STA Blog

Lila Mali

Lila Mali

November Projects

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Icon Animation Training!

My last few shifts, I wanted to brain storm a new animation training for the video team and thought that icon animation would be a good next step to start understanding how to prepare assets in Illustrator and animate them in After Effects. For the training, I animated 4 icons that my supervisor De’sha found. Here’s how they turned out!

I’m not used to animating pre made icons so I had a lot of fun with this project.

Character rigging animations

In the mean time, I’ve been taking time to learn more about character animation in After Effects and have been assigned to work with pre made character rigs. Here’s the image I worked with and the animation I made from it!

There’s still some training I need to complete but I’ve been really liking this project so far!

CSMS animation

To finish from my last blog post, I completed the CSMS logo and intro animation. Here’s the final.

October Updates

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Animation Training!

Recently, Shanda and I were told about an upcoming animation project that has an emphasis on character animation, my main speciality! I haven’t been able to get a lot done on this project, but I made a practice rig in Adobe Illustrator to get prepared. It’s pretty simple, but here’s how it looks.

Next, I’ll be working on a female rig with more characteristics such as facial expressions and maybe accessories.

New Logo Design

I was assigned to make a new CSMS logo for their class Distributed Systems.

This was a bit tricky to figure out since there weren’t too many references provided to base a logo off of so I made a few draft designs.

They emphasized distribution amongst computers but we decided that two computers made the logo feel too busy. My supervisor provided me with some better icon references and I started to go off of those.

This project is still in the works, but these new designs worked well with the clients so now we can decide and start animating.

September and October

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Been a while since I updated my blog so there’s a lot to go through! I’ll start with my first assignment.

ARH Custom Stinger Animation

This assignment was pretty fun as I was requested to make an animated stinger intro for a TA. The class’s style uses animated images which I don’t work with frequently but I think the style is very charming. Here’s the finished stinger. I really like how it turned out!

STA Posters!!

Our team was requested to make new STA team posters and to make it a special surprise, they were going to be inspired from real movie posters! This was an especially fun project as emulating movie posters is always very charming and I was given the task to make posters after The Breakfast Club and Clue.

The Breakfast Club was surprisingly challenging as the students in the poster were wearing very similar colors.

We eventually decided to change to a different poster type and change the colors of the students clothing.

My supervisors helped a lot with the coloring and changing the STA shirt colors but eventually it was good to send. Next was the Computer Support poster. Here are some of the iterations.

These were fun to do and I love the computer motif

GOV Intro

This was a pretty basic animation assignment. All I had to do was to reboot an existing intro with new assets. I ran into some issues but it came out well. Here’s how it looks.

CSMS Logo Animation

New CS Logo animation! These assignments are always pretty intimidating at first since the topics are hard to visualize, but I was given helpful reference images and a good dirstcion to go off of. Here are some of my initial concept sketches.

The client really liked the look of the graph logo and I got started on the animated intro. Here’s how it turned out.

I really like the graph animation and the client did as well!

My Most Productive Summer to Date

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Back From an Insane Summer

I can’t say I had much of a summer break as I spent my summer doing the UT Semester in Los Angeles Program where I essentially worked around the clock. But it was one of the most beneficial experiences I’ve had at UT (besides being an STA of course).

I spent my summer in LA completing internships and taking Hollywood based classes provided by the program. I interned at MorningStar Entertainment and HappyNest Entertainment, 2 very different types of production experiences as MorningStar was mainly a history and true crime documentary production company and HappyNest is a kids animation distribution company. The experiences I gained from both companies was absolutely crucial to my growth as an animation student. While I have many technical skills in animation, I learned so much about pitching, negotiating, budgeting, and the inner workings of producing a well-made story.

While the internship is the main seller of the UTLA program, I’d say some of my most valuable experiences was all the animators I met who were super kind and made it obvious that all they wanted to do was to help animators break into a very scary industry. They were kind enough to get coffee with me and even show me around their workplaces!

I think what I took away most from the UTLA program is how to prioritize my work schedule and realizing that I’m very capable of hard work despite my inner monologue. I was always working and always networking and when I wasn’t working, I was seeing friends and going to different events. I never really had a day off. I not only want to take that work ethic into my career, but also as an STA to make sure the projects I get are up to my best ability.

without making this post too long, that about wraps up my summer! I’m so glad to be back as an STA and continue working with people and making art and graphics to be viewed by thousands of students!

Last post before summer!

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Wrapping up my projects

I got to work on a few pretty exciting projects these last few weeks so I’m very satisfied that I got to work on projects that I could not only complete but also enjoy working on before leaving for the semester.

World Literature Animated Intro

While I didn’t fully animate an intro for this class, I was given the task to think of an animatic for one of the world literature classes at UT.

This was fun to think of as it was simple but shows the transitions in time for world literature and theater. The book is by far the most complex asset for this animation.

Foundations of Data Science Logo and Animation

We have settled on a logo design!

The gears were a favorite for the client. Now I had to animate it.

This was a lot more tricky than I thought it would be because gears are surprisingly very complex. At least for me. Getting the timing right for the gear turning was a concern as a lot of the time the turning of one gear would offset the others and it would turn into a domino effect.

Luckily, I was suggested to slow down the turning which not only helped the pacing, but lessened the risk of the gears being offset. Here’s what I was able to finish with.

And once approved, I could add it to the intro animation template!

5/1 – 5/7

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Foundations of Data Science

After my previous logo drafts I made a few more based off requests from the client. Here’s what I came up with.

I kept the gear theme since both the client and my supervisor liked it and I think it would make a fun logo to animate. They suggested the concept of regression on a graph in the design and the other gear is a more refined puzzle piece look.

I also worked on some backdrops for the course graphics.

pretty basic but productive work.

PSY317K Intro Animation

I was tasked with reanimating and intro animation for one of the general physics classes. I was basically given an After Effects template and some stock footage to replace the current footage and I was set to go.

Here’s how it looks!

I’ve grown to really enjoy working in After Effects. It’s one of those programs that’s insanely intimidating and powerful but you really end up using only 1/4 of the program than necessary. I look forward to new After Effects projects.