling like that, so I've drastically cut back on the amount of drawings I share. Your website looks a lot better than mine. Authentic You posted:At the very least, find a decent scanner and make quality scans of your sketchbook work, because the grayish, off-kilter photos of those pages aren't doing you any favors and makes even polished, complete traditional pieces look half-assed and unpolished. Is it that bad? I got a new Canon LiDE scanner. It scans things in very brightly, so I have to adjust them in Photoshop. I've been sliding the Brightness setting nearly all the way down on some. I thought it looked better than the original. Maybe I've been overdoing it. It tends to exaggerate the smudges and stray marks. Authentic You posted:I have a similar problem, where most of my work is in the form of scribbly, incomplete sketches. I have a WP-powered portfolio (that I've programmed to mimic one of CargoCollective's awesome grid layouts because I'm not cool enough for an invite You don't need an invite. You can apply too. If you want I'll invite you. I'm not sure how it all works. I got mine yesterday. I haven't made much progress on it though because it has a huge degree of choices you have to make, and I got intimidated/stressed out by it. It'll be slow going for me to make something decent, especially since I don't enjoy spending time on design related decisions (I recognize they are important). As for the Lord Emery drawing, I included that in my portfolio because I thought it looked cool and because it uses cross hatching for the shading, which I don't do much of. That's about it. If it's going to scare people off I'll take it out. Beat. posted:... My impression of you is that you are a hard rear end. I do need to devote myself more to drawing. My concentration could be improved a lot. It's the main reason why I only have one semi-realistic looking picture in my portfolio and rely on linework more than rendering. I do not yet have the patience to do realism. I think I know what you are getting at, which is that marketing yourself will only take you as far as your drawings. If your drawings are good it will do a lot of the leg work for you and you won't have to worry about PR and applying for jobs as much. It'll come to you naturally. I've watched a lot of lectures by Jonathan Blow and he has said the same thing about video games, and it confirms my intuitions. My opinion of these pictures is that right now I could do the linework for them (especially if I use reference photos). I'm not capable of doing the coloring. Nessa posted:... I think there's a shop in a town that's about a 30 min. drive from here that promotes local comic creators. I get nervous about showing my work. I feel like "Who will care?" (but also like they should care, if that makes sense) and I'm wasting their time. I tend to be bad presenting. If I do, I'd probably barge into the store and shove my drawings into their face and be like "Here!", and they'd be very confused and frightened and never want to see me again. I visited Image comics website and was encouraged to find that they accept stand alone submissions from artists, as well as full comic submissions. I'm going to apply there once I make a few good panels. Thanks everyone for the comments. They've been helpful and more than I expected.
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Feb 25, 2013 20:20
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Nessa posted:As someone with who's familiar with the comic industry rosselas could do way more than $5-$10 commissions. That would be selling himself short. I personally do $10 commissions for drawings of cartoon ponies and I don't have a tenth of the art skill that this guy has. God, I just hate it when my anime connoisseurship gets called into question. rosselas posted:My impression of you is that you are a hard rear end. Let me frame it another way. You know what you could do? Pick someone/someones in your area who is "successful" by whatever metric you think is important. Call them up, and politely ask to do a 15 minute informational interview. Ask them about their training, background, and how much time they spend on a piece before they deliver it to whoever their client is. Whatever their client base might be, since you give us basically no idea of what it is exactly you want to do. Their delivery may be more polite than mine, but I bet you they won't jerk you off.
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Feb 25, 2013 21:04
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I feel like I should throw myself out here and see what comes back. I've read through probably this whole thread and it's full of great advice! This is me: caitcadieux.com I'm graduating with a BFA in Visual Communications from a state school in May. I want to get into animation or something to do with film or games, but I've really no idea how to tighten up my portfolio or what I should add or do to increase the chances of that. My primary focus in school was on motion graphics (but the program itself is primarily print and branding based with a more recent lean toward environmental graphic design and UI/web, so this is mostly self-taught, although I did have a really helpful internship in Los Angeles last summer where I learned a lot about After Effects). I also have always had a real interest in concept art — I totally do not have this represented in my portfolio but have considered building that up. I'm also working on a pretty big semester project that will involve a lot of concept art, as well as introductions to 3D modeling, rigging, and all that good stuff. I don't have any of this to show in my portfolio to my satisfaction, but will have plenty to show for that in a couple of months. I guess it's confusing because I'm essentially learning whatever I want in a program that really isn't at all bent toward what I want to do, so any feedback for that would be awesome. I feel like primarily what I'm missing, for the kind of job I'd LOVE to do, is a lot of polished digital art. But crits for this portfolio as is are more than welcome, anything at all really!
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Feb 25, 2013 22:09
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rosselas posted:... I have a Canon LiDE scanner and get better scans than that. Try messing more with the levels adjustment. Get your background as close to white as you can and then adjust the gray and black till your lines look good. Crop out the edges of the paper for the love of god. If you couldn't take the time to make your drawings presentable why the hell should I take the time to look at them? Your best pieces on your portfolio so far are the photo-study and maybe that doodle of the guy with the sunglasses. Try to get all your portfolio pieces to that quality and I think you'll be on the right track. I'd delete all the other images besides those two off your website and then work on stuff and compare it to those until you got something that either matches the quality or is better. Shoot for 8 pieces total for now. Usually you only need around 8 - 15 portfolio pieces. The idea behind mock-ups is not that you sit around drawing book covers all day, it's that you can deliver a product to a client. Unless you're famous or insanely talented, no one is going to buy your sketchbook and your doodles. Right now it looks like your portfolio is showcasing sketches and doodles. Here's an example: Marko Djurdjevic is this guy that decided one day to redesign the X-men. Marvel happened to see them and he got a job doing covers for a ton of their stuff. If you type x men redesign into google it auto finishes it with Marko Djurdjevic. Yes, he's a very good artist. He was a good artist before he did those mock-ups. Those mock-ups helped him get noticed by a client. Dave Rapoza is another guy that started getting a lot of work because of his mock-ups getting noticed. He did a bunch of realistic stylized paintings of TMNT and some other famous stuff which started getting him more attention and whatnot which lead to more clients. Obviously don't just do redesigns of stuff only. You want some personal work, but also some work that might grab peoples attention. Again this really depends on what kind of work you want to do which I don't think any of us know and I don't think any client would know either. That's kinda a big problem. Make a stronger portfolio, make a better website, make sure clients know what you're selling. One last thing I thought I'd mention; I read this somewhere and think it's a really good principle: People will hire you based on 3 things. You need 2 of the 3. -Good work -Good to work with -Fast delivery If you create really good work and have a fast delivery, but you're a complete rear end in a top hat to work with, people will still hire you. If you're fast and really easy to work with, but your work is only average, people will still hire you. If you're good to work with and do good work, but you're pretty slow at producing the work, people will still hire you.
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Feb 25, 2013 22:24
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rosselas posted:I think there's a shop in a town that's about a 30 min. drive from here that promotes local comic creators. I get nervous about showing my work. I feel like "Who will care?" (but also like they should care, if that makes sense) and I'm wasting their time. I tend to be bad presenting. If I do, I'd probably That's great! I'd also recommend checking out if the sotre does comic jams or hosts creator meetings. It could be a great place to meet other local creators of different skill levels, as well as just get you comfortable talking to other folks and showing them your work.
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Feb 25, 2013 23:48
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rosselas posted:Is it that bad? I got a new Canon LiDE scanner. It scans things in very brightly, so I have to adjust them in Photoshop. I've been quote:You don't need an invite. You can apply too. If you want I'll invite you. I'm not sure how it all works. Anyhow, on the portfolio, you really just have to sit yourself down and put it all together and get it over with. I bought hosting, installed WP, and then sat on a blank 'under construction' site for ages. At the very least, spiff up the Carbonmade site a bit. Add a header, reorganize it, and add custom thumbs instead of the auto-generated one that's chopped the head off one of your figures. As for Lord Emery, it just does not appear to be on the same level as the rest of your stuff. I went to a portfolio review when I was applying to college design programs, and I had one piece in my portfolio that was okay, but not near the level as my other stuff. I just threw it in because I was low on human figures and it happened to be my next best human figure. The dude critiquing my work just told me to take it out because it was a drag on the rest of my stuff. If you want to show off cross-hatching, make a better piece or show off some cool cross hatch doodles in your sketchblog. Here's the level of cross-hatch ballpoint doodles I'll show off. Even so, this definitely isn't one of my main featured works because I have better, complete pieces for that.
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Mar 1, 2013 03:52
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redjenova posted:I feel like I should throw myself out here and see what comes back. I've read through probably this whole thread and it's full of great advice! ...anyone?
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Mar 1, 2013 04:16
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redjenova posted:...anyone? First of all, why is it blue? You'd be much better off with a white or even grey background. Also, there's so much headroom that most of your thumbs are below the fold on my 1600x900 screen and it's possible to miss the self-rearranging thumbs show if you click a portfolio category from the sub menu (which shows up at the bottom of the screen for me). And when the thumbs do rearrange, I get jerky transitions when the scroll bar disappears and reappears. It's just the browser doing its thing, not the coding, but it's still a bit jarring. Also, when you click into a project, the details are boxed in between the huge header, blue background, and the cramped thumbs below, and it's not presented at a particularly large size. On the thumbs themselves, give them some breathing room, and crop them so they're a uniform size or at least have uniform spacing (like how thingies on pinterest display). Oh, and when you're looking at a particular project, there are arrows that show up on the picture, and I click them thinking I'll get to see more work within that project (like the other monster alphabet letters), but instead it just scrolls me up to the top of the page. fake edit: Okay, JUST figured out how to get to a better, clearer view of an individual project. (Why do I need to click on the thumb AND that little title that I didn't even know was clickable in order to get a good view of a project?) I'd definitely suggest simplifying the design because the site just gets in the way of the work. Check out the featured sites on Cargo: http://cargocollective.com/favorites I don't have a Cargo site (it's WP with my own custom theme inspired by a lot of Cargo sites), but I spend a lot of time looking at those sites for inspiration.
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Mar 1, 2013 05:10
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redjenova posted:...anyone? As it stands, for games, there's nothing in your portfolio that demonstrates that. If you want to do game animation you need to have a lot of cycles, attacks, jumps and stuff like that. If you want to do concept art, like you said, you need to work on that. 3D modeling? A bunch of models. You get the idea. I think that you reel right now would have a better chance at getting you a job in advertisement, or possibly in film. But I don't really know much about those industries so this is just a guess. I like your motion graphics, that's good stuff. I'm not so sure about those shots with the TV noise. It looks like you just pasted a video and put a filter on top. The animation on the AT parts isn't very strong either, it looks too much like it's tweened. I assume it IS tweened, but you want to make it look like it's not. Especially on the shot with Jake bouncing. Oh, and there is one extra frame at the end of that shot when it changes scene.
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Mar 1, 2013 05:12
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