Hey guys! I know this topic has been discussed on here before, but I have something pretty specific that I need your opinions on.

I'm going to the SCBWI Austin, TX conference at the end of April and am trying to pull my portfolio together to present.

I know there are a lot of feelings about fan art in one's portfolio, and I'm trying to decide if I include these illustrations.

They are a re-imagining of Disney's Princess and the Frog into a separate story: Tiana's Halloween.

I think these show my abilities, in rendering, traditional media and story telling, but I don't know if art directors will majorly frown upon this at the conference.

Thank you so much for your help and insights!
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@LauraA OMG! ctrlpaint is SO good! THANK YOU SO MUCH!
Mike

@Roselyn-Jerome your work is very nice and I can see you have great painting and drawing skills! Solid all around.

That said, I do think you will have to make a totally new portfolio and I'm not sure you should use development work you have already done for your images.

The first thing you will need to do is decide what kind of illustration you want to move into. They all require different things from your images. If you want to do book covers, that is one kind of portfolio and can utilize some "collage" type scenes that show multiple parts of a story all at once Think of a movie poster idea or the harry potter book covers. Then there is narrative illustration, which is typically publishing work. But even that is broken into graphic novel, YA, and children's book. Editorial is another type of illustration and solves yet another kind of image based problem.

So, first decide which direction you are headed, then start making new work for that area AFTER you have thoroughly researched that market. Too many concept artists try to switch over and rely on flashy painting but that doesn't actually get you too far in these other areas.

There are lots of illustrators who draw/use lines. Matthew Cordell recently won a Caldecott and his books are ink drawings with washes of watercolor on top. I also love Kate Hindley, Briony May Smith, Emily Hughes, and Claire Powell to name a few. There is lots of room in kidlit for different styles, I think the most important thing is just to make sure you have attractive characters, and color palettes appropriate for the age group you are illustrating for.

Hi Team!

My name is Mike, I'm from Sarasota Florida. I was wondering if there were any other SVSers around my area that might like to catch up in person talk about courses, compare notes and, maybe do a urban drawing session?

I've never done anything like this but I. thoguht it could be cool to meet up with any other SVSers in my area. It could be cool to also for other areas to do the same?

If you are in Sarasota and you'd like to catch up please let me know!

Mike Babich

@MimiHecher thanks so much for your reply!! It offers great insights in the ups and downs. Im a real beginner and I often feel frozen when it comes to start an illustration. Especially being inbetween such amazing artists here. What's in my head never comes out on paper. My life is also so busy. My kids are still small (almost 3 and 4,5). I work as a teacher in a university of applied sciences with a times huge peak workloads and am considering changing to teaching primary education. That means a discovery and assessment trajectory and when that pulls off being a student again next to working as a teacher. Im still nowhere near professional in looks nor speed so I'm making this my long term goal. But stories, education and environment are where my heart is, so want to use stories to reach kids and make them think. Going into primary education will also put me much more in touch with my target audience and the books that are out there in schools. When money will follow doesn't really matter. Since teaching is and will remain my first source of income. Whenever I feel Im up for it I can research into the Dutch educational market, where I am based. Thanks again!!

Hey there, can you please tell me where to find Bucci's character designs for kids lessons? I would love to watch it and afterwards give it a try to design an adult that way. If I succeed I can tell you what I did differently. 😉

Besides that my way of maintaining consistency is in having at least SOMEthing that all characters have in common. Like having very short legs or set the eyes very high in the face like the adult vikings of Nico Marlet.
Or do all eyes the same way, f.e. round cicles with a black spot in in, bigger for children, smaller for adults, but all the same kind of eyes. Etc. There are plenty ways and it also depends on the overall drawing style you are aiming for.

Besides, I would like to ask you back: Are you really SURE that you are struggling with this? Maybe you are trying to fix something that isn't a problem after all? Or did people tell you that your characters don't look like they are from the same world?
Are you willing to show us some of your characters that SHOULD belong to the same universe? Maybe YOU only see differences between them, but us others see that they belong together?

@davidhohn
Thanks very much for that tip, David. Will definitely do that.

@ksfabian Great! Then you surely are the perfect fit for him in more than only the illustration regards! 😃

@MimiHecher Yes I did, and it’s been exciting so far 👍🏻

Hi @kirsten-mcg, thank you for sharing your feedback! Regarding your examples, I’m definitely in the “persistent” category!

Sometimes people will tell me, “Wow! You have so much talent! What are you doing in construction? You should be an artist!”

My response:

“Thank you so much for your kind words! Construction is paying the bills, one day Art will hopefully do the same. ☺️”

What I lack in raw talent, I’m trying to make up with hard work, resilience, grit, persistence and a ‘never give up’ attitude!

This community is helping tremendously with that.

This might sound weird, but I like the humorous art memes on IG and enjoy remixing them with my art.

@Asyas_illos thank you!

I am a longtime member of SCBWI. Get to know your local chapter, volunteering at events is always fun. You meet people, make local friends that you can team together with for critiques or cheering up, and have the perks of often getting to chat with the faculty. In the beginning I did a lot of the webinars, because they are affordable and got a lot of the agent and editor critiques. I found those really helpful in figuring out how I was doing and which way to develop my work. They also have free webinar series, that come in between the big conferences. So keep an eye out for those. If you are getting ready to query, check out the Handbook. It is updated multiple times a year, and has great advice, best practices, agencies, and publishers listed.
Make sure you are getting your regional emails, to know whats happening in your area, and if you are close to an edge of a region, you could see what the neighboring region is doing too.

@AngelinaKizz Glad you can see it now! But yeah that is weird 🤔 Thanks for the heads up!

@Griffin-McPherson I didn't have formal design qualifications but I did work in the industry for a while as a studio manager in a web design agency, so was familiar with the processes and industry terms as I often helped with Quality Control though I wasn't hands on with the software. I enjoyed the initial design process more when you are breaking down the user's requirements into task flows and logic than the actual red button vs green button, outline or no outline, rounded corner vs not. Hahaha.

If you want to try your hand on UI/UX design, you can learn Figma. Its free tier is good enough for most and is quickly becoming an industry standard. There are also tons of comprehensive tutorials on skillshare and youtube.

@Lee-White wow... I never thought of it that way. Thanks Lee. You're always so encouraging. Us rabbits are all very lucky to have mentors like you!

@allevolz You could do darkened silhouettes of the happy family! It's a poetic way to showcase something that is not quite tangible yet.

@Geoffrey-Mégardon your question led me down this rabbit hole and I think I will still mix up all the different terms used to refer to different combinations of nations that are part of the British Isles. Ugh. Hahaha.
https://www.infoplease.com/geography/difference-between-uk-great-britain-england

@Griffin-McPherson I like the very faded lines!

@Shelley-James-0 awe man, I'm so sorry. If you need an ear to vent to, or have broken dominant hand questions, feel free to reach out. I'd be happy to send you my number and we can whatsapp. No one really understood what I was going through, and the struggle of it being my dominant hand and not being able to do what I love. So I'm here, with an empathetic ear if you need it.