LRC Poster, Chatter interviews, KB edits, and more

This past week, I’ve been busy! Here’s a quick synopsis of what I did:

• Talked to Marla and Chris about Chatter
• Edited the photo ID KB article
• Created a new KB article for ID email templates
• Did the animated course graphics training
• Created a draft of a flyer advertising the visiting scholars program at the Linguistics Research Center

Animated course graphics training

I made this intro based on a course I designed a display for. I used brightness and glow effects in AE to simulate lightning, once I separated the foreground cloud and lightning bolts into separate layers in Photoshop.

 

LRC flyer draft

LRC-visitingscholars-poster

The LRC wants to advertise their visitings scholars program, using vague UT branding, an open color scheme, and possibly the banner image from its site. I used the banner image, GT Sectra, and I eyedropped the color scheme from the banner image.

 

 

Weekly updates

I took Monday off this week for a medical appointment at a weird time. Here’s what I worked on this week and last week! I also was able to schedule a meeting with Marla to discuss Chatter numbers and whatnot for the PR project. I plan on talking with Chris Pittman next, and hopefully Matthew nails down the faculty presentation soon.

Photo ID Guidelines

Ingrid, Angie, Abriella and I have all been working to update the photo ID aesthetic guidelines and training. Last week, we finished the aesthetic edits slide deck, and this week, we chose photos — categorized into easy, medium and hard — for new STAs to practice on. Here are examples:

 

Here are a couple of slides from the slide deck. I actually learned about the selective color tool from Cristina — changed my life. I also tried to emphasize in the slide deck that most photos will need more than one type of edit, and some edits require others after (like cool color balance –> vibrance)

 

 

Color grading training

This was super fun! Thanks to Sheryl for making it! For ~fall vibes~ I chose to match colors to Wes Anderson’s adaptation of “Fantastic Mr. Fox,” incidentally one of my favorite movies.

https://sta.laits.utexas.edu/blog/2021/10/15/41864-2/

Weekly updates

This week, I’ve:

• worked on photo IDs
• cut out photos and updated the spreadsheet for the STA roster poster
• Slacked with people and researched for my PR project
  • Matthew Busby tells me there is no set date for Chatter faculty presentation, but I am welcome to come when it happens 🙂
• worked on updating photo ID guidelines
  • Ingrid and I have been working on a guide (will end up being a linked PDF in the KB) to teach STAs basic aesthetic edits for photo IDs. Here’s a slide I did to show an extreme version of color balance edits:

This week, brrrrr

This “cold” front was an absolute godsend. I got to read for about 30 minutes before my shift on the Gearing patio, and it was awesome.

This week, I finally finalized my quiz stinger animation and I worked on revamping the photo ID training, a display for the GRG department, the new PR project, and photo IDs.

 

Photo ID training

 

I’m glad we’re updating the photo ID training and client communication — there’s a lot of situations I run into with them that aren’t necessarily spelled out in the training. Knowing how to handle these comes with time and experience, but it’s always nice to get guidance early on. Here’s one thing Suloni pointed out that I added:

 

The top photo is my original 200×300 edit, before Suloni pointed out that Naval Science faculty (like this man) have medals that should probably be visible in the ID. I went through and updated the other Naval faculty with this format, but it’s a good example of when to not follow the guidelines exactly.

 

Quiz Stinger

 

I also finalized my quiz stinger:

 

GRG Display

 

Project: Display for GRG dept
Client /Prof: GRG department
completion status: Started Sept. 22 2021
staff guidance: Valerie Tran
description/plans: Make a 1920×1080 display advertising a (new?) GRG course on extreme weather events. Use client-provided photos and a previously-used aesthetic and basic layout.
To be completed: ~ Sept 30 2021

Here’s the draft we sent to the client:

 

A slower week, and starting a new project

I haven’t done a ton this week, seeing as I took Wednesday off to see a doctor (no uveitis here, y’all). This week, I nailed down the sequence of the quiz stinger animation with the help of De’sha, worked on photo IDs, and began a cool new project from Maddy.

 

Quiz Stinger

 

Wrapping up the quiz stinger feels nice — I feel like I took way too long with it, but I refreshed what little After Effects skills I had and did something productive all the while.

 

Photo IDs

 

Ingrid and I both had some photo ID troubles, so much that Abriella’s writing up new client communication email templates. Faculty and graduate students alike are trying to submit photos that aren’t in the same universe as our photo ID guidelines, yet are insistent on replacing their older photos (the irony here is that the older photos often do match the criteria). Thanks to carefully worded emails from both of us, the many of the questionable submitters gave us new photos to work with and upload.

 

 

New Project

 

My new project, courtesy of Mike and Maddy:

Project: Public-facing articles for LAITS website
Client /Prof: internal
completion status: Started Sept. 17 2021
staff guidance: Maddy Kaniewski
description/plans:Write 3-4 new articles for the LAITS website about cool and impactful STA projects, like Chatter. Interview full-timers and STAs from all departments to get a better idea for possible features and get details cleared up. Find media to embed in Cascade page.
To be completed: December 2021

I’m super excited to spend a lot of my time here this semester learning about other departments (audio, video, studio), the cool things they’re up to, and how they work!

Traveling the world for free this week

This week, I’ve worked a lot on the stinger animations in After Effects and finding street-level images in various cities throughout Africa for Dr. Gordon’s AFR 303 class.

 

Maddy had the great idea of using Google Street View, combined with basic tourist sites, to find the city skyscraper-type pictures that Dr. Gordon wanted. It was pretty successful, although I spent a lot of time hopping around Accra, Ghana for a good shot. Once I took screenshots, I did some color correction, cropped to the correct aspect ratio, and erased Google’s street names with the clone stamp tool when necessary. Here are some of the edited versions.