Tuesday, September 14, 2010

Mini Portfolio

In an effort to save money and still be able to pass out portfolios, I was turned onto an interesting type of miniature photo album that can be purchased for $1.20, by my good friend Kate Burk. The standard size for images that can be placed in these albums are about 4x6. I created around 17 portfolio pages so far, some meant for two page spreads, and I will probably only make around 20 in total. It is an interesting practice to create pages for a miniature portfolio as it really forces me to be selective in what I put in and how I display my artwork. I opted for a brown paper look, as it's something I've been fond of ever since I bought my first toned sketchbook. It also has a nice texture to it that I find appealing.

















I wanted to show variety, though I am sure I could benefit from drawing more females, environments, and animals. Other than some life drawing pages I believe the production is complete. It's an interesting experiment and I am eager to see what responses they get at Ottawa.

Sunday, September 12, 2010

Portfolios and ARMS Masters

Its been about a month or two since my last post. My time has mostly been taken up by ARMS Masters work and the new search for jobs. I'm refining my portfolio for animation and illustration and starting to think about presentation a bit more. The Ottawa animation festival will be my main focus in these upcoming weeks as I prepare to hit up the job fair as well as the animators picnic if possible. In the meantime I will continue to work on ARMS Masters while trying to find a small part time job to help pay the bills and get food.

Below are some color model sheets of some ARMS Masters characters.

Seth: The deceptive villian of the series. My concept for him was a mixture of Peter O'Tool's portrayal of King Henry in 'The Lion in Winter' and Mr. Freeze from "Batman: the Animated Series".
Mountain Monster Form: A character created by Mike Winn, the director of the project, in his most raw form. Mountain is supposed to be able to morph into his 'true' form. I took the name literally. This is an early concept and will need some major revisions before he is ready for the show.
Bounty Hunter: This is the revised version of the Bounty Hunter who is supposed to attack one of the main characters 'Tyr'. A mixture of raw animal power and a cold cunning intelligence, I used a panther for inspiration on his face and body type while referencing a band of hyena taming gypsies in Africa for his outfit.

For my portfolio I continue to experiment with themes and interesting visuals that say something about me, are iconic, and can trigger the memory of any recruiter looking at my portfolio. So far I have come up with these three designs.

Using one of my paintings as a background and playing with the title a bit. It may be too busy for a portfolio cover, the idea being a quick and memorable image to entice the viewer to look further.

A more fun approach with an attempt at focusing on my animation instead of my illustration. Again I am not a graphic designer so my knowledge of tight composition is limited. This cover might require a better understanding of graphic design in order to pull off effectively and to not look sloppy.

What to people call me when they don't know my name, "that guy in the kilt". Using one of my favorite sketchbook images along with an extreme close up of my kilt for texture, I attempted to create a simple but effective design that says something about me.

I'm not really sure where to go with this, so any comments, questions, and critiques would be greatly appreciated. :)