M.S.: Does having a really fancy portfolio or graphically well-designed resumé make any difference?

R.L.: No, not to me. This is where if you had a panel of recruiters such as Frank Gladstone from DreamWorks, who’s wonderful, or Tiffany from Disney, or Jay Francis from Film Roman, or anybody else, we would all have our own thing to say. Although there are aspects of a portfolio that pretty much every studio wants to see (for instance, everyone likes to see life drawing skills). However, because we are all different studios artistically, we look for different strengths in portfolios. For me, I could care less about a graphic design on a resumé, or how beautiful the portfolio case is.

For the resumé, the most important aspect is, is it easy to read? Does it tell me clearly where, when and in what capacity you worked? Also, a lot of companies scan in resumés. For every resumé we get, we manually import all the information that we need and put that person into a database. I have heard other recruiters say, “Please just give me plain white paper,” because if it’s textured paper or if these are tons of fonts with bolding and all this fancy stuff, especially if there is a graphic, it won’t scan.

The Wild Thornberry’s Movie. Courtesy of Paramount/Nickelodeon.

So the most important thing with a resumé is clarity. Is it easy to read? Is it clear where you worked? What did you do, and when did you do it? With a portfolio it’s very funny, sometimes we get people that bring in absolutely outrageously fancy big gigantic hand-painted boxes. Even though I understand that the artist’s intent was to make the portfolio stand out, we look at every portfolio that comes in here anyway. We’re not judging whether or not we’re going to open up a portfolio by the looks of it. Some of the best portfolios I’ve seen look like they’re about to fall apart.

However, when I open them up they’re well put together with all their life drawings together, and they’re focused on how they’re marketing themselves to the studio — that makes a difference. For instance, if I open up a portfolio and I see life drawings and amazing characters with turnarounds and expressions, I know that this person wants to do character design and is very focused. On the other hand, if I open up a portfolio and see a little sketch of a character here, and the next page is a life drawing, and the next page is a BG, and the next page is something that looks like it belongs in a comic book, then I’m thinking, “What does this person want to do?”

I always tell artists, specifically students just starting out who don’t really have the professional experience, that there are a lot of very experienced professionals on the street right now, and you don’t have the luxury of just being able to present yourself as an all-around-artist. You have to present yourself as a character designer, or a storyboard artist or a BG designer. Otherwise, there is just no way to compete with the other portfolios that we see.

M.S.: When you’re looking at reels that people include with their portfolio, do you prefer to see pencil tests or a finished project?

R.L.: To be completely honest, and I can pretty much say this is universal for the other studios as well, we really don’t look at reels unless the portfolio blows us away. I simply don’t have the time. Of course I’m talking about 2D artists, obviously, not 3D. For 3D of course the reel is the piece to look at. For 2D artists I will only look at their reel if their book blows me away. I just do not have time to look at every single reel. If I see a portfolio that is really good and I do watch the reel, pencil tests are always nice to see — but you don’t need four minutes of pencil tests!

By the way, put your best work first on your reel. You have got to sell yourself in the first 30 seconds, because if it isn’t there in the first 30 seconds, nobody is going to see it. So put your very best stuff up front on that reel, to really pow — this is my best work. Also, don’t worry about the audio; nobody really listens to the cool, funky techno music that is playing in the background. We turn the audio down. We don’t care about your audio ability or your taste in music. We’re looking at you as an animator and what you can bring animation-wise.