STA Blog

Lila Mali

Lila Mali

Work from April

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I haven’t updated in a while due to a main project I’ve been working on being confidential so the other work I’ve been getting hasn’t been enough to dedicate a post to. Now, however, I do have enough material!

UTFC Work

I’ll summarize this as it’s work I’ve made posts about before. This month, I was able to complete a PowerPoint presentation for the textbook and I’ve also completed 2 banners for the project.

STA Presentations!

This was the first time I attended an STA presentation and it was a ton of fun! I learned so much about the work form other departments and got to see my fellow design STA’s present their work. It was a nice experience to cheer on all the students who work so hard in this department and I got to know some of the faculty better. It really put into perspective how tight-knit LAITS is and that it can really build connections and a healthy work culture.

Foundations of Data Science

I was assigned a new type of course graphics for the Edx department. I’ve never done this kind of work before and it was pretty intimating at first. My main assignments are to design a logo for the new class and animate it. I had know idea where to start but luckily I was given a sheet of past examples I could take inspiration from.

I also looked up how data science is normally represented and found some ideas to go off of. Here are some logo designs I was able to draft as of now.

After showing these to the client, they said that they really like the concept of the gears and puzzle piece look. They offered some notes on implementing a possible regression reference on the design so i’ll be looking into that.

week 3/18 – week 3/22

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Back from Spring Break

My spring break was pretty low-stakes which I am very grateful for. I went to some SXSW events which was really fun. The ones I went to ranged a lot in subject matter like I got to see the creative careers expo which was heavily focused in tech innovation in the creative industry. I also attended some pop-ups and a filmmakers lunch where I met some really cool directors and film buffs.

Apart from SXSW, I got to hang out with friends and see my family which I think was the most refreshing part of my break. I’m back feeling refreshed and excited to get back on previous projects.

 

Small projects that are now complete

I was assigned to work on a new UTFC vocabulary sheet and got approval on it this week! While the vocabulary sheets can be rather tedious, it’s a nice breather project that I can just listen to music and spend time finding images. After finding images, we’re tasked with filling out a PowerPoint template with the approved images. After getting approval on the PowerPoint, we go to a seperate spreadsheet to put in the credential info of all the photos we found.

These assignments usually take a good amount of time but they’re pretty easy to figure out once you get used to them. Like I said, a good project to just zone out to!

I also worked on some STA cutouts this week to help with the STA roster poster. I look forward to how the finished posters will look!

Week 2/26 – 3/1

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Pre-Course Video Approval!

This week has been pretty eventful! I can’t wait to show off one of the approved drafts of the Pre-course video, I’m really happy with how it came out. I’ve also been assigned to work on an upcoming project that has a high involvement with illustration and comics!

Pre-Course Video

It is done! Well, as of now it’s done. The video went through many notes from the original animatic. Luckily, with the workflow from Illustrator to After Effects, making edits was relativley painless, but my file organization became pretty messy.

Here’s the approved draft!

I’m still surprised I was able to make this. It was very out of my comfort zone but I had fun with it!

I’m especially really happy with the segments that portray the studio more accurately. They’re just really cute to look at. The map segment was a part that took a little more planning and notes since it was a little hard to figure how to make the class exits clear and also engaging. With the help of my supervisor, we were able to figure out the scene.

I’m so glad it has a finalized look that can hopefully be shown to students.

 

Week 2/5 – 2/9

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Additions to the Precourse Video

After getting some notes on the current video, one part that was suggested was to make the emergency exit sequence more of a map route style.

Currently, the sequence shows the exit doors as the voice over describes the location. So now, we’re gonna try and do an iteration of the scene based on a map of the room. Here’s what the map looks like.

 

Here are some iterations I made.

It’s all a work in progress and I was given notes to make the map reflect the look of the studio itself so I’ll be working on that this week as well as other assets.

 

New Assignment: UTFC Banners

This was a pretty straightforward assignment as we just had to use a tamplate to make banners for the textbook. Here are examples of the banners I made.

1/22 – 1/26

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Pre-course video updates!

The video is coming along! I’ve been having a lot of fun with it and see what effects I can add.

One thing I had to change was the style of some backdrops that were used. I was told by my advisor that beforehand, the backdrops looked to realistic to fit in with the rest of the video, so I was advised to properly trace the backdrops in my own style instead of automatically vectorizing them.

Here’s a comparison of how they look.

While it did take a while, I’m glad that I was advised to trace the backdrops. They look a lot more inviting and fitting now

Here’s one of the other backdrops I did.

I’ll be able to post the first draft of the video by the end of the week!