How to make a Character Design Portfolio

i'm jackie i'm a professional character designer and filmmaker and today we're talking about what makes a good character design portfolio so we're going to be talking about formatting the type of website you need what to put in your portfolio specifically and tips and tricks and i'm going to be showing you examples from real life professionals that have generously agreed to let me show you their portfolio so let's start with what makes a character design portfolio obviously you need characters you don't need layout you don't need storyboard or a reel or anything like that you just need to focus on characters but if you're also leaning a little visual development e then we can also add that in that's kind of what my portfolio looks like i just touched my mic so let's start with why do i need a website can't i just show my portfolio whoever asks no you need one curated gallery to show your very best work to anybody who wants to find it these days everything's about the internet you need to post everything on the internet and that's the best way for people to find you what about my tumblr or instagram you could post on that too but it's also a lot of your sketches and stuff like that so you really need one place where you could show professionals your very best work so what type of website do you need you can use paid websites like squarespace or wix um that's personally what i use that's what a lot of professionals use but you can also use free resources like carbon made or blogspot or even tumblr as long as it's organized nicely like you don't need to pay for a website you can also pay for a domain so it's just your first lamelastname.com and i think that starts at about like 17 a year with google domains but it's also no problem to have firstnamelastname.wix.com it doesn't really matter so let's talk about formatting and i'm going to be using my portfolio as an example you need to remember these three key points you want to have your website to be clean you want it to be easily navigateable and you want everyone to know exactly what position you're working for so on your front page you always want your name and your desired position in my case character design visual development you need to have your contact info easy to find on your website so for me when i click about you find a blurb about me my email and you could find my resume you don't have to have this section but it helps recruiters get to know you where you are located what kind of projects you've worked on in the past i recommend having an about me page in terms of your actual portfolio i recommend it it's really nice to have all the pages the same aspect ratio it just feels really clean curated and like you've put effort into the display and aesthetic of your portfolio also i highly recommend having your name email on every page because sometimes pages get lost online people send photos around and what happens if your portfolio page gets sent around and there's no name attached to it though in terms of technicals in your portfolio itself i recommend you know 10 to 15. mine has like 17 though pages of your very best work you want your first piece to be a real big hard hitter and your last piece to also be a big hard hitter but you want every piece to also be a hard header if you know what i mean i put a splash page on the first and last page with my name email and position just so people are reminded every step of the way who they're looking at and they don't forget and i recommend you do the same i often get asked how do you format a portfolio as their template or anything that's the thing there is no template everybody's is different the whole point of this creative industry is that you can make it any which way you want so as long as it's simple clear and easily readable you can format it any way you want you know be creative you're creative person aren't you next what to include in your portfolio what you're going to need is exploration lineups character turnarounds character poses expressions bonus hand poses characters interacting props and if you're more vis-devy you know maybe a scene where characters are in an environment an exploration of a location we'll talk more about this in depth let's start with exploration so a lot of my designs personally i usually get on the first try because i know what i'm looking for and it's it's in my head right but when you're working at a studio you can't read the director's mind you go usually you go through a lot of process you go through a lot of variations and ideas and it takes a while to get to that final design that the director was envisioning so when you do your portfolio you want to mimic that process so then recruiters and directors know that you can follow that process and you could work as a team when you're creating a character piece or a lineup or something like that always show your process clearly with sketches or sometimes references here and there and yeah that's it lineups a really cool way to kind of think of a creative idea without putting too much work into it is make a reimagining of a fairy tale or a story that's already well known then you can kind of do your own take on this story people know the story people can follow along and they just have to focus on your design work so for example my portfolio i did a reimagining of narnia i have a page of exploration i have a pose page and an expression page and i also have a scene with characters interacting in an environment and that's a little bit more this dev side so in addition to your lineup i recommend making a pose page for one of those characters and making an expression page for one of those characters you want your poses to be in all different angles maybe a side view front view three-quarter view three-quarter back view poses that really showcase who your character is in an interesting and creative way same with expressions you want to really showcase this character's personality and their story within your drawings because that's what animation is all about turnarounds now this is my controversial opinion so for a very professional portfolios you don't really see turnarounds in them because mostly professionals can really show all the technical aspect of a turnaround in their character poses and expressions so if you're really good you can show these volumes and all these angles through posing and then you don't have to waste precious space on a technical turnaround but for newcomers to the industry who will mostly be doing technical work as like a character design assistant i do recommend putting one turnaround in your portfolio because the director or the recruiter needs to see that you can do that work hand poses is a fun thing to have it's difficult and that's why you show that you can do it characters interacting oftentimes people find difficulties in characters touching interacting volumes get all messed up so showing that you could do that is also really great props sometimes for series tv there isn't necessarily a whole prop designer doing the props oftentimes character designers do props as well when i was working on series i did a lot of prop design although i didn't really want to so we talked about what to put in your portfolio but what do you want to demonstrate in your portfolio you want to show story and personality the whole point of character design is story story is always the forefront of your characters and remember that when you're designing your characters to always know their motivation why they're doing the things they're doing why they're doing the poses they're doing and it doesn't have to be complicated for example right here i have a superhero teen character and you could tell her motivation behind her poses she's a superhero it's simple it's clean but it's well done it's volumetric there's a strong line of action and you could tell her personality so even on this simple two page spread i have exploration right here on the left i have final poses final character costumes i have a hero pose some other pose ideas and expressions so that's a perfect example of a mini project two pages another thing to demonstrate in your portfolio is versatility oftentimes there's going to be a character design lead whose style you have to follow so you want to show that you're adaptable and you're chameleon so maybe one project is flat and 2d and very shape heavy and maybe another is very volumetric maybe it could be converted into a 3d project maybe the proportions are more realistic showing that you can do more than one thing is really great to have in your portfolio and finally you want to demonstrate good draftsmanship you want to show that you're good at capturing volumes that you understand anatomy that you can rotate a character any which way and the character still looks the same that's like honestly the most important thing in character designing and bonus tips don't include fan art in your portfolio studios want to see your creativity they want to see what you can bring to the table in a new concept or design when you're when you're choosing your reimagined stories think has this been done before in animation can i create a unique design that still conveys the original story bonus tip two don't put figure drawing in your portfolio i've seen beginners put figure drawing their portfolio before figure drawing is more of a thing that you practice and you sketch and you learn anatomy and it's the step before you create a character bonus tip three keep it cohesive don't put a reel in for storyboards if your you know your focus is character design keep it really cohesive and just focus on character design and a little bit of this dev if that's what you're looking for be unique you know stand out by making something new i've seen a lot of character designs that are very simple and basic and the poses therefore are simple jumping poses or running poses you know remember to keep your character's personality at the forefront and really create something interesting and something that you would like to see on the screen and my final tip is only put your best work you know you'd think this is obvious but i always see people putting in not their favorite work maybe they're cringing at it and i'm like why is it in there and they're like oh well i don't have enough pieces even if you don't have enough pieces only show your your very best work that you're really proud of if you're not proud of something putting your portfolio someone else isn't going to be impressed by it okay now let's move on to some examples sorry took a look through my portfolio this is also kind of old work usually if you're working in the animation industry you have a series portfolio of nda work that you can't really show publicly because it hasn't been released yet so that's actually all the work that i've done in the past two or three years are in my secret tab so that's why i don't have a lot of recent work in my portfolio so let's start with brittany myers um brittany myers is a friend of mine and i like to call her a friend i hope she thinks i'm her friend too i worked with her recently and she has an amazing work she was the lead character designer for over the moon and i wanted to show you some of her work she did and that she presented on her portfolio so she has um exploration and posing of this main character um really interesting lines really interesting shapes really unique ideas of poses that you wouldn't normally see characters interacting it's a rough sketch and that's totally fine you don't have to color everything that you put in some more exploration of the mom character and just really cool poses and of the boy character you can really see his personality it's really fun to experiment playing with a prop in your character design poses you can get a lot more out of the character when they're interacting with something a lot more acting can be done next we're looking at ulysses alvarado yamas portfolio this next portfolio is a little more viz dev i worked with him on a project last year he's amazing so i want to show you what you can do how you can really push your character design portfolio as far as you can so with this lineup we have a lot of interesting shapes and the characters personalities really shine through the lineup you know they're not static poses you can already start to see the story taking shape we have a beautiful concept piece with characters interacting this is there's a beautiful way to jump start what your story is going to be like we have exploration of the main character with some references on the side and some more exploration of the villain and you could see him playing with different shapes of this villain we have a little thumbnail of a turnaround i recommend if you're going to put a turnaround in having a kind of small like this it doesn't need it's not your big hitter so it doesn't need to be that big and we have really cool poses of this character really focusing on shape design you could really see the characters personality now if you want to take your portfolio in a more visual development direction showing the locations of where these characters are located is also really great so next we have amanda jolly a great character designer on a lot of great work i'm going to show you her work from storks specifically and i want to show this to you because she has so much fun exploration and they're all just sketches you don't have to have very clean red final rendered work all you need to show is your strong character acting character poses and just a lot of fun exploration we have characters interacting like look at this there's just so much shape exploration and people exploration all these different types of people you know showing a lot of range taking out one character and fully exploring that character really strong poses for these birds as well next we have kenyak tran i worked with her on a project recently and her work is just so it's so unique and i want to show you this portfolio to show you that to show how far you can really push the uniqueness of your style in your folio we see this one character and we see her personality we see the story there's beautiful acting with multiple characters i think this is a great standalone mini project you know showing these really cool poses these dynamic characters these characters interacting fashion forward i think that's its own category and i think that these four pieces work together to show that and we have some great expressions and some poses it doesn't have to be retelling of one or two stories it can be a lot of different ideas as well and i also want to show jamie tran's portfolio i think this is a really great example of versatility in styles he has a lineup with this really flat style with all the things you need to pull out of it you've got to turn around you have poses you have characters interacting things like that and then also we have more um you know dynamic characters that have more volume and shape to them like this character as you can really tell who this person is as well as showing other versatility a page of pirates really cool exploration and shape design and that's also to show that you could have one-off pages that work by themselves so that's what i have for character design portfolio tips i hope you learned something in my next video i'll be critiquing a character design portfolio from one of my supporters on patreon and i haven't chosen them yet so you can join my patreon and comment your portfolio link in my pinned post in that video i will be critiquing the portfolio with all the things i talked about today and showing you how you can take your character design portfolio and bring it to a professional level i also have a lot of other cool fun stuff on my patreon like tutorials progress videos so if that interests you you can stay around for that i've never really done a video like this before so let me know what you think and what topics you'd like for me to cover in the future also if you want to learn even more you can join my art retreat in morocco next year where we'll be people sketching and learning character design basics and i have a link for that in the description you can check that out if that interests you okay that's it for me thank you for watching thank you for listening and that's it bye

Channel: Jackie Droujko

Views: 70,888

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Id: hHoFS-PyS5M

Length: 16min 38sec (998 seconds)

Published: Tue Jul 12 2022