Stephanie Feng

In this series, I am creating a visual development portfolio that could be turned into a game, movie or TV show. I want to enter animation once I graduate and these types of media are the most common format in the industry. During brainstorming, I looked at the portfolios of people who are already in the industry like Jonathan Hsu, Rebecca Shieh and Zac Retz for inspiration of what I should include in my portfolio. I noticed that the art they showed included a lot of background painting and environments, something that I could work on.

Before this portfolio, I was drawing mostly fanart of characters from whichever media I was consuming at the time because it was what I found fun and it eventually became a “comfort zone” for me. To create a visual development portfolio, I had to utilize more of my own ideas to create something original. Towards the beginning of my portfolio, I was doing what I was more comfortable with: characters and character focused pieces. This was a “preliminary” stage, since I would need the designs for future pieces in the portfolio. As I continued to build my portfolio, I experimented with different ways to complete a piece, diverging from using lines with minimal shading to digital painting with many different textures. Overall, I think this portfolio was a good way for me to strengthen my skills as an artist by making me explore different techniques and processes.