What is a Portfolio Review?
This is a modified excerpt from a book I’m working on called The Business of Freelance Comic Book Publishing. It is designed to help you understand the structure and purpose of professional portfolio reviews. While this can’t be taken as legal or financial advice, it can help reduce the stress of having your work criticized in a professional context.
A portfolio review is a professional analysis of samples of your comic book work. Many comic conventions (cons) have time set aside for this type of evaluation. Artists, editors, and publishers use this process as a way to discover and develop talent. Building a portfolio is a story for another time, but there are seven important things to remember in a portfolio review:
The point here is not to stroke your ego, hire you on the spot, or even to encourage your career in comics. The main goal of a portfolio review is to identify the weaknesses in your craft and what might prevent you from finding work. Many prominent FCC have horror stories about the brutal nature of portfolio reviews that ultimately improved their work and their careers.
Most of the time, the person conducting the review has dozens (if not hundreds) of people they have to evaluate in a very short period of time. This means they probably will not have time to hold your hand and walk you through each flaw they find in your technique. The interaction may be very brief, so don’t be offended if they spend five minutes tearing down work that you spent five months putting together.
You might have to have your portfolio reviewed multiple times by the same editor over several cons over several years before they think you’re ready to work for their publisher. This is a part of building the marketing relationship, so don’t expect an immediate offer at the review table.
The reviewers are people who are ultimately providing a service to you by offering their professional opinion of your work. While you might not agree with their evaluation, understand that their perspective is subjective without being defensive or belligerent, even if they are less than polite. It will be more difficult to find work when you start verbally attacking your potential employers.
Portfolio reviews are essentially auditions, but the goal isn’t instant recognition or flattery. You are trying to build relationships with people who can enhance your business over the long term.
If you have done work for clients and you want to include that work in your portfolio, make sure that you have those rights clearly stated in your contract to avoid any claims of copyright infringement, breach of contract, or breach of confidentiality claims.
If you can’t make it to a convention portfolio review, you could submit your portfolio directly to publishers online. The benefit of this is that you can submit to multiple publishers at very low cost. The downside is that you might never get any response to your submission, even after multiple tries.
Have fun with your comic.
Gamal
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If you have questions about the business or legal aspects of your comic book publishing and you'd like a free consultation, please contact me and we can set something up that fits in with your schedule.
PLEASE NOTE: THIS BLOG POST IS NOT A SUBSTITUTE FOR LEGAL ADVICE. IF YOU HAVE AN ISSUE WITH YOUR COMIC PROPERTY, DISCUSS IT WITH A QUALIFIED CONTRACT ATTORNEY OR CONTACT C3 FOR A FREE CONSULTATION