Building a professional storyboard portfolio

Last year when I was at CTN, I looked at a lot of portfolios and I showed my portfolio around to a lot of different people, both pros and students. And I heard a lot of advice from people about creating a good story portfolio, to show around. Most of the tips are generally about being considerate of the person viewing your portfolio, but isn't that really what life is about?

1. Print it, It only costs about $10.00 to get a wire bound book made at FedEx (make two)
Why? If someone likes your work they may want to keep your portfolio, I had an artist that I hold in very high regard ask to keep my portfolio so he could bring it back to the office with him and show around, If I only had an ipad portfolio I could not have done this. It feels better to turn pages rather than swipe on a screen, but go in prepared and have a portfolio DOWNLOADED (no internet needed) to your tablet just in case.

2.  Size, I printed my portfolio at 8.5x11, some people liked that size and some people wanted it one notch larger, To be safe I would recommend printing two sizes of your portfolio. that way if someone mentions that they wish it was bigger, BOOM I'm prepared bitch!

3. Include storyboards, This one sounds obvious, but you only need to have storyboards in your portfolio, and if you want to include other work, set a maximum of four pages at the end of the book for things like life drawings, comics, character design, background layout. I also paint backgrounds, but they were not in my story board,portfolio, I had a SEPARATE portfolio with just backgrounds, so if they asked if I did background I could pull out my other book and show them. I cant stress this enough If you want to be a storyboard artist you need to have a storyboards, I think the magical number might be three original stories in total.

4. Tailor the types of boards that you draw to the type of media you want to work in. The question is essentially, where do you want to work? You need a specific answer, don't say "movies". For example I want to work at Cartoon Network on a young adult television show, so all of my boards had a television feel, and they were laid out like a lot of tv boards are laid out.

5. Overview pages, At the start of a new storyboard sequence in the portfolio, it might be a good idea to have a couple of pages dedicated to having all of the boards laid out in a grid, keep them about 3 inches in width so they don't have to struggle to look at them. But then also have a page by page of the storyboards as if they were being used in production. This way whoever is viewing your portfolio has the option to see a project as a whole, and if they like it they can get into the nitty gritty of each panel.

6. Put tabs in your portfolio, like bookmarks, Fed Ex includes these in their book printing, but the tab pages are going to be blank, don't have blank pages, tape some drawings to the blank page or something.

7. This one is important, be prepared to pitch the boards. They may very informally ask you what the story is about, and instead of mumbling, "oh its a guy, and huh he is uh you know..." have an exciting pitch to give them about why your story is awesome!

Theres so much more to say on this topic, and maybe you disagree with what I think, so let me know in the comments!