Clio/Canvasser + InDesign Training

Click on “BB” to play the final game on Canvasser!

With the help of Bridget and Poonum, I tried evening out the speed of the fade animation, but it did not change, so it will have to do.

InDesign Training

Today, I also started working on the InDesign training! Here is a preliminary layout that I started tinkering. I used a 6×6 grid system to guide some of the positions, and next time I am going to continue to move around the text and change the appearance of the elements. I used to use InDesign a lot in high school newspaper, but that was so long ago! I felt so nostalgic doing this training today. We never really got into short cuts, such as using the master template tool, in high school, so I am having fun learning about these techniques.

It feels like school is over to me, which is dangerous. Have a great and safe Thanksgiving break!

Photoshop Color Correction

Today, I worked on a Photoshop Color Correction training. The training walked through several different types of photo adjustments, which are used often when editing photo IDs. Here are some of the examples that I worked on that I found the most interesting.

Exposure Mini Practice

In this exercise, we practiced using the exposure adjustment. Since the land and the surrounding sky and water are lit differently, we used the selection tool to select parts of land then adjust the gamma and offset to make it look natural. Then, we followed the same general process but for the inverse of the first selection such that it would apply to the sky and water.

Hues Mini Practice

In this exercise, we practiced using the hues adjustment. We were asked to practice changing the color of the flower petals. Since they are purple, I selected “Magentas” in the hue bar under “Master” and adjusted the sliding color scale towards the red hue until it looked red. I was surprised by how realistically this changed the color of the flower petals.

Layer and Masking for Isolated Color Correction Mini Practice

In this exercise, we practiced another method of editing specific parts of a photo as opposed to the whole photo , which an adjustment is usually applied to. I applied a levels adjustment then used a gradient on the the masking layer to specifically brighten the right side of the photo but not the left. The gradient appeared white to black, from the left to the right. Since the right side is darker and underexposed, I shifted the white arrow to the left to bring some more light into the photo. With the masking, it only applied these edits to the black portion of the mask.

This training was super helpful, especially with understanding how to make edits targeted for specific portions of photos.

Canvasser Progress

I have continued to work on my game! At this point, I think everything is in the correct position and all the layers are in the right order. I have gotten through most of the conditionals and interactions, and I should be able to be done with the rest by the next time I work! If all goes smoothly, hopefully I can wrap the game up my next shift and make edits as needed. I realized that the original idea I had for “reusing” BB and dragging to multiple different places would not work well, so I got around that by making additional versions of BB for each drag and drop question. You can see them all in this photo, but only one will be visible at a time. After the player drags one version to the correct spot, then the new version of BB will appear.

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Captioning and Weekly Update

This week was pretty chill (at least at work). Most of the week, I worked on my Canvasser. Photoshop has been kind of tricky to use because grouping layers complicates the process of moving assets around, so I probably just shouldn’t have grouped them that early. Right now, I am working on making the edits Abriella suggested to the windows.

I also figured I would talk about the e316m captioning project Ingrid, Bridget, and I have been helping out with. Every three weeks, we will rotate who does captioning for the week.

We start by downloading the mp4 file for the week, then uploading it to the automated captioning service. It will work on the subtitling job for a while, then you will be able to download an SRT file of subtitles. These subtitles are generally pretty close to the real thing, but have a lot of little typos. For example, the word “to,” is commonly written as “thio,” and there are often weird capitalizations and spaces.

Therefore, to correct these subtitles, we upload them to the subtitle editor in Amara. It is pretty easy to use and learn, it’s just that making edits takes quite a bit of time when you are constantly pausing and restarting. I am at the mercy of my internet speed any time I do the captioning. When you finish captioning, then you will download a VTT file and upload the edited subtitles back to the video editor. I have one more week of captioning right before Thanksgiving, but yeah, it has been interesting to learn all the captioning conventions. You can’t really do all of the conventions in Amara, but it does remind you to think about readability and usability.

That’s it for the week! This week was pretty stressful outside of work, so I hope the weekend is better and I hope your weekend is good too.

Religiology Logo Wrap Up + Canvasser + STA Showcase

Mega post for real!

Religiology Logo Wrap Up

First, I want to talk about the Religiology Logo. After some working meetings with Maddy, it is finally done! Maddy was so helpful in teaching me about good practices for Ai. I feel like I want to do some more trainings in that area. At the end, we focused on making a more crisp (?) crescent shape and adding some color. Then, I followed Sheryl’s KB on preparing an approved graphic in different file formats to ensure that the right assets were in the Box for the client. Here is the style guide I prepared. I was telling Maddy this- it was very exciting to see this process through to the end, for a real client. It did not really register with me that this logo would actually be used on a real school website, so that was cool to understand. Below, you can see the blog site right now, and the style guide I prepared.

Canvasser

I have also started preparing my Canvasser game for the Clio training. Continuing along with the tennis theme, his game follows Ballboy “BB” Ball, and the player is instructed to drag the character to the right places, in response to a prompt. It tests the player’s understanding of tennis rules and lingo. Baba and Mama Ball observe from the sidelines and baba is a soccer ball. I have been told to be wary of the number of assets I create, as other STAs have been having issues with Canvasser for reasons related to the number of assets. Here it is so far! The characters kind of look like my STA caricature. Pic 1: inspiration for the court, pic 2: the process of creating the characters, and pic 3: where I’m at now

STA Showcase

Today was also the STA showcase! I presented on the process of fermenting sweet rice, but my presentation was really more about process itself and how much I appreciate the things I get to do as an STA! I truly appreciate the supportiveness of Suloni, Valerie, Maddy, and all the STAs! There are a lot of other philosophical and existential things I could get into regarding my mediocre food, but that will have to wait for another day. With only 3 minutes per STA, we really had to fly through it. I’ll attach my presentation for funzies. It was also SO GREAT to see all the other projects the STAs from all departments worked on, especially my fellow design STAs.

Fermenting Rice and other reflections

There the mega post goes. And Happy Almost Halloween. I am wearing a costume as we speak, but I am going nowhere. Just going to listen to the Cocteau Twins and CRY! Have a great weekend 🙂