Anyone who is serious about drawing cartoons professionally needs to assemble a portfolio of their work. A portfolio is just a collection of your best work that you can present to potential employers, allowing them to quickly and easily see just how talented you are!

In this How-To, we'll walk through the basic steps of putting together a simple portfolio. We won't be covering the actual process of drawing cartoons as this How-To assumes that you're already somewhat of an artist. But, if you're interested, you can always check out other Mahalo How-To's like How to Draw Manga and some How to Draw Videos.

You might be wondering what materials you'll need in order to put together a cartoon portfolio. Well, it depends! If you're a more traditional paper-and-ink person, you'll need your original drawings and access to a scanner and/or photocopier. You'll also need some kind of presentation portfolio or refillable binder.

If you're more of a computer animation person or just techno-savvy (i.e. your finished work is in something like Adobe Illustrator or Flash) you will probably want to invest in recordable media, like CDs or DVDs, or else in large-capacity removable storage drives.

Remember, each employer will want to see examples of your excellent cartoon work - but your portfolio should also be flexible. This reflects your own flexibility as a cartoonist, but it will also allow you to tailor the portfolio that you bring along to exhibit your drawings. For example, if Marvel-type comics are your thing, you might want a portfolio that demonstrates your flexibility and creativity just within that style. If you lean more towards Far Side and Close to Home type humor, then you won't want to put any superhero adventures in your portfolio. Bottom line: always research the employer and make your best guess as to what they're looking for if they don't tell you explicitly.

So, you think you're pretty good at drawing cartoons. You have your style down, and maybe you even started writing a comic book storyline of your own. Or, you've come up with a good stockpile of one-panel or multi-panel joke strips, in the lines of Far Side or Doonesbury. Either way, you're ready to start hitting the job market.

First thing's first - you need to select your best drawings. Think about the style of work you're interested in pursuing and which drawings best represent both (a) that field, and (b) your own contribution.

It's usually encouraged to select several "best of" drawings for your portfolio. The more range you can display, the better. But again, we're assuming you basically have narrowed down your chosen style of cartooning. Even so, try to flex as much muscle as you can in that style; balance out the action scenes with backgrounds and landscapes, or reduced-action scenes.

In most cases, you should select six to a dozen pieces to bring along.

If you're using pen/pencil and ink, make high-quality photocopies of your originals. It's recommended that you scale them to fit on a typical 8.5 x 11 inch piece of copy paper. This should be assembled in some kind of presentation portfolio. http://www.ehow.com/how_4883361_put-together-cartoon-portfolio.html

You might also think about being more creative and using a large portfolio case to transport your drawings if you mount them on larger pieces of posterboard, or some other material.

If you're submitting computer-based work, make sure you obtain recordable media or external/USB drives that can hold all of your files. If you're using programs to illustrate you work, you might consider printing out high-resolution copies and assembling them in a portfolio binder, as above. You can keep the files with you on a jump-drive or similar device just in case you need a backup.

If you're doing animated work, then burning it onto a CD or DVD is a good option. Just make sure you bring your laptop along! (You might want to call ahead and make sure the equipment you need will be available. If not, bring your own!)

So, you have everything you need. Now, how to put it together?

If you're going with presentation portfolios then you can just slip your copies into the plastic protectors that come with the binder.

Alternatively, if you noticed what Bill did in the video above, you could try affixing your drawings to black backgrounds of posterboard or something similar. You can go through these individually by 'shuffling' and discussing them in turn.