Need advice on what to put on my portfolio website! Pretty please?
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Hi Jackie! I love your style, clean and fun, looks very suitable for children books. If that is your intended market, there are a few pieces I would leave out. There seem to be a lot of what look like landscape studies and still life - I would reduce that to your very favorite pieces and leave most of them out (or add something happening in them). My favorite pieces in your portfolio at the moment are the girl balancing on the tree trunk, the astronaut, the girl reading, the girl with the jumping device, and the girl with the teddy bear. I am not a big fan of the illustrations with the older kids and the animals in a safari-like setting - they seem to be less polished than the rest. You have a good balance of full-bleed vs vignettes and I think if you take some stuff out and do more in the direction of your strongest pieces you have a very solid portfolio.
As others have mentioned, the slide show format is not the best - you need a page with thumbnails of all your work that people can click on as your home page. The different subpages (Childreńs book, personal work, etc...) don´t make much sense at the moment - I would remove them and put everything on a single section. I would remove the pieces you have on “personal work” as they are not as polished as the rest. The “sketchbook” section is nice, but two items seem too little to merit a separate section. If you have more you could build it up, or turn it into a blog format. Hope this helps - just my two cents! -
@JackieDopp Your portfolio site looks really nice. Love the clean lay-out. I agree with @TessW about the slide show, and there are some great images in there that would look great on your children's book illustration page. To me the distinction between the children's book and the personal work page is a bit vague. Do you really need these two separate?
I personally always love to see sketches, so I would definitely keep that, but make sure to keep adding.
I love your self-portrait on your about page, but I would maybe think of changing it for a photo. I can imagine clients would prefer to have a 'real' image of the person they will be working with. Would love to hear other opinions on/ experiences with this.
Good luck! Hope this helps. -
@rcartwright Yes! I am currently going through and watching all of their videos. I've downloaded the sheet it comes with and plan on going through my work and seeing exactly what I need.
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@tessw Thank you very much! And, you know I had a feeling about that slideshow, so thank you for clearing that up. I will certainly change the layout to seeing all the illustrations in one place.
Thank you for your thoughts! It's so nice to hear some feedback on my work, as it's been almost 2 years since I graduated college!
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@dottyp Why thank you! I agree that I need to change that slideshow, but I'm really glad that you like the Mudpie illustration! It was definitely based on a memory from when I was a kid, and to this day, I do not know if I ate it or not...
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@kevin-longueil Thank you so much, Kevin! And I do indeed want to change the format to something where you can see more all at once, and I will definitely check out the video for sure; I have been meaning to watch his videos!
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@smceccarelli Yes, I do want to get into the children's book market, and I will organize and pull more pieces out. I had a feeling I was putting too much in there, and wanted some feedback on what I should take out, so thank you so much for your "two cents!" It is worth much more than that for sure.
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@renske-d Thank you so much! I wasn't really sure how to organize, since I have some subject matter that's definitely more for kids, and then a style that seems more suited for and older audience. Is that okay to have a mix between the two?
I also love seeing sketches, and flipping though sketchbook, so I want to keep my sketchbook page there, but I will organize it better and keep adding as I go.
And once I get a hold of a good camera, I'll make sure to put a nice portrait of myself there; I have been using that as a placeholder until I get a nicer shot!
Thank you so much again!
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@jackiedopp Wow love the images you've added!! And I think the changes make it much clearer now. I see what you mean with the subject matter/ age group thing. I don't mind the mix, I think it looks great as it is. I can imagine that in the future (or when adding more work) you could make two categories split to age group. But at the moment I would leave it like this. Your portfolio looks really good and proffesional! Good luck on getting it out there!
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@renske-d Ah, I'm glad that the changes are working! I think that's what I'm going to focus on right now, getting more work in my portfolio, especially more narrative pieces, since I feel I'm lacking a little in that department. Thank you so much again for the advice!
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Your portfolio is BEAUTIFUL! The only thing I can think of is possibly your process, showing what steps you take and any in progress images to show it.
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Hi Jackie! I'm a little late to this party, but I thought I would mention that Squarespace has a free app for your iPad or iPhone that will automatically sync with any galleries that you have on your Squarespace website. This allows you to have your website images on your mobile device and you can display them even if you don't have internet connection. It is called Squarespace Portfolio and it updates when you update your website galleries so there is no double handling. I just discovered this and it's been really helpful for me, so I hope it helps you too!
