Fábio Moon and Gabriel Bá's blog

Portfolio review lines

Nowadays, I find myself looking over other people's artwork when I go to conventions here in Brazil, reviewing and giving advises, but it wasn't that long ago that I stood in line in one of those portfolio reviews you'll find in many big conventions.

Those lines are creepy. You'll see that the guy sitting next to you is a flat out copy of Jim Lee, only that he would be a drunk and blind Jim Lee, and the other one just came out of school and is actually showing drawings he did in his school notebook, right in between the notes from his last class. Suddenly you flatter yourself thinking it's going to be easy to impress the editor whose line you took, and you're probably right, but something I learned in portfolio review lines is that, no matter how good you are, they're probably not going to hire you right away. They'll say your stuff is great, they'll give you a card and they'll tell you to keep sending them stuff.

The only time someone offered me a job in a portfolio review line, the "reviewer" was in fact some lame guy who sat in the Dark Horse table while the Dark Horse editor hadn't arrived so people thought he was the Dark Horse editor. He saw a lot of people's pages, loved the stuff my brother and I had to show, and offered us some work on "religious super heroes". Then he gave us his card and we realized - as many who were also at the line - that he didn't work at Dark Horse.

We had to get in line again when the Dark Horse editor finally appeared.