Week LXI

February 7, 2023 By Adrian McKee

Week LXI

Top secret!

It was decided we could use a few more variants of this backdrop, which I made by variously rotating the gradient overlay and the pattern layer. As for swapping it out in After Effects, we all know how much Adobe likes to make simple actions intuitive and accessible, so it only took around an hour to figure out how to drag the files into the file panel and then alt-drag them into the layer panel.

TGDP Banner 5

Laying this out has still been pretty tricky. The blocks of text are pretty uneven, and chronology is important, so… This is one attempt at a zig-zag timeline, but it could use some more shapes to make that clear, maybe lines or arrows? And the background is still a placeholder.

Faculty Search Committee PPT Redesign

Project: Faculty Search Committee PPT Redesign
Client /Prof: Grayson Hunt
completion status: WIP
staff guidance: Maddy K
STA team members: Lorena
description/plans: TBA
To be completed: TBA

From what I understand, we are redesigning the powerpoint for a presentation about grad school demographic data, and by we I mean Lorena, because I have not done much besides take notes so far. I may eventually be reformatting the data below into some kind of charts and graphs but the best direction for that has not been entirely clear. Watch this space…

Week LX

January 30, 2023 By Adrian McKee

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

January 23, 2023 By Adrian McKee

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

January 17, 2023 By Adrian McKee

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

January 10, 2023 By Adrian McKee

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.