STA Blog

Adrian McKee

Adrian McKee

Week LX

By

Week LX

Top secret!

I’ve gotten approval to share this, but the actual purpose is still classified. All that needs to be said is that it’s a studio backdrop. This is my first time making an animated one, so I finally understand what keyframes are.

There’ll be a few more versions coming up, and you’ll see them all soon, I think?

TGDP Banner 5

Initially, I was trying to draft this in Photoshop, with placeholder blobs of text. That didn’t really work. The format here is pretty particular, with the length and hierarchy of various text blocks. This is where I got with actually making a vector draft:

Some stuff could still be fine-tuned… especially the image layout. This was really just my best attempt to fit the text and images at all, without considering eye flow too much. There’s probably a better way to structure it, though the volume and assymetry of material leaves not that much wiggle room.

Week LIX

By

Week LIX

Save the DATE!

Earlier in the week, I settled on this general layout (with MUCH feedback from Leilani) and tried out a splayed stack graphic.

Maddy commented that it looked more like a movie ticket, or at least not specifically ‘sporty’ enough, so I added some more flairs like a ribbon banner and an art deco font.

Ultimately, there will only be one final product, and two other STAs are working on it, so I’m not sure how directly any of this will be used, but I have plenty of iterations and material to go into it.

I also worked on a second graphic for the STA presentation, which is…

TOP SECRET!!!

(I could probably get away with posting it on my blog, especially since we haven’t started meetings yet, but hey, where’s the fun in that?)

TGDP Banner 4

There was a communication hiccup here (mostly on me), but we’re finally at the tail end of this one, just awaiting final approval. I had somehow duplicated an entire paragraph in the last draft you saw here.

STA Trainings Planning

This was a big thing this week, but sadly without any fun graphics to break up the text.

Valerie, Maddy and I have met twice now about how to better handle STA trainings. Some issues that have come up are:

  • Trainings not being approved properly before they’re checked off
  • STAs spending too much time on trainings (especially due to photo IDs not existing as a “filler” task anymore)
  • Trainings can be dubiously relevant/redundant, depending on prior skills
  • Training spreadsheet isn’t up-to-date

As for solutions, we’re working on streamlining it and having Valerie or me approve and more directly oversee (10 minute in person feedback) all trainings going forward, as well as writing up rubrics for scoring trainings, but it’s all still in the draft phase.

Week LVIII

By

Week LVIII

This week, settling back in, was a lot of small stuff. I helped onboard a new STA, gave a tour, and troubleshooted my Box issues in terminal, between tiny course graphics edits and exports for old projects. Coming up for the spring, I have 2 big things.

Save the DATE!

Project: Course Graphics – 2023 STA Presentation
Client /Prof: LAITS
completion status: WIP
staff guidance: Maddy K
STA team members: Leilani, Louisa, et al
description/plans: TBA
To be completed: TBA

So, we have our first official STA presentation since… 2019? The theme is sports, and I’ll be in charge of a lot of prep and graphics, but for starters I’m just drafting a promotional ticket stub. Most of the text isn’t done yet, but I spent a lot of time getting the shape perfect.

Basic Training: Create your own 8-bit Animated GIF

With most of our After Effects human capital departed, I’ve been suggested to start some animation trainings. This one was short and simple, and I’ve done similar stuff before.

Something that did come up was our organization system for STA trainings, and the forgotten training spreadsheet… Valerie, Maddy and I are meeting this week to draft up some better organization systems.

Intermediate Training: Animate Simple Course Graphics

This is where the actual Ae skills come in. I haven’t gotten past the drafting stage, with Save the DATE! taking precedence, but my idea is making an intro for Introduction to Greek Archaeology, one of my favorite electives I’ve taken at UT.

Week LVI

By

Weeks LIV-LVII

Oops, it’s been a little bit. I started drafting this blog post over winter break, and left it unfinished, so consider it my winter break summary.

GOV 312L US National Security

For the final version of this, we ended up with a purpleish-grey. The studio backdrop is actually sepia, but it shows up as purple-grey, and the rest of the graphics are sampled from that.

Texas Legislative Internship Seminar Asset Updates

This was just updating the dates for event promotional material. Some of the PSDs were missing, so I had to recreate them.

TGDP Banner 4

Finally working on number 4 – this is how the current draft is looking, awaiting feedback. The info is simple enough to lay out, 2 sections of text with a brief intro.

Schusterman Center for Jewish Studies banner

I get no credit for the circle logo, I believe that was Sheryl? But the department wanted an updated banner incorporating it, so this is what I’ve got for that. We’re leaning more on the bolder text. As of writing, I was just having fun exporting 16 different formats.

AFR 320

This course had pre-existing slideshows with black Arial on white, and wanted light on dark. I ended up going with a warm sepia-grey and an off-white, for the vintage look. Originally I wanted a slab serif font too, but that was too ambitious. I still learned quite a bit about Texas history from skimming these slides as I worked.

 

Week LIII

By

Week LIII

GOV 312L US National Security

I’ll keep it short. Just mostly worked on this.

Working with a request for red and green highlights, my first attempt was a little more archival/sepia.

We ended up going for a more “breaking news” look with red/green gradients.

However, as of writing it looks like I’ll need to rework these a bit. Wish me luck!

Week LII

By

Week LII

GOV 312L US National Security

Most of what I did with this last week was getting a liiiiittle carried away with some stylized Canvas banners of a newspaper and… an old TV news reel?

It turns out the professor wants something more contemporary in terms of photo subjects, and presumably style, so I’ll be updating the studio backdrops and thinking of new Canvas graphics.

Tech STA Poster

This took priority on Thurs/Fri, let it be noted that I was only cutting out the student photos and putting them in. ALL CREDIT FOR ACTUAL POSTER DESIGN GOES TO LEILANI