As an animator, you must be accustomed to turning the stories or inspiration around you into a short animation or animated film that can entertain everyone. During your career journey, you have certainly touched the lives of many people, even though you are not always aware of this, and inspire people through your animation.
But, have you told the story about yourself?
In the midst of increasingly fierce market competition, you need to tell a story about yourself. If someone is interested in watching an animated film because of the story, then someone is interested in working with you because of your story as an animator.
One of the ways you can tell a story about yourself is by creating an animator portfolios website. With a portfolio website, you can easily upload your works in one place where you can also provide details about yourself: stories as an animator and your contact contacts.
For inspiration, let's look at some examples of animator portfolios that you can learn from.
Collection of Amazing Animator Portfolios Website
• Julie Baltzer’ Animation Portfolios
Image taken from Strikingly user’s website
• Alexandra Maranon’s Animation And Motion Graphics Portfolio Website
Image taken from Strikingly user’s website
• Daniel Gerhardt’s Animator Portfolios Website
Image taken from Strikingly user’s website
Let’s pause our search for inspiration and discuss some technical sides of making a website.
You may start to wonder: can an animator like you create a website like the websites above on your own? Isn’t making a website a job for an IT professional?
Of course! You can make an animator portfolios website on your own. You don't need a lot of IT knowledge to be able to build a website.
You can easily build your animation portfolio website by using a website builder service. You can even find free website builder services.
But you should immediately guess and know that free services will not provide many benefits. Investing in a paid website builder will help your career in the long run.
Now, you know you can make an animator portfolios website on your own by using a paid website builder service. The question now is: how to choose the right website builder company?
There are several things you can take into consideration when choosing a website builder for your animation portfolio website.
- The first is cost. Website builders generally have several schemes or plans that you can choose from. Each plan also generally comes with its own features where the more expensive a plan is, the more complete the features you get. Make sure you choose a website builder that provides a good plan with good features.
- The second thing is uptime. Simply put, uptime is the time when your website is operational and can be visited by people. This is important because no matter how good your animator portfolios website is if people can't visit it, your website will be ineffective.
- Ease of use must also be taken into consideration. The goal of using a website builder is to help you, a person who has minimal or no experience in creating a website, to create a stunning and amazing website. If the website builder you choose is too technical or too difficult to use, then you will have a hard time building your animator portfolios website.
- Another thing to note from the ease of use is customer support. This is equally important because you certainly need help when your website encounters a problem. It will help you if you can get 24/7 assistance from a website builder company.
- The last one is a collection of templates. A website builder that has an extensive collection of templates can help you find inspiration for your website design. In addition, make sure you can easily edit the template you choose to make sure you can always update your website content all the time.
Can you find a website builder that has all of the above?
Yes, you can! In fact, you don't have to go far looking for that amazing website builder because you can get it all here at Strikingly.
At Strikingly, you can have your own animator portfolios website for as little as $ 96 a year. Apart from that, Strikingly is also very friendly for users with minimal or no technical knowledge of website development. Strikingly also ensures that your website will always be accessible 24/7.
Design-wise, you can choose the template for your portfolio's website from Strikingly's extensive collection of templates. You can easily edit each template you choose to make sure you have the animator portfolios website you really want.
Let's take a look at how to build an amazing animator portfolios website using Strikingly!
How to Build an Amazing Animation Portfolios Website With Strikingly!
1. Plan Your Animator Portfolios Website
As with your process of creating an outstanding animation, you have to plan your website before you start working on it. There are at least three elements that you should prepare for your animator portfolios website: layout, color scheme, and content.
The layout of a website can determine the readability of a website. As a story that has a plot, the layout is the storyline for your animation portfolio website.
A portfolio website generally starts with a title page followed by your introduction and work, before finally ending with a contact section where people can reach you.
Of course, you can experiment with your website layout. The internet is filled with animator portfolios websites that you can use as inspiration for your website.
Color is also an important element for your website. As an animator, you understand how using a color can tell a story in itself.
The same is true in making animator portfolios websites. By using a good color combination or scheme, you can build an image or brand about yourself and your work.
As with layouts, you can freely experiment in choosing a color scheme. You can take a peek at other people's animator portfolios websites and see how they use color on their website.
Now, you've arrived at the most crucial element on your animation portfolio website: your content or work. The goal for you to create an animation portfolio website is to sell your work. Therefore, you have to make sure you prepare them well.
The first thing you should pay attention to is the focus of your work. If you are a motion graphics designer with works that are experienced in producing various types of animation, you can immediately sort your works. If you still lack experience and work, you can start making some from now on.
Why should you divide based on the focus of your work?
This is to help people understand your work better. If you display too many of your works in one place, people may miss details of your best works. Focus on what you want and can do the best.
Then what about your skills that don't appear in your anime portfolio section?
You can put your abilities that are not visible in your portfolio in the section about yourself or the section where you describe your abilities.
2. Create a Story About Yourself
As an animator, you may have often told stories about other people or your characters. Well, on your animator portfolios website you have the opportunity to tell stories about yourself.
Why do you have to do that?
As you may have noticed, there are many animators on the market. You may have abilities and work that are far above average, but there are animators who have skills and work that are more or less the same as yourself.
A story about yourself can help you add extra points to your work. You can, for example, tell you about the creative process that you go through in general in making your works that make people better understand your work.
What can you tell people about yourself?
You can start with your professional life as an animator. You can tell who you have worked with and what positions you have held in that job.
If you are a graduate of an art school, adding information about your school is certainly not a bad thing. This can increase your credibility as an animator.
You can also add a little personal story touch to your animation portfolio. Tell people what made you interested in the world of animation that made you decide to become an animator.
Sharing a passion like that can make people who are excited about your work look forward to working with you.
Finally, you can use other people to add value to your sale: reviews from people you've worked with. Reviews can really help increase your credibility because they mean you can actually do your job as an animator.
Not only that, good reviews from people can be a guarantee that the next person who will hire you will also get more or less satisfactory results like other people have.
3. Choose your Animation Portfolio Template
Now that you've prepared the content of your website, it's time to choose your portfolio website template.
Strikingly provides animator portfolios website templates that you can use to get started building your website. For example, you can check out the Perspective template from Strikingly. This template is well-designed to be able to highlight both the images and videos that you put on your animation portfolio website.
Image taken from Strikingly product
Apart from that, you can also find portfolio websites made by other Strikingly users. This can help you find inspiration when you run out of ideas when designing your animation portfolio website.
Once you have found the template that you want to use, you can start to build your animator portfolios website.
4. Create a Catchy Title Page
Image taken from Strikingly user’s website
When someone comes to your animation portfolio website, the first thing they see is the title page of your website. This makes an attractive and strong title page important because the title page can make someone interested or not in your website.
What makes a great title page?
The first is a great background image. You can use a photo of yourself or a collection of your works on the title page. Whatever you use, make sure the images you use have good resolution and quality. You can find out specifications for your images in our help center.
Apart from images, you must also have a strong tagline or slogan. This tagline or slogan can be a brief introduction of yourself. You can identify your profession or you can use a memorable quote to get people interested.
5. Tell Your Own Story
Image taken from Strikingly user’s website
Now that visitors are excited about your animation portfolio website, it's time to get them interested in your profile.
You can create an about us section and tell the story about yourself that you have prepared in advance. In this section, you can also use a picture of yourself.
If you have reviews from people you've worked with, you can post them in this section using Strikingly’s custom form.
6. Showcase Your Works
It's time to build the core part of your animation portfolio website: your collection of works.
At Strikingly, you can easily upload your work and create a gallery section where people can easily browse your work.
You can also use big media sections which can better showcase your best work. Whatever you choose, make sure you feature the best work on your animation portfolio website.
As has been said before, make sure you have a focus when choosing the works that you will upload. If you do have some focus that you want to highlight, you can create multiple pages or sections on your animation and motion graphics portfolio website.
7. Share Your Contacts
After a visitor has been impressed by your profile and your work, what do they do next?
Of course, they will contact you with the possibility of offering you new adventures in your career as an animator.
Luckily, every animation portfolio template by Strikingly has its own contact section. You just need to add your contact details to your website, and you are ready to go.
The contacts that you can share include email, phone numbers, and social media links. Make sure the contact details you use on your animation portfolio website are always up to date. You don't want to lose the opportunity because you forgot to change the contact details on your website, right?
Those are the steps you can follow to create your animation portfolio website with Strikingly.
As an animator, you know how powerful a story is. In the midst of market conditions and easy access, you increasingly need to tell a story about yourself as an animator through an animation portfolio website.
With a portfolio website, you can easily display your work while adding to the impression of yourself as a professional animator.
You don't need to worry if you don't have website-building experience. With Strikingly, you can easily build your animation portfolio website. You just have to choose a portfolio website template that has been provided by Strikingly and start building your website.
So, what are you waiting for? Create your animation portfolio website with Strikingly today and start sharing your story with the world!
