“Show Your Book”: A Look at Art Portfolios from 1990’s to 2020’s, p2

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”, a topic we'll explore 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 expresses a broader view of artist identity.