“Show Your Book”: A Look at Artist Portfolios from 1990’s to 2020’s

The Big Book Era

In my last year of art school, I purchased a large book portfolio that measured about 20x25” and held about a dozen 18x24” pages. It was heavy, expensive, and comically unwieldy - especially if you tried to carry one on a bus in downtown San Francisco. I bought that large portfolio because that is what art students did at the time. In fact, I had to buy two of them because I needed to send one portfolio to Walt Disney Feature Animation, and another to Walt Disney Consumer Products (representatives from both divisions of Disney came to my school to look at student portfolios, and both expressed strong interest in my work - hence I was encouraged to apply to both while finishing up my last semester before graduation). I paid something like $60-$70 to mail each portfolio to Disney (which as more than I could afford at the time and so I had to beg my parents for the money… LOL). A couple months later, job offers came from both divisions, and I had to choose between Disney Feature and Disney Consumer Products. This was one of the most intensely exciting times of my life; I went straight from art school to employment in the animation industry.

Pictured below is the actual portfolio that landed me the job at Walt Disney Feature Animation - I haven’t updated it since. Some of the drawings have yellowed with age or fallen out of place, but otherwise, it’s basically the same portfolio I mailed to Disney in 1997.

The Ritual of “Showing Your Book”

“Show your book” was a phrase I first heard in the animation industry - in that venue, it meant showing your portfolio in effort to get jobs. Over the next decade, I would spend a good deal of time running around Los Angeles “showing my book” to animation studios, video game companies, advertising/publishing houses - anywhere an artist might ply his craft to pay some bills. I had a variety of portfolios, some tailored to animation work, some toward commercial illustration. And I had multiple portfolios of each kind because portfolio submissions typically required leaving your portfolio for review. Portfolio reviews could take weeks, even months, and you needed multiple portfolios in order to submit to more than one company at a time.

Artist portfolios, and the process of submitting them, would change quite a bit over time. Pictured below are some of the portfolios which I used to score industry jobs. As you can see, sizes run from the large 20x25” book portfolio down to an 8.5x11” binder. By the early 2000s, I think the animation studios were so overwhelmed with portfolio submissions that they simply didn’t have room; hence, smaller portfolios were becoming more acceptable - even encouraged. These hard book portfolios would eventually give way to the CD-ROM and the website portfolio.

A Timeline of Portfolio Evolution

Below is a rough timeline of artist portfolio sizes and formats. This timeline is by no means exhaustive or complete; it merely reflects what - and when - most animation artists were using to find industry work. We should also note that these categories overlap. For example, book portfolios continued in use years after the introduction of the CD-ROM portfolio, and some artists continue using big book portfolios even today.

Big Book Portfolios (1990s)

These giant 20x25” (or larger) books were great for showcasing your work, but handling them - let alone mailing one - was quite the challenge. I remember one of my illustration instructors relating his story of carrying one of these into an art director’s office - the giant book took up all available space on the director’s desk and knocked over a cup of coffee.

I should mention that Xerox technology was less developed back then, and artists sometimes used photographic prints in their portfolio pages, which could become quite pricey. Everything about these large portfolios was pricey. And if you lost one in the mail… well, that was bad!

Medium Book Portfolios (late 1990s/early 2000s)

After Disney, I went to DreamWorks, and the medium book portfolio pictured below is the one I submitted to get in – except the artwork is not the same. I updated it with newer drawings and submitted it to other studios, but I don’t think I’ve used this size of portfolio since about 2003.

Small Book Portfolio (Mid/late 2000s)

While I appreciated all the space for showcasing work in the large portfolios, I was relieved when small-book portfolios became acceptable. These were so much easier to carry around or send through the mail. Also, ink-jet printer technology had developed to the point where artists could make relatively decent quality - yet affordable - reproductions with their home computer. Thus, it became much easier to make many copies of my portfolio and submit to many more animation studios at one time. Plus I could send them in the mail without fear of losing one (in fact, portfolios were becoming “disposable” in that you could now send one off in the mail without expectation of getting it back).

CD-ROM/DVD-ROM Portfolios (Late 1990s/early 2000s)

I never used one of these, but I was enchanted by them from the moment I first saw one. A colleague at DreamWorks showed me his portfolio on a CD-ROM - you popped the disc into the CD/DVD drive of a computer (most computers came equipped with one at that time) and it just started up (or “auto-played”). But it was so much more than a portfolio; it had animated menus, sound effects, music - even video clips! This was a revolution in portfolio design and presentation.

The CD/DVD was especially great for animators and visual effects artists, since it readily replaced the demo reel (usually VHS tape at the time). A light, thin 5” disc was much easier and cheaper to send through the mail, plus you could inexpensively burn as many copies as needed.

FUN FACT: Here is my ¾ inch U-matic tape which I used for all my pencil tests in the Foundations of Disney Animation (F.O.D.A.) Training program in 1997. These cassettes were commonly used in animation studios up till the late 1990’s, but I haven’t found a machine that could play one for the past 20 years or so. Obviously, a CD-ROM was easier to mail than one of these bulky things!

Website Portfolios (2010s/2020s)

As revolutionary as the CD/DVD-ROM portfolio was, animation studios would eventually realize that they didn’t need to deal with physical submissions at all. Portfolio websites had been around since the year 2000 or earlier, but they didn’t replace disc or book portfolios until later. I continued to use book portfolios - and animation studios continued to accept them – throughout the 2000s. I don’t remember exactly when animation studios stopped accepting book portfolios, but sometime in the early 2010s, I became aware of companies saying: “Never mind your portfolio - just send us a link to your website or blog”.

Indeed, the virtual realm claimed much more than art portfolios. Since about 2012, every freelance gig of mine has involved remote work via the Internet. Every work-related communication has been via email, cell phone, or video conference. 

Building My Own Website

I was late climbing aboard the World Wide Web. I didn’t start uploading artwork online until around 2007. By that time, artist websites were proliferating rapidly, and art blogs had become hugely popular. The Internet was becoming a dominant means by which artists showcased their work and got “discovered”. Nevertheless, I remained slow to adapt.

In 2008, I set up this blog with the intention of blogging about animation and illustration art, in conjunction with building my own portfolio website. However, a multitude of projects distracted me, so my blog remained undeveloped. Eventually, I was forced to concede that traditional book portfolio submissions were no longer viable for securing industry work - I really needed an online presence. So, I configured my blog to work like a basic portfolio website. It wasn’t ideal, but it worked. My “blog-pretending-to-be-a-website” got a surprising amount of traffic (especially my “Perspective Notes” page, but that is a story for another blog post). And it was instrumental in scoring me a lot of freelance work for more than a decade.

After many years of intervening distractions, I finally set out to build an actual website. One year ago today, I launched tcstarnes.com to showcase not only my animation and illustration work, but also my teaching notes, perspective studies, and miscellaneous artistic explorations.

Admittedly, my website is flawed. I have been steadily tweaking it over the past year, fixing mistakes and making small improvements here and there. It may be an ongoing work-in-progress, but it is a website I needed to build (for reasons I will elaborate in another post).   

From Weighty Books to Weightless Links

As I look at the old book portfolios leaning against the wall of my studio, I’ve been thinking about how the form and content of artist portfolios has changed over the years. In this post, we’ve seen portfolios go from big books to websites. Part II in this series will address content: what should you include in your art portfolio? What to exclude? And how has changing technology shaped our perceptions/expectations of artist portfolios?

Aesthetics of One- and Two-Point Perspective.

Years ago, I designed an online perspective drawing class in which I attempted to cover WAY too much material – such as the aesthetics of one- and two-point perspective. It was too much for one class, and during the editing a lot of interesting material ended up on the cutting room floor. Revisiting those ideas years later, I hope to dust them off, fix them up, and find a place to properly showcase them. So, here is some of my old material – freshly rewritten with new example images (the two head studies above are fresh off my easel!)

Most of my teaching has focused on perspective technique: how to draw architectural environments in one- or two-point perspective.

No doubt, technique is important – but successful drawing is more than technique. Perspective also shapes mood, symbolism, and the psychological relationship between viewer and subject. It’s worth pausing to explore that aesthetic dimension.

So, let’s look at a series of images through a pair of contrasting ideas:

One-Point Perspective = Symmetry, Stability, and Direct Engagement

Two-Point Perspective = Dynamism, Obliqueness, and Psychological Distance

One-point perspective emphasizes central recession - space recedes directly away from us. Since all major lines converge to a single vanishing point, the resulting compositions often feel symmetrical, formal, or even ceremonial. They present the world as orderly and stable.

Raphael’s School of Athens comes to mind: the architecture frames the philosophers in a perfectly balanced space, reinforcing the painting’s theme of a harmonious, rational universe. It has been said of this painting: “The perspective isn’t just a technical device; it’s a philosophical statement.”

Two-point perspective, by contrast, introduces diagonal recession. Instead of a single, central pull into space, we get two competing directions—two oblique angles that create tension and movement. The result is often more dynamic, energetic, or unstable.

This makes two-point perspective ideal for action scenes. Think of the light-cycle battle in the original TRON (1981): the angled grids and racing diagonals heighten the sense of speed and danger. The perspective itself becomes part of the drama.

Applied to the human figure, perspective can create a sense of directness verses indirectness, engagement verses psychological distance. Here again are my head drawing studies from the top of this post.

The straight-ahead head study (on the right) directly meets our gaze. There’s an inherent confrontation - or at least a clear engagement - when a figure aligns with the central axis of the picture. One-point perspective amplifies that feeling, as if the viewer and subject occupy the same visual corridor (i.e: he is looking at you “straight in the eye”). On the other hand, two-point perspective tends to produce more incidental or intimate views. The three-quarter head study (left) looks away, not confronting us directly. The rotation introduces psychological distance. We observe the figure, but the figure does not necessarily observe us.

Finally, let’s compare two very beautiful - but very different - paintings by Burton Silverman. In the portrait below, a woman looks straight at us, scrutinizing us as much as we scrutinize her. The one-point alignment intensifies the psychological exchange. We are not just observers; we are participants.

Painting by Burton Silverman

In this next painting, the figures turn away from each other - but not quite directly towards us. The oblique angles and off-center viewpoints create a sense of interiority - private thoughts, private emotions. The psychological complexity is entirely different from the direct, frontal engagement of the above portrait.

Painting by Burton Silverman

Perspective is often taught as a technical system, but it’s also an expressive one. One-point perspective tends toward clarity, order, and confrontation. Two-point perspective leans toward dynamism, obliqueness, and psychological nuance. Neither is inherently better; each carries its own emotional vocabulary. 

Understanding that vocabulary gives you more than a way to construct space - it gives you a way to shape meaning. 

[NOTE: I want to thank my editors at AAU who gave insightful feedback on the original draft of this material years ago (even though it was ultimately discarded in the final version of the online class build). Also, I recently ran it through an AI to get more feedback. While I hate AI (I intensely loathe anything that threatens "to do my thinking for me"), I must admit, the AI provided some useful feedback to improve what became the final version of this article. So - like it or not - I must grudgingly give credit where credit is due.]

Memories of Oswald

Of all the animation productions I have worked on, it’s really tough to say which one was my favorite. I’m not sure I could pick just one, but if I had to, I might choose Oswald the Lucky Rabbit – mainly because the environments where so much fun to design, but also because of the history/legacy of the Oswald character.

Walt Disney created Oswald before Mickey Mouse, but lost ownership of the character to Universal Studios way back in 1928. Nearly 80 years later - in a strange and unexpected turn of events - Disney CEO Bob Iger negotiated back the rights from Universal, trading Oswald for ABC/ESPN sportscaster Al Michaels (fascinating read on this story here).

Following Oswald’s return to the Disney fold, a number of attempts were made to revive the character, including video games, merchandise, a short film, episodic TV series, and apparently - there is now a live-action/animation hybrid in the works. I should note that I was/am not involved with any of the other efforts to revive Oswald – just this one from around 2016-2017, when I was freelancing for Disney Interactive/Disney TV. For unknown reasons, the series never materialized.

For nearly a decade, my work on Oswald remained unseen to all but a few people, but now that Oswald is public domain, I hope it's OK to post these. So, I put together the video at the top of this blog post using a bunch of my Oswald backgrounds (the video is mine so any bad editing is my fault, and the music is courtesy of Google Vids, and not from Disney). To create these backgrounds, I worked with the amazingly talented production designer, Edgar Carlos, who has a great eye for design and composition (without his input/advice, my drawings would never have worked as well as they did). My role was primarily background design, so I only claim credit for the backgrounds (not the character drawings – those were done by other artists). Also, this is early development work, so some of the drawings are quite rough. All of these backgrounds were drawn in Photoshop using a Wacom Intuos 4 tablet.

One of my favorite scenes was this establishing shot of “Coneyopolis”. This first version (below) was an early rough concept.

Later, we reworked the idea, making Coneyopolis more expansive. This version includes a field guide to indicate camera movement – the camera was to pull out wider, while the foreground hills fall away, revealing the extra-wide shot of Coneyopolis (second drawing below).

I must give credit where credit is due. The above drawing was so detailed and it was taking me forever – so Edgar stepped in and drew in some parts, helping to finish on time.

The next scene (below) is an even wider shot where we digitally transplanted the previous drawing of Coneyopolis into the wider landscape, with endless rows of windmills covering the hills. Very time consuming, but very much worth the effort.

I regret that this Oswald series never materialized, but I’m just grateful for the opportunity to contribute in some small way to the legacy of this iconic character. I really enjoyed drawing these backgrounds!

CrocPond: The Dream Job that Lasted for a Moment

Lately, I’ve been reminiscing about old projects from the course my career. One project for which I had the highest hopes was the ill-fated world of CrocPond. Originally, it was intended to be a direct-to-DVD film series aimed at teaching life lessons to children. But as all too often happens in this industry, the project ran out of funding and was eventually abandoned. (I will refrain from commenting on specific events, controversies or conspiracy theories surrounding the demise of the project or the closure of FatCat Animation – I have no dog in those fights. For this blog, I just want to focus on the artwork).

In early 2005, I was contacted by someone from FatCat Animation, a studio founded by Len Simon in Tempe, Arizona. Initially, the job involved cleanup animation on the Curious George movie, but when I enquired about layout work, they said they would need to send me a test. Not long after, a package arrived by FedEx. Inside was the test: a couple of penciled line drawings for which I was asked to provide tonal renderings. I had seen no other CrocPond material, and I was given no reference or direction for the lighting – I just had to invent the lighting myself. So, I put my whole heart into it, and the result was the pencil rendering you see here, as well as the one at the top of this blog post. Needless to say, this test got me the job.

As I child, I loved the animated film Secret of NIMH, as well as the laser disc video game, Dragon’s Lair, both created by Don Bluth Entertainment (or its various incarnations). Fatcat was staffed with artists who had worked for Fox Animation Studios, which in turn, had absorbed talent from Bluth. While CrocPond was stylistically distinct from NIMH, I couldn’t help but feel excited to be working with people who had some connection to one of my favorite childhood films. In my mind, CrocPond was an opportunity to create environments which had the kind of atmospheric, mysterious, magical quality that reminded me of Secret of NIMH. For me, it was the dream job. I was very disheartened when the project came to an end.

I worked at FatCat Animation from about mid-2005 to mid-2006, the first part of that time doing cleanup animation on Curious George, the rest of that time spent drawing backgrounds for CrocPond and Rindin the Puffer. This was still the age of traditional pencil-on-paper animation, and so all of the drawings here were created with graphite pencils, kneaded eraser, and blending stubs. For many of these scenes, I was provided a rough layout (usually just a line drawing with no tone - so I had to invent the value pattern and lighting myself).

For others - such as the next two drawings here - I designed and rendered the background, so both the composition and finish are my own.

The last two drawings (below) depict the “House of Knowledge”. The exterior was initially designed by the amazingly talented Filipino artist, George Villaflor. George gave me a line drawing of the exterior, and a very rough line drawing suggesting the interior (for which I was to provide the finished renderings). Another artist had made a drawing of the interior, but from a different camera angle, and not all of the room was visible in his scene. So I had to design the rest of the room and match the desired camera angle. The script called for a room crowded with objects from every continent, representing every culture around the world. This assignment had my name all over it – a job perfectly suited to my tastes, skills, and artistic ambitions. I spent days researching reference material for everything that needed to be drawn. It was very time consuming, but I genuinely enjoyed the work.

While I am disappointed that Crocpond never reached the screen, I have fond memories from my time working on it. It was a moment in my career when imagination, craftsmanship, and opportunity aligned – however briefly – and I am grateful to have been a part of it.

By the way, I recently found some clips from FatCat Animation on YouTube (thanks to WorkOfZen for posting these!) This one provides a sense of what CrocPond might have been, if the funding had not dried up. 

Eye Update: One Year After My First Cornea Transplant

One year ago, I underwent my first cornea transplant (lefteye). Four months later, I went in for my second transplant (right eye). I really hoped that by now I would be enjoying crisp, clear vision. That hasn’t quite happened – but there has been real progress.

On the bright side, the thick fog is gone. My vision is dramatically better – especially when viewing things close up: fine details, textures, small print, all things that eluded me a year ago. Distance vision, however, is still a problem: street signs, grocery store isle markers, café menu boards remain difficult to read. I still see strong halos around lights, and there is a persistent double vision effect (especially in my right eye).

At my last doctor visit, my cornea transplants were healthy and working perfectly (no problems there). However, cataracts have developed in each eye at a faster pace than my doctor anticipated. The doctor recommends holding off on cataract surgery for at least a year or more following the cornea transplants. Also, my doctor believes another issue may be impacting my vision: dry eyes (i.e.: when the surface of the eye not properly hydrated, it can cause a scuffed, hazy effect). Actually this is good news, since the solution is non-surgical; the doctor recommends artificial tears for now, and these do seem to help.

Despite the ups and downs, I am feeling grateful. Of all the eye problems one could have, Fuchs dystrophy and cataracts are more manageable, especially compared to more serious issues like glaucoma or retinal detachment. Still, it does feel like I am living in a holding pattern: my vision is currently hovering around 20/40 in my left eye, and worse in my right eye; good enough to pass an eye exam at the DMV, but not quite good enough for me to catch the subtleties of someone’s facial expression across a coffee shop. I was hoping to resume my practice of café sketching, but alas… the café sketches will probably have to wait until after cataract surgery. 

In the meanwhile, I am happy to be drawing with pencil on paper again (in previous posts, I noted that my vision had deteriorated to the point where I couldn’t even see well enough to draw in a sketchbook). Here below is my most recent sketchbook page. I used the Blackwing 602 as well as the Tombow pencils (both are favorite pencils of mine), plus blending stumps and kneaded eraser. For the airbrushed version at the top of this post, I scanned my drawing and painted it in Photoshop. For the future, I am thinking of doing a lager, airbrushed version of this drawing, maybe using it as the basis for a finished painting.

Memories of the "Amazon Project"

Recently I put together a short video featuring some of my background work for the "Amazon Project" (actually, we called it "Amazonia" or something back when we were developing it, but for some reason, I kept referring to it as the "Amazon Project", and the name has stuck in my head).  

I've written about the Amazon project on my website here. Basically, it was to be an animated film featuring the character designs and animation of my good friend, the insanely talented Sandro Cleuzo. And it would have been an opportunity for me to develop a bunch of backgrounds loosely inspired by the art direction of Disney's Jungle Book (a film which Sandro and I both love). As happens all too often in the animated film business, too many great projects end up getting shelved.

On my website, I also wrote about The Last Days of Traditional Background Painting. By the time we were working on Amazonia, the animation industry had pretty much moved away from acrylics or gouache paints to all digital painting. I was one of the lone hold outs trying to work in traditional media. Here is a photo of me working on an Amazon background from way back (circa 2012 or so). Since this was a dev/dev piece rather than a production BG, I could use any media. I actually used oils on canvas for this one. 

And since I recently found these old photos, here is a look into my working process. For this next background, I started with a graphite drawing. After rendering out everything in graphite to establish the composition and value pattern, I airbrushed over my drawing with acrylic ink to darken the darks.

In this next step, I begin airbrushing thin layers of color over the black and white rendering. I like to work with a solid drawing under my painting - since I have already resolved the lighting and atmosphere, now I can focus on color. 

Slowly and patiently, I build up the layers of color so they become more intense, while trying not to lose the feeling of atmosphere established in the drawing.

Here the painting is coming along, but still a ways to go towards the finish. At the bottom of the photo, you can see paints laid out on my palette. I used a damp paper towel under the paints to keep the acrylics from drying out too fast. A spritzer bottle also helps to keep the paints moist. I still have the old butcher tray which I used as a palette in art school. With the painting progressing this far, I've put away the big brushes and brought out the small brushes for detail work. 

The finished painting is displayed on my website, as well as in the video above. Even though the film was never made, I am forever grateful to Sandro for the opportunity to collaborate on his film. And it did provide me with the opportunity to make some great portfolio pieces which helped me to land a number of jobs later on down the road.

Christmas at the Haggin Museum

It’s Christmas time at the Haggin Museum, and the galleries are dressed for the season: red, green, gold and white woven through banisters like festive ribbons. I haven’t been to the Haggin in quite some time. As my vision deteriorated from Fuchs Dystrophy, I stopped visiting museums altogether. One of the first things I longed to do after my cornea transplants was to return to art museums and see paintings in person again – not photos of paintings enlarged on a computer screen, but real canvases, real brushstrokes; I wanted to stand in the presence of real paintings and see them in their physical form.

Now that I’ve had transplant surgery in both eyes, my vision is better - not fully recovered, but definitely much better than it was. So, for my birthday, my dad drove me down to Stockton and we spent an afternoon wandering though the Haggin.

For those who don’t know, the Haggin Museum might be one of the best-kept secrets of the art world. Some even argue that the Haggin is the finest art museum in Northern California – surpassing the San Francisco Bay Area museums in the strength of its collections. A bold claim, I know. The Haggin is a mere fraction of the size of the De Young or the Palace of the Legion of Honor. But what it lacks in square footage, it makes up for with astonishing depth: Renior, Gauguin, Rodin, Jean-Léon Gérôme, William Merrit Chase, Thomas Moran, and the region’s largest collection of Albert Beirstadt landscapes.

On my first trip to the Haggin, I was stunned to find myself standing in front of Bouguereau’s Nymphaeum - a painting I have pored over in books, never imagining that I would see it in person. The last time I stood in front of this painting, my vision was weakening - but not yet to the point where I could no longer appreciate the subtle variations of color, the brushwork, the details... Fuchs Dystrophy impairs vision, and not just the ability to see detail - value contrasts are diminished (e.g.: darks appear grayed out rather than fully dark), colors appear washed out. Cornea transplants have restored my ability to see strong contrasts and vibrant color. Edges are still fuzzy, but at this point, I will happily take whatever victories I can get.  

The Haggin also houses the largest public collection of works by Golden Age illustrator J.C. Leyendecker, one of my artistic heroes since my student days at the Academy of Art in San Francisco. Honestly, this exhibit alone would have been well worth the trip.

A gallery dedicated to the works of J.C. Leyendecker

My father viewing illustrations of Leyendecker

 

A section of drawers holds drawings not only by Leyendecker but also by other famous illustrators such as Charles Dana Gibson. To protect the drawings, each drawer is covered with glass. Here my father examines a drawing displayed inside a drawer.

In addition to its art collections, the Haggin also features artifacts from early California history. From Gold Rush exhibits to Native American baskets, to fully recreated Victorian era rooms, to19th century industrial technology... I could spend days wandering through these halls. I was particularly fascinated with these antique fire-fighting machines (these would have been very helpful as reference when I was designing steampunk elements for my last video game job). 

So much more could be said about the Haggin, but I won't try to describe it - you have to see it for yourself. I can't recommend this place highly enough. The Haggin would be a great place to visit any time of year, but so near Christmas time, with all the festive ornaments - and to see it after my recovery from from cornea transplant surgeries - to me, this trip was priceless.