3.1 Research

Portfolio Research

I decided to look up a few portfolios based around 2d concept art. While I want to pursue a career as a narrative designer, I search for ages and struggled to find a portfolio based around a narrative designer. However, I did find a few pieces of advice for what to include in a narrative designer portfolio and have taken screenshots of them for future reference for when I set up my own. Here is the narrative designer portfolio advice:

With the notes on a narrative designer portfolio taken, I moved onto finding some concept art portfolios. I searched 3 portfolios of different skill levels on Artstation. Each artist I looked at has an ‘About’ page to help explain who they are and what they offer.

First I was on a look out for a student portfolio, which was a little harder to find than I first thought. I eventually stumbled across a school account which uploads concept art of its students and decided it would be a good one to analyse. As its home to work of multiple students, I can gather a main idea on what a handful of students present their work. Backgrounds for the pieces range from light greys, to blues and blacks mainly. Character pieces have the blue/grey backgrounds to help the character pop while it seems the object or environmental pieces have a dark blue or black background, which helps them as they may have a glow to them that is better contrasted with a darker background or to simple help the colour of the item stand out. As it’s a portfolio consisting of multiple students works, each piece is fairly varied with its own style, and each is distinct. They range from a semi realistic to a cartoony artistic approach and I personally like the look of all the pieces.

I wanted to find another student portfolio that was dedicated to one student rather than many so I could understand how one person will present their work instead of looking at a variety of people presenting their works differently. Like I mentioned earlier I found it quite difficult to search for a purely student portfolio, though I decided to reach out to my friend, who is a student, and asked if I could use hers, which she happily agreed to. he has organised her work based on its style and if it fits in a certain theme/series of drawings she is making. Her work is neatly organised with portraits, realism, cartoony and limited colour works to help show the variety of styles she can produce.

After viewing student work, I decided to then look for another concept artistic who wasn’t a student and wasn’t a high professional. I found a freelance artist who is making concept art for a small game. The art style is simplistic but mystical and very pleasing to the eye. As most of the work is related to a game she is currently working on, the backgrounds keep up a similar forest green that gives a sense of warmth to the pieces and helps the glowing characters shine. The simplistic artsyle like I said earlier is very pleasing and catching to the eye, making the art have a mystical vibe to it. Not only that but a limited colour pallet is also present in many of the pieces, which helps the work feel focused and not overcrowded. This also aids the characters stand out with them being another source of colour which differentiates from the background.

Finally, I look for a portfolio from a professional concept artist. As I prefer more stylised and cartoony approaches to art over realism, I search for an artist who focused more on the former. The work here is very varied- from humans to creatures in different poses and styles. The backgrounds for most of the works are darker- to help empathise the character in the drawing and to keep the focus on them. This only differs with the top left drawing having a lighter background as the character has darker clothing. The drawings are expressive and you can practically understand the mood of the character through their expression. All the designs are great- while I have a personal preference over the cartoony based drawings, I still find the other drawings impressive.

Now that I had research some portfolio examples, it was now time to look at the options for what website to use to display a portfolio. I first looked up Carbonmade. It’s a free portfolio site and it is fairly simple to use without the need to know any coding. It is well organised and user friendly and has various ways to organise pieces of work by style or purpose- which I like to do to keep everything neat and easy to find. With how many portfolios are on the website already, I’m heavily intrigue with this website and I like its stylised looked, so I may use this one to help present both my skills with making concept art and narrative.

Artstation is another portfolio website that I have been looking at. I like the way its presented and the variety of artwork that can be found there. Its easier to search for what you’re looking for and everyone on it seems to be supportive of all the work presented on Artstation. You can set up a simple ‘About’ page to say what do specialise in and who you are . Artstation is full of people fromstudents, to professionals and those in between. Work from 2D art, 3D modelling, traditional and digital are all showcased here, so it would be suitable for my traditional concept art pieces.

I also looked into Portfoliobox.net. It a free site that offers a variety of page types from ‘Gallery’ to ‘Text’ pages to help set up a portfolio. It has portfolios for art, photography and it looks to have more variety on how to present work. It has many options for customisation. The portfolios on the website look clean and professional and many people suing ti say it simple to use and a great tool. Out of these 3 websites, it the once I like the look and appeal of most, therefore will be my likely choice when setting up my digital portfolio.