˚✿˖° February Projects ⋆˚✿˖°

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PETEX Pipeline Technology-Maintenance Course Phase II

This month I was assigned to recreate a graphic into a clearer image! It was fun working more with gradients in Photoshop to provide more depth to the graphic and I adjusted some text for better readability!

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2025 STA Presentation

Initial Thoughts: This project I was assigned to create the slide template for the 2025 STA Presentation!! While the idea was a bit daunting at first, I was really excited to create a slide template of my own!

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Initial Sketch: So at first I thought the slide template was based on the Peanuts franchise combined movie elements (LOL) which turned out to not be the case! Although this slide template wasn’t on the right path, I still wanted to use some elements like the curtain and section header slides!

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2nd Design: I leaned away from the Peanuts characters and focused more on movie elements by rendering my past illustrations! I tried to include a variety of movie symbols like film cameras and film strips! While I do think the different elements were nice, with the given feedback, I realized for a slide template meant to display the work of STA’s, I needed to be more subtle with my design and let the presentation speak for itself rather than the background! I also made a note to make my designs more vector based to stay in the same style as my other STAs!

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3rd Design: This time I focused more on creating the title and content slide! I went back to the initial slide idea with seats and zoomed in more so the screen could be the focus! The hardest part was making the gradients work with the seats and where to place the bandings! I did like adding the special effects like the outer glow to the screens, it really did make the design pop!

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3rd Design PT.2: Next I tried marking where the STAs would structure their title slide! To be honest, I was really stuck on how to make this work because none of my placements really looked right to me! However, with some feedback from De’sha I was able to reformat and add new edits to the title slide!

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Final Design: Added some edits to the title and content slides by adding a yellow tint and making the chairs more realistic! I explored different fonts for the mock title slide and put the title image as the background! Overall, this project was definitely a journey, but it lead me to learn even more about Photoshop, how to effectively create slide templates, and incorporate feedback to make the best design possible!

Summer Marketing Social Media

• Instagram Reel (2/25): Top 3 Reasons to Take UT Summer Courses
  • Animated elements and transitions in AE based on sketches De’sha provided.

• Instagram Post (3/4): Announcing the UT Summer Course Schedule is Live!
  • Populated PS post-it mockup with various Summer Marketing-related elements and text. Final text edits applied by Leilani.

Updated Animated Pre-roll:

Speedway Banner Finalization:

Real Banner Example:

Final Design:

Mockups:

Summer Marketing

Spring Texas Parent Ads

Description: Texas Parents newsletter graphic

Inspiration:

Drafts:

Spring 2025 STA Roster Posters

Project Overview: Design 2 posters that display the STAs, their names, the main title, and that differentiate between the teams. The design will be based on “Movie Concession Stands”. The idea is to have the STAs represented as candy boxes/bags of candy.

I started by sketching out some layouts and finding inspiration photos. My initial vision was to have the teams represented by different bars/bags/boxes of candy.

This is the first draft I created in Photoshop following the original design. It was at this point in the project that we decided to pivot on the design to something more illustrative to simplify the layout, fill the empty space, and save time.

I moved to Illustrator to try a new layout, created with the help of my manager De’sha. In this version, each STA would be on their own mini candy box. This way everyone is equally represented and can blend into the packaging more seamlessly.

I designed some simple candy box designs with placeholders for the photos and names, then got to adding all 75 STAs to the document.

With all the STAs in their candy boxes, I could focus on the border and title design. I was directed to make it look more like the display case from my original inspiration pictures. I also added a key beneath the title identifying each of the teams.

I received some more feedback to shorten the title, turn the boxes on their sides, lighten the background, and add some elements to fill the empty space on the bottom shelf.

In another round of feedback I added some effects to the title, removed the border completely, darkened the color of the shelves, and simplified the popcorn to match the stylistic design of the rest of the poster.

In a final round of edits to make the design look more like a concession stand, I added a 3D perspective to the boxes, changed the title font and changed the key design.

My Thoughts: This project was a little bit of a rollercoaster, but I definitely learned a lot. In hindsight, I think I should have pivoted to Illustrator sooner as I spent a lot of time on a draft that ended up being scrapped in the end. Additionally, asking for more help and feedback in the early stages of the project would have saved time and energy fixing things later on.

Overall, I think the posters turned out fun, playful, and very colorful.

2024-25 STA Blog Banner Design

Project Overview: Design a banner that presents all of the STAs and their names to act as the Design/Coding STA Blog header.

This is the background design I created inspired by the UT turtle pond. I drew this in Krita, then transferred it to Illustrator, vectorized it using image trace, and added text.

By the time I went to add the STAs to the image, some new members had joined our team, so I did some rearranging and duplicating of lilypads to fit everyone. Here’s the final product!

This semester, I’ll be stepping away from my role as an STA as I take on a new opportunity at an AI-tutoring startup. Being part of the STA Program has been such an enriching experience, and I’m incredibly grateful for everything I’ve learned during my time here.

This past fall, I had the chance to work on our STA Alumni site, Dr Christopher Beevers’ Mood labs site, Dr Elliot Tucker-Drob’s Lifespan Development Lab, as well as Dr Mark Ravina’s Clioviz maps interface. All of which deepened my skills in web design, research, development, and design decision-making. Each project challenged me in new ways and allowed me to grow as a designer and problem-solver.

A huge thank you to my amazing managers, Leilani Cabello and De’sha Bass-McClellan, for their guidance, support, and mentorship. Working with this team has been an absolute joy, and I’ll miss collaborating with my fellow STAs.

I’m excited for this next chapter, but don’t worry, this isn’t goodbye. I’m looking forward to what’s coming up, and I’m hopeful that my path will cross again with the STA Program down the road. It’s been a great experience, and I’m definitely keeping an eye on what’s ahead!

Been a while since I’ve updated my blog but there’s been a really big project I’ve been working on since January that I’m excited to talk about!

MSAI Logo and Animation

I was tasked with taking on the MSAI logo creation and animation this month and it actually went in a different direction than I was expecting. Here’s the logo that was finalized.

The animation actually had to go through some iterations. Here was the original concept.

After showing to the PM, we realized that it came across as plants growing from the brain rather than the nodes being stimulated by the brain. After a meeting to discuss a new direction for the animation, here’s what we came up with.

This was actually not only a preferred animation from the client, but it was also a pretty simple animation to complete which I’m really happy about.

DELL IPE Online Course Creation

This project has been quite fun to work on as it emphasizes my focus, character animation!

I’ve been working with Shanda to make animation for Dell’s IPE Online Course where they’ve requested for us to animate specific lecture slides for them. These are essentially medical scenarios they would like animated. This project will most likley last a couple months as they’ve requested 6 animations that span to be 5 – 8 minutes so right now I’ve been focusing on making reusable animation assets that can make our project pipeline faster.

Shanda is the Illustrator on the project and has done wonderful work to make the characters! Here’s the lineup.

With all these characters, here’s some of the animations I made beforehand to prep for the slides.

Since then, I’ve been making an After Effects template that can be used as a master file for all the animations needed.

Those are my main updates for now. Next I wanna finish up the animations assets and make a project tracking sheet for this project for the whole semester.