Hiya! been following your art since all the Wheatley stuff, and just want to say you're a huge inspiration <3
You probably get asked stuff like this a lot... but do you have any tips for an aspiring story artist looking to break into the industry? (For context, I'm a college senior majoring in art... fine art, though, so I've been teaching myself animation and character design and whatnot on the side because my uni doesn't offer any animation classes... long story). Also, do you have a sense of how employers (like Sony) feel about getting portfolios with fanart in them? Or have you ever put fanart in your own portfolio or reel, and if so, how has that been received? If you don't mind sharing, that is... I only ask because most of the story-focused art I've done so far is fanart, and I want to know if that's okay or if I should shift my focus more to original stuff for the future. Thanks!
Take care, and keep up the amazing work! love what you did on kpop!!!
hi, thanks so much!
I'm afraid this is a little hard to answer because hiring for animation is pretty different from hiring for story and I don't want to steer you in the wrong direction ^^; particularly for sony, story is done down in the LA studio and I work up in Vancouver so it's very separated from the production work that I'm familiar with.
I think I saw some advice one time saying that it's better to work with pre-existing characters for your story portfolio work because it shows that you know how to efficiently shorthand a char, and also it allows you to focus on story and not worry about character design. No matter the area you want to get into, the people hiring you always want to know that you can work within the style of the thing you'll be working on so I personally feel like fanart is a good way to display that you can work with different styles. I'm sure not everybody sees it this way though, so I would still aim to include some original work too.
I know I have some story folks following me so please feel free to reply or reblog if I'm off base with this!
