STA Blog

Tate Gibson

Tate Gibson

Progress Update on the CHI507 and the RUS412K Projects

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Progress Update on the CHI507 and the RUS412K Projects (as well as some other little tidbits)

The CHI507 Project is in its final stages! (Hallelujah). There are just 2 more videos to touch up before we wait for absolute final approval from the professor. Because of having to do videos over again, I was able to gain more experience in the leading projects and sending assignments/providing edit notes. However, I am elated this project will soon draw to a close, as it’s lasted about twice as long as originally planned. With the RUS412K Project, we’re picking up momentum with production! Character assignments have been given to every STA involved in the project and I have already received three in return! I also assigned Duo to update the ppt background for the new semester of Russian videos, and have sent her lovely first draft to the professor for critiques. I have established a worklfow with Samantha on how to handle the RUS406/RUS407 edits and will be beginning work on those this week! Finally, Rodrigo and I spent about 4 hours last week attempting to create an interactive last week in Adobe Animate utilizing Drag and Drop features. Unfortunately, we had little success:^( However, I plan to explore this some more! So much to do!! AHHH!!

RUS 412K Animation Update

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RUS 412K Animation Update

The week marking the beginning of training/pre-production for RUS412K animations has finally arrived. I spent last week talking with Dr. Rice about the first section of new animations, receiving clarification, finalizing the art style and setting up the google sheet used for assigning tasks. Dr. Rice has been continually providing me with image references to make the animations more accurate to Russian culture; including both images and videos of Russian spaces. I got feedback for the first animation that I made for the new semester, and have already incorporated one of Dr. Rice’s notes, specifically that Russian apartments typically don’t have adjacent rooms without a wall separating them. I’ll post a video with this change soon! Now, the apartment just needs to be cluttered up a bit more to be more fitting with what is more typically seen in Russia. I have also attached a screenshot of how I have the google sheet organized right now.

CHI 507 PPT Video Project Update

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CHI 507 PPT Video Project Update

The CHI507 Project has been moving along magnificently since the issues we had with the font. Before, syncing these videos took probably about a month and a half. Now, with the all-hands-on-deck approach for the resyncs, we’ve completed roughly the same amount of videos in about 2 weeks. Personally, I received experience quickly training STAs in workflow processes they have not done before, assigning todos/giving adequate feedback, as well as streamlining the video sync workflow process. Here’s to wrapping up this project by the end of this week! I’ve included a screenshot of the basecamp assignments for this project. The checked off ones are officially complete, the grey ones are the ones that have been assigned to an STA for syncing, most of which are done and are just awaiting edit notes and the yellow ones are remaining videos to be completed!

Early Stages for the RUS 412K Cartoons!

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Included in this post is the 1st draft of the 1st cartoon for the RUS412K online course! The animation description that I was provided was: a person at home cooking dinner sees they don’t have an item they need, they run to the store and come back. I also used this cartoon to create around 9 tutorial videos to bring more STAs into the animation workflow for this project. I picked this animation because of its level of complexity; it required a lot of skills necessary for general proficiency in the program in regards to what’s needed for this project specifically. I have already received some notes from Dr. Rice to make the space more believable as a Russian apt, which I am working to incorporate. Very excited to see how this project turns out!

Chinese PPT Video Font Fiasco!

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There have been a number of hiccups in the completion of the Chinese language instructional videos I have been working on the last few months. Unfortunately, for around 29 videos, the necessary Chinese character font was not loaded properly into the computer and the videos must be re-recorded. Through a slew of events, I was able to find the font that was needed for the project and load the correct fonts onto the computers that need them. I have also taken multiple measures on my end to prevent a mistake of this magnitude from happening again. I have pushed 4 video STAs quickly through the workflow training to join the 3 Design STAs trained in the process so hopefully we can finish this project quickly and strongly!

CHINESE 507 Online Course

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CHINESE 507 Online Course

An older Chinese online language course has been revived for completion recently and I’ve been tasked as the guy to sync it up! It follows a similar workflow as the Russian online course I’ve been working on. In fact, it’s responsible for establishing some of the norms for making these types of videos at LAITS, which continued on to the Russian online course. Some of the processes are a little dated but I’ve gotten into the swing of things and have already knocked out about about 10 videos since being assigned it a little over a week ago.