Longhair and Doubledome: Return to Graphite

Returning to Pencil on Animation Paper

From the dawn of time... or at least since I was a child, I have loved drawing with pencil on paper. In time, I would fall in love with pen and ink, pastel, watercolor, and other media, but graphite is where I started my journey into the world of visual art. Graphite on paper is also where I began my animation career, drawing in-betweens for Disney, and later drawing backgrounds for other animation studios.

Then came the digital age, and all animation industry drawings were to be drawn on digital devices. Resistance was futile. Every animation gig I have had since about 2012 has been drawn on a computer screen.

However, recently I had a rare opportunity to return to graphite on paper. Gavrilo Gnatovich (affectionately known as "Gav"), reached out to me about creating some art for Longhair and Doubledome - but not for another animated cartoon, this is in connection with his upcoming graphic novel (read about it on Kickstarter here). I've known Gav since about 2005 when our paths crossed at Fatcat Animation Studios. I was thrilled at the chance to work on one of Gav's projects, but even more thrilled that he has been drawing this graphic novel with pencils on animation paper. Gav gave me the option to work digitally, but I was not going to pass up the opportunity to work in pencil on animation paper and actually get paid to do it. This decision, however, would cost me time and frustration - but also teach me some valuable lessons, as chronicled below. But first, let me show you the drawings I produced.

The Final Penciled Drawings

Gav has given permission to show these in advance of publication of the graphic novel (they don't give away anything important about the story), so I am posting these now. The next three images are the final drawings, all penciled on 16 field animation paper (typically about 17x12”).

Challenges of Graphite

Since I had not actually drawn a background with pencil on animation paper in years, I had to reacquaint myself with the techniques of graphite rendering - a process which taught me just how much digital media makes us lazy. First, pencil on paper has no “undo” function - you can erase but it's not as clean as Photoshop's "CMD/CTRL-Z". You cannot save your drawing at various stages and revert back to an earlier stage at any time. There are no "layers" that let you resize/move things around, or experiment without ruining the drawing. Basically, you have to live with your mistakes. Probably this is a good thing, as traditional media forces us to take more risks and be decisive - at the risk of ruining a drawing or two (or three, or…). It's like drawing without a safety net. By contrast, digital media, with its endless undo's and layers, creates "safe" solutions that don’t really tax our drawing skills quite as much. Hence our skills atrophy.

Other challenges included having a flying insect land on my drawing paper as I was trying to concentrate. Working on a Wacom screen, I haven’t had to deal with insect guts staining my drawing paper in quite some time (don't worry - this happened to one of the early versions, the final drawings are free of insect guts). Also, I had to take extra care not to accidentally crease or fold or otherwise damage the paper. I try to be careful, but accidents happen; with too much vigorous erasing, I almost tore one paper.

Finally, I completely forgot about peg reinforcements! As I worked on these drawings, the paper began to stretch or tear around the peg holes - then I remembered these reinforcements from my days at Disney and DreamWorks. I've rarely used these for the last decade+ but digging them out of an old drawer brought back memories!

Peg hole reinforcements used at Disney and DreamWorks

Alternate Versions and Work-In-Progress

The following images are either work-in-progress or early alternate versions of what would become the final drawings. For the first background, I started in blue pencil. The landscape was maybe a bit too "cartoony" in this version.   

First version - plants are maybe too cartoony

Here is where I hit my first real snag: my first attempts at rendering were disappointing. I didn’t fully appreciate how out-of-practice I was with graphite rendering. So, I decided to completely redraw the scene on a fresh sheet of animation paper. On the bright side, this gave me an opportunity to rework the design of the plants and trees. The line drawing below eventually became the final rendered version. 

Revised version - more interesting plant designs

2nd Background

The second background changed a lot from initial concept to final composition. This early version showcases a variety of plants, but it misses an opportunity to create stronger depth while improving the composition (compare to the revised version below).  

Early version - limited depth, lacking strong focal point 

In this line drawing for the revised version, the plants are more varied in design, and shapes are overlapped to create stronger layers of foreground, middle ground, and background. The "Dutch angle" (tilting the horizon) adds dynamism to the composition.

Revised version - stronger depth, better overlapping shapes

During the rendering of this scene, I became discouraged by my lack of practice in graphite. This drawing really needed more contrast, but I was afraid to ruin it with over-rendering. So, I scanned my drawing and continued working in Photoshop. I digitally darkened the foreground, adding more shadows which help to emphasize the focal point in the distance. This is a more cinematic lighting which I was hoping to achieve in the final drawing - but this is what I mean by digital media making us lazy: I have done this type of lighting so many times in Photoshop that it seems easy to me, but on actual paper, I lost my nerve and became afraid to finish. I am disappointed that I resorted to Photoshop to solve a problem which I should be able to solve directly in graphite. Alas, digital methods have dulled my skills and made me timid. 

Photoshop edited version - foreground shadow helps emphasize distant focal point.

3rd Background

The third background may have changed the most from early layout to final version. This early line version worked fine as a showcase of plant varieties, but it lacks a strong focal point or feeling of depth. As I looked over my drawing, I felt there was an opportunity to create a stronger composition. 

Early version lacks depth or strong focal point

For the revision, I decided to try a different approach. I don't have a line drawing of this one because I jumped directly into tone, employing an age-old drawing technique where you smear graphite across the paper with a chamois cloth, laying out the big masses. Then you work into the masses with kneaded eraser, blending stumps and pencil, to "sculpt" the big shapes - with smaller shapes and details only emerging later out of the bigger shapes. This technique really took me back to my art student days, when drawing was exhilarating and fun. I lost myself in the process, unaware of the passing of time, as the pencil seemed to move of its own volition and plant shapes emerged spontaneously from the graphite void. The next image is from a couple hours into that process, but hopefully you can still get a sense of how plant shapes were formed out of masses of tone.

Plant shapes emerging from the graphite void

Here is another shot from later in the process as I tightened down the rendering and hammered out many of the smaller shapes, sometimes changing my mind about the design of a plant or two.

A few more hours of rendering - heading towards the finish

The final version is up at the top of this post, where perhaps you can see that the composition has a better arrangement of shapes and the plant designs are more satisfying. Below are a couple of closeups where you might see the time I put into details. I think that by the 3rd background, I was beginning to feel comfortable rendering in graphite again. 

Closeup details of the final rendering

Looking back now, I could have done this job entirely in Photoshop and finished much more quickly, while avoiding the frustrations, but I would have missed an opportunity to challenge myself and realize where my skills need work. Also, this job really took me back to my childhood love for pencil on paper, as well as my early days in the animation industry. Thanks Gav, for giving me this opportunity to play with graphite and relive old memories!

As the age of pencil-on-paper animation was winding to a close, I remember spending a good deal of time studying and admiring the fine pencil renderings produced by the layout departments at Walt Disney Feature Animation, DreamWorks, and other animation studios. I expended considerable effort to absorb those techniques as best I could. Sadly, I haven’t had many opportunities to continue honing those skills in recent years - at least not within the animation industry, since the industry no longer values pencil on paper skills the way it once did.

Eye Update: The Cataract Crossroads

[For those who may be new to my Eye Updates, I've been documenting my recovery from Fuchs Endothelial Dystrophy (a disease which impacts the corneas) and other vision problems. I’ve also explored how vision problems impact the life and work of a visual artist.] 

It’s been one year since my last DMEK cornea surgery, and I am happy to report that the cornea transplants in each of my eyes are healthy and functioning normally. No signs of graft rejection. Vision is stable (no more changing eye glass prescriptions every few months). Eye pressure is good. The retinas appear to be healthy (no signs of retinal tear).

With the DMEK surgeries safely behind me, my ophthalmologist says we are ready to discuss my next hurdle on the road to fully restored vision - the cataracts. Within a few months of each cornea surgery, I briefly experienced wonderfully clear vision (almost as good as 20/25 in my right eye), but then the cataracts grew worse, creating a double vision effect as well as blurred vision. I also experienced dry eyes (fairly common in cornea transplant patients) which disrupts the surface of the eye, contributing to the blurred vision.   

At present, my vision is dramatically better than it was before the surgeries. Up close, I see fine details and textures that eluded me for years (lately I’ve been marveling at spider webs – a common occurrence in an old house, but I hadn’t been able to see them for years). Also, colors appear more vivid and saturated. I’ve been excited to look at paintings and read art books again! However, distance vision remains a problem. Even with new glasses, I struggle to read street signs or see faces clearly across a coffee shop. This will not likely change until the cataract surgeries – probably sometime later this year or early next (we want to give the cornea transplants plenty of time to fully heal).

With cataract surgery, I face a major decision: what kind of artificial lens to put into my eye? Modern lenses come in several varieties, but for DMEK patients, a monofocal lens may offer the sharpest detail and fewest visual artifacts. However, I need to decide between near vision and far vision. All of my life, I have been extremely nearsided. I’ve always needed glasses to see the chalkboard or anything at a distance. But for working close up (writing, drawing, painting), I’ve always taken off my glasses. Now, I have a chance to correct my nearsidedness - but I would need glasses for working close up. So, the big question is: should I get lenses set for working up close, and need glasses for distance? Or should I get lenses set for distance and need glasses for my illustration work? I’m so accustomed to working on illustrations without glasses, I’m a bit nervous to do anything that might jeopardize that. On the other hand, the opportunity to correct my lifelong nearsideness is appealing. Fortunately, I have plenty of time to research this decision. Any artists out there who have had cataracts, please feel free to comment and share your experience. 

In the meanwhile, I am enjoying drawing in a small sketchbook again (something I was unable to do in the years leading up to my DMEK surgeries). Here is a recent page from my sketchbook, along with a short video showing how the drawing progressed from initial lay-in to its final state.

For the painting stage, I scanned my sketchbook page into Photoshop and painted digitally, laying in color like watercolor or airbrush. For the background textures, I experimented with spatter-brushes.

Exploring Substack

Recently, I started up a Substack. I'm not abandoning Blogger - I was just curious about Substack, and if/how it might be used in conjunction with my blog.

My first Substack piece is a short history of the Art of Starnes Blog, and how it came to be in its present form. I plan to keep Blogger as the central hub for my artwork, drawing demos, and ideas about art, but I might experiment with Substack as a place to post supplemental material - sort of like an annex to the Art of Starnes Blog. We'll see how this goes.

Designing Japan from Sketch to Finish

Japan: Stages of Development 

Following up on my last post on the Reversed Front: Bonfire game, I want to highlight my work on Japan. I loved all the backgrounds in this series, but Japan stands out for its unusual color scheme which pushed me out of my comfort zone. Each territory was supposed to feature a specific color - or combination of colors. When it came time to design Japan, I was told the featured colors should be "pink and matcha green." This combination intimidated me - pink and green can easily clash or feel overly sweet, if not handled just right. And I had never applied this color scheme before, let alone to such a complex city scene. 

In this post, I'll walk through the process from sketch to final painting ... and you can judge for yourself if I was successful in applying these colors.

Ideation Sketches

This first page was an attempt to envision the world of Reversed Front, including an early version of Japan. Through "thumbnail sketches", I explored composition as well as architectural styling, and even details that would appear within the finished environments. All of my work on Reversed Front was executed in digital media. I used my iPad with Procreate for very rough idea sketches (the iPad's portability facilitates developing ideas anywhere - doctor's office, coffee shop, etc.) Next, my iPad sketches were imported into Photoshop for refinement on my desktop PC. On my desktop, I work in Photoshop and/or Painter on a Wacom Cintiq 24 Pro (you can read about my homebuilt desktop PC setup here).   

Concept Sketches

Having roughly mapped out the world of Reversed Front in ideation sketches, we needed to solidify the design of each territory. Reversed Front was supposed to be styled around "Asian Steampunk" - and honestly, I wasn't quite sure what that was. I had to research steampunk design and more specifically, what makes for "Asian Steampunk". As near as I can tell, Asian Steampunk seems to blend traditional architecture with industrial machinery - but with a lighter, more ornamental touch than Western Steampunk. 

Also, I needed to work out how to incorporate steampunk elements throughout each landscape. In an early version of Japan, I envisioned steampunk elements interwoven throughout a medieval Japanese castle. I think this would have been fun to draw, but I don’t think my sketch really captured the spirit of Japan.

My early concept sketch for Japan

This next sketch is not mine - it's by my colleague and good friend, Scott Cook, who worked with me for a little while on this project. His concept sketch - a view looking across the water at a modern Japanese city, interspersed with mechanical steampunk elements and the occasional Japanese temple - was chosen as the direction for the final background. Honestly, Scott's idea was a better representation of Japanese culture, and so it became the basis for my pencil layout below (this, by the way, is why I really enjoy working with a team of creators - it's an opportunity to bounce ideas off of other artists and create something that I probably wouldn’t have thought up on my own). 

Scott's sketch that influenced the final layout

Pencil Layout

Working from Scott’s concept sketch, I began the pencil layout in Photoshop, drawing with the Wacom Cintiq. I chose a greenish color to work out the preliminary drawing - this technique harkens back to earlier days of traditional animation, when animators would begin a drawing in blue pencil before tying down the final drawing in graphite. I like this technique especially for handling highly detailed subjects. Plus, this technique readily accommodates revisions. When I finished the pencil layout, I was asked to revise the roof of the foreground temple - I am always happy to make revisions at this stage because it's so much easier to revise a line drawing than a fully rendered painting.

Pencil Layout

Inking Stage

I inked over my pencil drawing (or rather, applied the digital equivalent of ink with a thick/thin brush in Photoshop). This process is similar to how old-school comic book inkers would ink on top of a penciled page. It's a time-consuming process, but the result is a drawing that I think might hold its own as a pen & ink illustration.

Inked Drawing

Underpainting

Following the inking stage, I applied soft-edged brushes in Photoshop to render the entire scene with a full range of value from light to dark. This process is a modern counterpart to the Renaissance method of creating an underpainting ("Verdaccio" was the Italian method of underpainting with gray-green tones, while the French employed "Grisaille", or grays). The idea is to separate the problems of color from the problems of value (light and shadow). With the composition and values resolved, I can relax and enjoy the painting process, focusing on color and refinement. I find that my painting goes much faster and is usually more successful when I paint over a full-value underpainting. It's harder to mess up the finish when you start off with a solid foundation. 

Underpainting

Color Rough

Before starting the final painting, I made a rough pass at color using mostly soft-edged brushes in Photoshop. At this stage, the paint can be rough and unrefined - I am just trying to decide which colors work best. My color roughs are generally much rougher than this, but I was really enjoying this painting. 

Regarding the color palette: it was easy enough to apply pink to the foreground cheery blossoms, but I had to "invent" opportunities to apply this color elsewhere in the scene. For example, I used shades of pink within details of the foreground temple, as well as within the background architecture and steampunk elements. Same with the matcha green. The contrast between these two colors seems effective especially within the foreground temple. All in all, I think the pink and matcha green actually came together better than I expected.

Color Rough

Final paint

Working over a solid drawing and full-value rendering, colors can be layered on top, building from transparent towards semi-opaque. I rarely apply paint fully opaque - I like to leave some of the underpainting showing through the upper paint layers even in the finish. This is a holdover from how I paint in traditional media, but I like the effect of layering paint this way. 

In the final painting, you might notice the colors are more vibrant and fully saturated whereas my rough is more muted and painterly. I like the colors in the rough version, but there is a necessary tradeoff between painterly subtlety and readability on the video game screen. I also think the pink and matcha green risk clashing with this much saturation, but perhaps it better fits the cartoon style of the game. 

Final Paint

Finally, I had a last-minute request to change the distant "Fuji-like" mountains to rolling hills with cherry blossoms. It's difficult - even frustrating - to make revisions this late in the process: working in Photoshop, I had to go back into the drawing and rendering layers and make changes there before coming back to the paint layers - but I did make the revision.

The greatest benefit of working in animation and video games has been the challenge of pushing myself artistically, whether its tackling complex subject matter or painting with strange and unfamiliar color palettes. Reversed Front, and especially Japan, challenged me to push color much further and try color combinations from which I would've previously shied away. I don't think I ever would have attempted to paint a complex city scene with "pink and matcha green." I am grateful for the opportunity to be pushed out of my comfort zone and learn from the experience.

A "Dangerous Revolutionary"

[I'm posting this a little bit early, but since Taiwan is actually 15 hours ahead me here in California, it's already April 5th there]

Today is the first anniversary of the release of Reversed Front: Bonfire (Apple version is here). I poured all my heart into designing and painting backgrounds for this game. The above trailer features many of my backgrounds representing various territories within the Reversed Front world. You can read about my process for creating these environments on my website here.

Reading responses to the game on the internet has been entertaining. The mobile app was banned in Hong Kong for promoting successionist agendas like 'Taiwan independence' or 'Hong Kong independence' or 'Tibet independence'. According to a police statement, anyone caught downloading the app may be regarded as being in possession of a publication that has a seditious intention.

Below is a short video explaining how you might be arrested in Hong Kong for downloading the app. 

For my involvement with Reversed Front, I may be labeled a 'dangerous revolutionary', allegedly promoting sedition, succession, and lawlessness against the Central Authorities and the Government of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region (i.e. the communist regime).

I could not be more proud of my work on this game.😂

"Show Your Book": A Look at Art Portfolios from 1990's to 2020's, Part III

The Typecast Artist

“You always paint such dark things!” a classmate exclaimed upon viewing one of my illustration assignments in art school. The exclamation took me aback, I hadn’t thought of myself as a “painter of dark things”. In fact, in all my years of art school, I painted maybe a dozen illustrations that might fall roughly within the dark fantasy/horror genre. With equal zeal, I would illustrate various genres: science fiction, action/adventure, mythology, literary or history scenes, children’s books, etc. I love all kinds of stories. How could my entire oeuvre be defined by a handful of illustrations in only one genre?

We can speculate as to why my fantasy/horror paintings made such an impression on my classmate while the rest of my artwork failed to register, but the problem of pigeonholing - being typecast, labeled or categorized as one thing or another based on one facet of my work - has always been a challenge for me. Early in my animation career, I was typecast as a cleanup artist. In A Longer Story, I recount being typecast as “a guy who only draws charcoal portraits”.

Fortunately, the internet provided an opportunity to break the typecast. In particular, social media sites during the mid-to-late 2000's were a great place to post artwork in various media, where followers could watch the artist’s progress over time. Hence, colleagues who had been familiar with only my animation cleanup work were now able to see my paintings, people who knew me from animation layout were seeing my illustrations, folks who had seen only my portraits were seeing my sketchbooks, and so on. The internet allowed my work to reach many more people, and opened up new opportunities for me.

More recently, I set out to build a website that (I hoped) would once and for all break the typecast by bringing together various facets of my work: drawing, painting, writing, animation, illustration, sketchbooks, perspective studies, and miscellaneous artistic explorations. Looking back on it a year later, my website seems less of a portfolio site than it is an artist retrospective, or a form of autobiography. I had become less interested in “showing off” only my best work and more interested in documenting the creative process, while trying to make sense of whatever it is I have done with my life.

Artist Development: From Student to Journeyman to Seasoned Professional (or “Old Guy”)

I suppose it was inevitable that my website would become a retrospective rather than a typical portfolio site. In my previous post, we covered the progression of artist portfolios from student to professional. Where the student portfolio can be more general, showing the best work the student has done up to that point, the journeyman portfolio is a curated selection of work built around a specific theme or purpose. Beyond the journeyman portfolio is the artist retrospective, a collection of work that spans the artist’s career, and reveals the arc of development from student to journeyman to seasoned professional (or in my case, maybe just “old guy” because, as anyone working in animation or video games knows, of course… anyone over 35 is “old”). 

The retrospective may include early experimental works alongside mature works, as well as explorations of varied media and subject matter. Note that we have come full circle: the movement from student to professional was from general to specific, but now we are moving back to the general - except now it’s a broad, decade’s long survey of an artist’s life’s work, in which perhaps we can see overarching themes, motivations, methods, values and artistic trajectory that collectively reveal artist identity. 

The term “artist identity” is used a lot on the internet these days, and I would be in deep waters way over my head trying to make sense of it here, but at the risk of oversimplifying it, let’s just say artist identity is a constellation of choices, themes, values and motivations that distinguish one artist’s voice from another. It’s the creative engine that drives portfolio creation and unifies the artist’s work across multiple disciplines, techniques, media or subject matter. The artist’s portfolio becomes a self-portrait of the artist.

 

Artist Identity versus Typecast

Standing in opposition to artist identity is the typecast. Identity emerges from within the artist; typecast is imposed on the artist. The world is still trying to box us in to a neat little niche with a label, or as one of my painting instructors, Bill Perkins, said during a workshop:

They want to know if you are a loaf of bread or a box of cereal, can we set you on this shelf or on that shelf?

I understand why artists are typecast, especially in regards to art marketing or applying for industry work. Labels are useful in categorizing, recommending, selling, etc. I don’t think there is any way around this, but at least now artists have new tools to overcome the typecast. The Internet has become the major engine of discovery, enabling artists to showcase their work to a worldwide audience, and even interact with followers and clients across the globe.

 

Portfolio Evolution: From Static Book to Multi-Platform Network

The art portfolio has gone from a static thing to a network. If identity is the through‑line of an artist’s life, then today’s internet platforms are the many windows through which that identity is seen. In recent years, the term “Multi-Platform Artist Identity” has come to the fore. It simply means that, as artists, we no longer express our identity through a single portfolio; rather our identity is distributed across multiple platforms. The artist might maintain a website, a blog, maybe an online store, an Instagram account, Facebook, YouTube channel, etc. The art portfolio is now a constellation where each platform offers a glimpse into a different facet of the artist’s life and work.

In my case, my website serves as a central hub to showcase my artwork, while my blog emphasizes my recent writing and thinking, but as I reach out across social media, I am able to interact with my audience and receive feedback from them. And this has proven very helpful as I’ve gained valuable insights from seeing what people respond to and how they respond to it.

I suppose audience interaction is another big shift in this portfolio progression. Audiences can follow their favorite artists online, post comments or questions, and even watch them create live on YouTube, Reels, or TikTok. In the past, I would admire my art heroes from afar; great illustrators like Drew Struzan, Thomas Blackshear, Iain McCaig or Syd Mead seemed so mysterious and distant when I only knew their work through hard copy publications. But today, I can watch interviews with any of them on YouTube and hear them speak in their own voices. I can even watch videos of them painting, demonstrating their creative process. They are no less heroic and still plenty mysterious, but I feel almost as if I know them now. The distance seems less distant.    

Forgive my wordy meandering, but I’ve been trying to make sense of my life’s work through the portfolios I’ve created. I would like to think the lesson here is that no single label can contain a lifetime of creative exploration. At the very least, I set out to break the typecast. I hope I have done that.

"Show Your Book": A Look at Art Portfolios from 1990’s to 2020’s, part II

The Trainee Portfolio

Almost 30 years ago, I put together the portfolio that scored me a job with Walt Disney Feature Animation. In the spring of 1997, representatives from Disney visited my school to look at student portfolios. They called me in for an interview and recommended that I submit my portfolio for the Disney animation training program that year. But the deadline was fast approaching and I would need to Fedex my portfolio to Disney soon (a daunting task - as I recounted in my last post, 1990’s portfolio culture was all about giant sized books).  

My teacher, the late Barbara Bradley, went over my portfolio with me, recommending what to add, what to take out, and how to arrange everything for best presentation. Also, I was given a paper titled “Walt Disney Feature Animation Portfolio Requirements”, as well as a “Sample Portfolio for Animation Internships.” All these years later I still have these. 

The Disney Animation Trainee portfolio requirements called for:

• Gestures (quick sketches drawn from live models, not photographs)
• Figure Drawings (more developed drawings)
• Animal Quick Sketches
• Animal Drawings (more developed)
• Sketchbook Pages

The guidelines state that you can add some refined works, like portraits, landscape/architectural compositions, illustrations or personal artworks that show your sense of light, color and design. They also say it's OK to add a couple of "well chosen" cartoon style drawings, but I was led to believe that Disney was primarily interested in foundational drawing skills. Hence, I weighted my portfolio heavily with my best recent life drawings and sketchbook work.

On the last day of my last semester in art school, a telephone call came through informing me that I was accepted into the Disney training program. I was elated! It seemed like such vindication of all the hard work - the sleepless nights and long hours at the drawing board - honing my skills up to that point.

However, I was a bit surprised after I arrived at Disney and had a chance to see some of the portfolios of the other trainees. Not everyone had followed the guidelines; in fact, I think one trainee was unaware that there even were any guidelines. Yet all the portfolios were brilliant; each one exhibited strong foundational drawing skills, but also artistic voice and individual taste. Perhaps I had been too concerned with rules and requirements; as I would learn over the course of my career: skill is important, but more so is vision. 

The Journeyman Portfolio

Pictured below are some of my portfolios from around the mid-2000s, featuring background layout work for various animated productions. Naturally, a journeyman portfolio should include professional samples, but when I was applying to the Layout Department at DreamWorks, my only experience was animation clean-up. I had no professional layout samples. Fortunately, Lorenzo Martinez (then head of Layout at DreamWorks) gave me a shot. I had to accept a trainee position, but I didn’t mind – I had my foot in the door and an opportunity to create the first of many professional samples.

I am forever grateful for the opportunity to hone my skills in the animation industry, and I believe my work would never have achieved the level of polish it has without the patient feedback and constructive criticism from my mentors and colleagues. They taught me a lot about drawing technique and visual storytelling; but they also taught me about professional mindset. From them I learned that the journeyman portfolio should be more than a showcase of technical facility; it becomes a declaration of the artist’s identity.

 

The Portfolio as a Mirror

The difference between the trainee and journeyman portfolio can be thought of in terms of the undergrad versus the MFA candidate. The undergraduate portfolio is about mastering fundamentals and learning the visual language of art. The graduate portfolio must show a cohesive body of work articulating a point of view. The first is aspirational (showing potential), the second is functional (showing intent).

The path from student to journeyman runs from the general to the specific. The trainee portfolio may simply include the best work the student has done so far. The journeyman portfolio should target a specific function. For example, within the animation industry, journeyman portfolios are usually tailored to a job category, such as:

• The Storyboard Portfolio (emphasizes storytelling, continuity, and staging)
• The Character Design Portfolio (emphasizes shape language, expression, model sheets and character turnarounds)
• The Layout/Background Design Portfolio (emphasizes composition, staging, perspective)
• The Background Painting Portfolio (emphasizes lighting, mood, color scripts)

Inevitably, our portfolios are shaped by the projects we work on, as well as the type of work we are drawn to (storyboards, character design, etc.) And yet we make choices in arranging our portfolios: what to show first? What to show after? What to include? exclude? What to emphasize? deemphasize? These curatorial choices reveal something of ourselves: our individual tastes, our own aesthetic judgments and artistic vision. Hence, each portfolio acts as a mirror reflecting the person we were at the time we made it.

Together, the trainee portfolio and the journeyman portfolio map out the arc of an artist’s career, while each portfolio is a snapshot of our progress. Cumulatively, all of our portfolios reveal our “artist identity”, something we'll explore a little bit further in my next post. We’ll also look at how changing technology has taken the art portfolio from a static thing to a multi-platform network that reveals a broader view of the artist’s identity.