I never drew but would like to learn.
My goal is to make a kickass portfolio.
So good that people contact me to make artwork for them.
How do I best go about it?

Oh boy, this is gonna be tough...

What I'd suggest you to do is to try drawing at least three hours a day and see if it's something for you, for a month or two. If drawing isn't fun for you, this won't work out and you do need those 10000 hours, no way around 'em. If you tried that, feel free to come back and open a sketchbook where you share your results!

Best wishes!

Few basic tips...



Absolutely NO fanart in your portfolio. This shows you aren't creative enough to make your own work, among a slew of other issues.

Best work first and last. Start off strong, and end on a high note. Put your less impressive stuff in the middle, with a couple of your better pieces evenly spaced throughout. Make the viewer want to go through the whole thing.

Try to keep a general theme to your portfolio. If you want background jobs, keep your portfolio centered around that. Don't throw random portraits and character sketches in the mix.

Try to have a good mix of different stages of work. I like to have a couple pieces with "stages" to show perspective employers workflow and how you problem solve. For example, a sketch, lined work, basic colour blocking, then the finished piece.

DO NOT overfill your portfolio/demo reel. Employers have to go through A TON of portfolios. Make it easy to navigate and possible to flick through in 1-2 minutes AT MOST. They want a taste of your skills, not your artistic lifestory.

[Ambiguity]

Portfolio for what? Animation? Illustration? Concept art? And what specifically, there are multiple jobs in each of those.

Im the same person, forgot my password, so this is my new account.

So, yeah, I want to do animation-illustration-concepts. Thats exactly it.

I just want to make a kickass-portfolio, so that people contact me and want me to do stuff for them, so they pay me.
Its not about a "job".

I would maybe set your goal to getting into animation, illustration, or concept art, these are three different fields of work and the portfolios need to display different skills that pertain to the specific job within the specific field. While working to that goal you then build a portfolio from the art you make. If you set out to make a "kickass-porfolio" you'll only learn how to make a portfolio and not how to actually work in one of those careers.

Also you have to put yourself out there to get contacted by people. People will not come to you, you have to go to them.

[Ambiguity]

Every art director I've ever heard speak on the matter of portfolios has said they do not want to see every single thing that you can do, they only want to see the thing you are really passionate about in your portfolio. You can always branch out later, but it's really best to focus on one thing at a time, or make separate portfolios for each thing. Illustrations have no business in an animation portfolio, and animations have no business in a environmental concept art portfolio. Even putting the business perspective aside, focusing on one specific type project for you to apply your fundamental practices towards will help you grow faster than being distracted by a bunch of things at once imo.

If you want to get started learning fundamentals, Sycra's resources tab at http://www.sycra.net/ is pretty good, and there is also this thread with more: viewtopic.php?f=5&t=42 . Keep in mind these are just the basics though, it's up to you to start applying them to personal projects so you have something to show prospective clients, which is why you need to actually choose something specific to make a portfolio, "good at drawing" is not good enough.

Okay, thanks for the advices, that sounds very knowledgable and experienced.
One additional question though:
How much money did everyone of you make with your art/ or what jobs did you get with your art and strategies?

Between my two work contracts at an animation studio and a little bit of freelance, about 100k CAD in the last 2 years (when I first started making money doing art). Doing art professionally can be really rewarding, but also pretty tedious and boring at times.

never are you lying you made a hundred thousand
i looked at your deviantart everything is skewed
no way that somebody paid you for that

I don't know what that's suppose to mean, but yes. Working at a professional studio with 350 people you make decent money, no need to be scurrilous because you don't like my personal style. You don't get paid to do your personal work, you get paid to make art that fits a set of keys which you refer to for style.

I'm so confused, shouldn't you just be happy he made that much with his skills. If he really is as bad as you seem to believe, shouldn't you be happy it is easier to work in art than you thought? Isn't that a good thing?

Also, I'm starting to doubt if you actually have any serious intentions of actually getting a good portfolio. All this time you have spent asking the same questions over and over again are better used improvimg your art skills.

Also, I just converted CAD to £. 50k is around £28k. Which, while great, is only a few k above average over here. It doesn't even sound close to impossible.

Snake: congratulations on the 100k! Can't wait to get even close to that myself.

Edit: just checked. Snake's salery is literally the average salary in the UK. It really doesn't seem strange to me.

[Ambiguity]

never are you lying you made a hundred thousand
i looked at your deviantart everything is skewed
no way that somebody paid you for that

You see this thing? Yeah, let's not do this thing again, alright? This is a warning in case that was too vague.

oh no snakebreath i am sorry it was not meant in a mean way
i just thought that some picture was skewed but maybe it wasnt
i am just a beginner and maybe my eyes have to improve more
100k is so freakn much in my eyes you are rich and i hope you will make
a million dollar with your art because you are a very dedicated artist

1+ Plumbum,

Pretty basic salary, everyone in the studio makes the same amount except for Supervisors, Story board artists, and Art directors. Animation studios are starting to move towards salaries as it's more "fair" to everyone. What they use to do was pay you by the background, or key if your animating. This is good if your fast, as it lets you make a lot of money, but it has some downsides (people overwork themselves to make extra money, or just make enough to live if they're slower), it also motivates people to be too fast at times, and their quality of work suffers.

Overall, it's not hard to break into the industry, you just need to be lucky enough to live in a city with studios, or be willing to move around for work. They always need people and are willing to let you learn if you have the basic skills to do the work. (For example, my current Supervisor was an Art director at Ubisoft, the one studio he worked at had 3500 employees, they were always looking to hire new people, and very rarely laid anyone off). Above all else you need to be a likable person. You can be Picasso reincarnated, if you're an asshole no one will want to work with you, and you won't last long.

Thank you so much SnakeBreath! We have been thinking about moving to Canada after brexit. The industry sounds way better than I thought. If it is okay that I ask: where in Canada do you work? Are there big mosquitos where you live? That's probably the one thing keeping us for living there! Well, other than my lack of skills (working on it though!).

Also, I'm curious. Is the studio you are working in 3d or 2d animation?

Currently working in my hometown of Halifax (Nova Scotia). The main industries here are Halifax, Montreal, Vancouver and Toronto. Halifax is the smaller (city size) of them all, and the weather is probably the closest to the UK in all of Canada. Pretty mild Summers, and the winters are a lot lighter than most of Canada. There's a lot of work here because the government gives studios a tax credit so they can be competitive with third world countries. So every dollar spent the government matches. Also the mosquitoes are pretty mild in Atlantic Canada, not sure about the rest though!

This studio (Copernicus Studios) is mainly 2D, but the show we are currently working on does utilize some 3D for the vehicles that the characters drive. (Though there's the odd occasion the render is wrong/low resolution and we have to fix it in Photoshop). But there's a good mix of 3D studios here as well.

This is so valuable information! Thank you so much Snakebreath. Canada has some pretty easy immigration requirements as long as you get a job over there first. I'll definitely look into it as we near brexit. Crossing fingers for it not ending horribly though.

I personally love 2d animation a lot more than 3d, so pretty happy that Canada seems to bringing it back!

Also, we cannot thank you more for this valuable information you have given!

No worries, I know my studio personally helps with the visa application, and I've heard others do as well. We get a lot of foreign workers here as there just isn't enough people here capable of doing the work. I've been told it's a pretty easy process