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Illustration portfolio advice

Your digital portfolio is the perfect opportunity to exhibit your best work, and show us exactly why you're suited to study BA (Hons) Illustration at Nottingham Trent University (NTU).

 
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Get some top tips for your portfolio

Work by Kai Wong

Everything you need to know

Submitting your portfolio for consideration to the Illustration course is an opportunity for you to showcase your skills, personality, and potential.

It should be a collection of your work that demonstrates how you and your creativity has developed.

We've pulled together some useful advice to give you tips on what to consider and what we're looking for in your submission.

We understand that your digital portfolio will be unique to you, but we require you to include the following elements:

  • 15 slides/pages showing us your work.
  • In addition to the digital portfolio, please submit a piece of writing you have completed recently - max 500 words.
  • The digital portfolio can also include sketchbook work, where relevant and appropriate.

What you should consider

  • Work from your Art and Design Foundation Diploma, BTEC Extended Diploma, HND course or A-level and personal work is what we want to see.
  • We want to see a combination of course and personal work that best demonstrates your artistic skills in expressing ideas.
  • A mixture of digital, analogue and 2D/ 3D work should be included in your digital portfolio where relevant.
  • Be selective, showcasing the pieces of work that you feel best reflect your interests, skills and strengths.
  • The work could include design, photography, life drawing, mixed media work and digital outputs.

Your focus may vary depending on your interests – film, animation, illustration, graphic design and photography. Please select work that you feel demonstrates your creative potential and passion and shows us who you are and what you are interested in.

We’d love to see evidence of your working process. The best way for you to showcase this is by collaging photographs of your sketchbook pages or other outputs that show ideas development. Choose pages/ work that best gives us an insight into your design process/ thinking process.

One of the most important things to remember whilst preparing your portfolio is to fill it with passion and rigour, demonstrating your potential to be successful on the course you are applying for.

What are we looking for?

Personal project work and school or college work that demonstrates:

  • Good presentation and the ability to visualise ideas
  • Good development skills – this could be your sketchbooks
  • A willingness to experiment in a range of visual media
  • A range of visual concepts that evidence innovative thinking
  • The ability to handle a variety of technologies, materials and processes
  • Good observational drawing skills.

Submitting your portfolio

  • If you are submitting your portfolio via Google Docs or Google Drive, you must make sure the link is publicly available to view to avoid any delays with your application. Alternatively, if you would prefer to password protect your work, you must clearly send us this password so our team can access your work.
  • If you are concerned about using an alternative method to send us your portfolio, you can always use our NTU Upload Portal upon application.
  • Your digital portfolio can be submitted as a PDF or PowerPoint format (ideally no more than 15 pages/slides)
  • Please submit any short films and any other moving image work you wish to include as either an additional single MP4 (10mb) file or by embedding the weblink in your portfolio pages (e.g. Vimeo/YouTube/Cloud Drives etc.)
  • When embedding links please ensure that you have made these viewable to us
  • The digital portfolio will need to be submitted as a single unzipped file not exceeding 10mb
  • The piece of writing can be submitted as a separate file from the digital portfolio.

Can I submit my work as single files like JPEGS or PNGs?

No, work must be arranged in presentation software so we can see it in the same order you would show us as if you were presenting it yourself.

How do I show moving image work like animation?

Embed the video file into your presentation software. If an online file, embed the link into the presentation.

Contact Ask NTU if you have any questions or if there's anything you'd like to discuss.

Alternatively, you can contact our Admissions team on +44 (0)115 848 4200.