Basic Training: After Effects

Today I started working on the After Effects training. It’s my first time using this program (and my first time doing any animating at all) so I’m excited to experiment and learn some new skills.

I’m thinking of animating this updated version of the banner for my pixel art tutorial, because why not combine two projects? Here is what the new version is looking like, pre-animation:

And here’s a rough storyboard + my color scheme:

 

Pixel Art Tutorial

I’m also close to finishing my pixel art tutorial! I’ve updated a lot of the screenshots, and now I’m waiting on feedback before I finally publish it. (I also switched out my image for a photo of my dog, which I think works better with the pixel art aesthetic)

Some screenshots:

I forgot to update my blog last week, but here’s what I’ve been up to! Mainly I’ve been working on finishing the draft of my Illustrator tutorial (below) and giving feedback on Canvasser games on Basecamp. People are starting to finish their games also which is nice! The feedback has been helping me a lot to improve the tutorial overall

 

I also attended the fall STA showcase, and even though I didn’t present, it was so fun to see projects that other STAs have been working on in or outside of the STA Program. Thuy’s classical composer collages and Miguel’s pavilion design were both incredible, but all the presentations were really great! Also got to see my roster poster in use, so that was fun lol.

Pixel Art Tutorial

This week I’ve made a little bit of progress on my pixel art tutorial. I’m learning that’s it’s actually pretty simple to use grids in Illustrator to “pixelate” an image (or get a pixel-like effect), I’m also trying to include Illustrator tips so that the tutorial is useful outside of

For the tutorial I’m thinking people can pick a famous work of art (something in the public domain) or a photo and transform it into pixel art. I’m experimenting with Van Gogh’s painting The Bedroom to see how this technique can be applied, since there are many methods you could use–there’s no one method.

Wrapping up CLIO Training

Here is what my final CLIO site is looking like! This week I changed the aesthetic a little bit and added a few new things: a table, some new headers with images, I embedded a new font (Montserrat), plus I added a button on the last page that takes you to my Canvasser game.

Other than that I’ve started drafting a new basic training that will cover how to make pixel-style art in Illustrator. I don’t really have much to show yet, but next week I’ll try to add some screenshots here.

Poster Edits

This week I made a few more edits to the Fall 2020 STA roster poster. There was previously a bunch of empty space at the bottom where the logo and title were supposed to be, so it was suggested that I create a long stamp with the LAITS logo to fill that space. I also added a different filler stamp to the audio section using the green color to make it fit better will the overall aesthetic. I’m pretty happy with how it came out in the end, it’ll be exciting to see how it gets used!

 

Canvasser Troubleshooting

Other than the poster, I’ve been spending a lot of my time giving feedback on Canvasser games and troubleshooting issues that people have been having. One thing that’s been hanging people up a lot is conditionals, and Suloni suggested that we incorporate an FAQ section at the end of the Canvasser tutorial. So I’ve started putting one together, going off of questions that have come up a lot recently. Here’s what it’s looking like:

Final Poster