We stopped in at the Lucasfilm Licensing portfolio review panel, thinking it might be interesting to hear what they had to say, and that Littlestar could get some pointers.
As it happens, she didn't stick around to.
Troy Alders, Art Director for Lucasfilm Licensing did a bit of Q&A at the beginning*. Before he started on that, he directed everyone to his brand-new article on starwars.com, which contains a lot of the information he finds himself giving over and over again to people whose portfolios he reviews.
Some notables from the Q&A:
Q. What's the first thing you look at when you look at someone's work?
A. What they're looking for always changes. A lot of the time, people are looking for work in concept art, in films.That's not what he does. A lot of this is in the new article -- something unique, fresh, different -- depending on what else is happening out in the world at that time.
Q. What are examples of printed pieces your division produces? What do you make?
A. Most advertising they don't do. Instead, they provide the artwork that licensees might use in advertising. Internally, they produce a style guide. Their goal is to put together a program that represents the brand, that everyone can use and that hangs together nicely.
Q. And you're just giving them artwork, then?
A. Pretty much -- all the stuff we consumers see, merchandising, t-shirts and so on, is based on their artwork and style guides.
Q. What did you think of the artwork on Clone Wars?
A. "Oh, I love that." "It's like Star Wars meets Gendy Tartakovsky."
Q. Are you located at the presidio now?
A. Yes.
Q. Are you looking for freelancers, or mostly in-house?
A. Freelancers. Troy also added that he's not searching right now for a lot of artists, but he likes to do this kind of review because he usually finds a few people each time. He needs people who understand what they're doing -- who understand the myth. He feels the cons are a good place to look for this, rather than recruiting out of art school.
That ended the Q&A, and initiated the mad rush to line up for portfolio review. We decided it wasn't worth the wait and headed out.
*I originally had this bit in there: ...left his energy somewhere else today, and that imparted an odd silence to the room. In retrospect, I think this sounds harsher than I meant it to. See the discussion below for more. I really appreciate Troy's showing up at WonderCon, as, I'm sure, do the people who took him up on his generous offer of reviewing their portfolios. Some day, I'd love to actually hear a full-fledged panel about the process of putting together a licensing style guide / bible for a major property.
Ported comments:
Left my energy somewhere else?
(Anonymous)
2006-02-24 05:04 pm UTC
I saw you leave and wondered why?
Re: Left my energy somewhere else?
parakkum
2006-02-24 07:31 pm UTC
Assuming I'm responding to Troy here -- we were just curious about what Lucasfilm Licensing's work comprised, and if you'd have anything interesting to say about your specific needs in portfolios. As it happens, no one in our group actually wanted to do a portfolio review as such (one person would have been interested in informally showing you some work, but not waiting in that long a line for it), so once the session moved on from the Q&A, we were done.
As for the energy remark, you (assuming again here) were very quiet and seemed not to really know what to do with yourself. I was a little surprised at that, given that you must speak to prospective artists all the time -- enough that you had a stock set of answers to give in the starwars.com article. One approach that might be helpful would be to give a quick, one-minute summary of exactly what Lucasfilm Licensing does, refer people to the article for general portfolio review notes, then ask for a few questions specific to working in your section.
I said, "left [your] energy somewhere else" because I assume you're normally a lot more enthusiastic and oriented. It just felt like you were maybe having an off day -- even more so having read your (very interesting) article on starwars.com. I still appreciated your showing up and spending your time at WonderCon.
parakkum
2006-02-24 07:44 pm UTC
Also, as Littlestar reminded me, you were there just because, and not to fill a specific need at LL, so it's understandable that you weren't brimming with enthusiasm.
I'll go up and edit a little.