Portfolios

          This is something that is mentioned a lot by professors, but there hasn’t been anyone telling us exactly HOW to make a portfolio. It’s always “You need to build up your portfolio so you can be hired by companies looking for talented individuals. True, a portfolio website (as well as a physical portfolio of your work) is vital to getting into any industry involving creations such as writing, artwork, and even games. 

          A physical portfolio is easy enough to make. Simply make a collection of all of your absolute best work and keep it in a place where you won’t lose it. However, potential employers can’t see your physical work unless you post pictures of it in an easy to access place. That place being the web, specifically your website. That’s where the online portfolio comes in.

          Online portfolios are a little harder to make, but are a lot more convenient for everybody. If you specialize in making digital work, you can simply upload your content to your website and whoever happens to be browsing around can see it. Trouble is, web design is a required skill in creating one’s own website and not everyone can do that. I personally am a novice at web design (and scripting in general). Fortunately, that may not be necessary. There are several websites that let you build your own portfolio website out of templates and drag and drop interfaces. Look here for a detailed guide on how to set one up. One of the things it mentions is that your domain and hosting are free. If you want people to take you seriously, you will need to go ahead and opt to pay for both. A paid domain name will not have “weebly” in the URL and paid hosting is a lot more reliable than free hosting. You’ll likely pay an annual fee, but it’s a small price to pay for entering the professional world.

          As for what kind of portfolio website it is, that’s up to you. What are you good at? Really think on what you’re best skill is. It could be writing or drawing, but those are broad categories. Maybe if you’re a writer, you are more of a film script writer or if you do drawings, maybe you classify yourself as an animator or concept artist. The more specific your skillset, the easier it is for employers to classify you as a type of worker. That way, they know exactly what they are looking for.

          Once you know what you’re good at, what do you want to do? If you’re like me and you find out you have a knack for writing, then you can see yourself in a variety of positions. Personally, storyboarding and story writing are more my thing. Naturally, to show this I would need to make storyboards and stories to add to the portfolio. If you really want to be an animator, make some animations. They don’t have to be incredibly long, but they have to be good enough to show off. If you feel it’s your best, then stick it up there.

          What about voice actors or music makers? They have portfolio sites, too. They put up samples of what they sound like and possibly a scene from a cartoon or movie they provided their voice for. More music, providing songs you have made is a good idea. The best advice I can give for this is to look around for people with portfolio websites and take some notes. Know what you want to do, then look for people who do the same thing and study their sites. They usually have a home page, contact info with their face (if necessary), and a section just for showing off work. As for additional help:

Here is some advice on what to do and NOT do for a portfolio.

A few examples of portfolios:

David Shaver here worked on Titanfall.

Jay Baker is a storyboard artist with some neat stuff.

David Mattock has some animations as well as the programs he used to make them.

Pearl Hewitt does voice acting and has several video examples of her speaking for ads.

Hopefully this helps you all make a portfolio properly and gets your name out there.