Elijah and Azuu

Author notes

#1007 Headache: Godawful at Being God Awful

Inkmonkey

on May 18, 2006

I was trying to find 8 good portfolio pieces for myself (we're conducting a portfolio review in one of my classes for the end of the year), and I was expecting myself to have trouble finding 8 pieces I thought were worth putting into a portfolio, but instead I ended up having trouble choosing between the assignments I'd done so far.

I'm honestly shocked to see how much I've improved in just this year. Nothing reinforces that concept quite like looking back at your older work; I was apparently plagued with the concept that people have heads several times too large for their bodies.

Anyway, getting back to my point, I had to remember something my teacher told me, and that was that, before submitting a portfolio, you should always gear it toward whatever position you are applying for. There really isn't a way to set up an "all-purpose" portfolio, and you have to be willing to adapt.

With that in mind, I decided that I would gear my portfolio toward what I would send to a company were I to try and get an original comic published by a smaller-press company. So I took out a lot of the big, non-specific pieces (still lifes, landscapes, etc.), and instead geared my portfolio towards either sequential art or standalone images that convey some sort of story.

Now I'm back at my initial problem of not having enough pieces to fill out my 8 piece requirement, and as they say, all is right with the world.