FINAL BLOG POST

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I can’t believe this is my last blog post 🙁

This job has allowed me the opportunity to grow in so many ways and I’m extremely grateful for it. I find myself becoming a better designer overall thanks to all the projects I’ve worked on. Furthermore, there have been many instances where I’ve taken the feedback given to me and applied it to outside of the workplace. Outside of growing as a designer, I believe I’ve become a better leader. Through having the opportunity of leading projects, I’ve begun to learn my leadership style and how to best communicate to my peers when giving feedback or overall direction. All in all, I feel extremely lucky for the growth I’ve experienced during my time here as a Design STA at LAITS!!!

Of course, this job wouldn’t have been so great without the people I work with! I truly enjoyed chatting and getting to know everyone. There is so much skill and talent in the room- I wish I got the opportunity to work with every person on a project at least once! Being able to see everyone’s work was amazing and I feel so lucky to be able to come to work and be so inspired by the people I work with. I’ll miss everyone and I hope to be able to work in another place in the future with a similar atmosphere!!!!

Regarding post-grad, there are a lot of fears there, but I feel so much excitement as well. I can’t wait to see where life takes me. I just hope to remain in the creative space to build my skills further!

Thank you to everyone who made my time here so wonderful. I’ll miss chatting and laughing with all of you. For our newer STAs, I’m sad I didn’t get the chance to know you guys for longer, but I hope you get the same experience as I and more from your time here! Thank you to Lila for being a great friend and manager (I look forward to potentially working with you again!!). And thank you to De’sha for being an amazing mentor. I don’t know anyone who has influenced and encouraged my growth as a professional and as a creative as much as you. Thank you for all you’ve done!! Thank you everyone and goodbye! 🙂

GRADUATION TITLE CARDS

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I was tasked with making a series of title cards for different graduations based on this year’s commencement graphics.

STA 2026 PRESENTATION GRAPHICS

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My focus for most of February has been the graphics for the STA 2026 Presentation which I’m overseeing! This is the biggest project I’ve acted as art director for. While I keep track of the assignments I provided to other designers, I have my own task to work on: the walk-in animation.

— Walk-In Animation–

Progress as of 2/18/26

Initial Mood board

Initial Mock Up

Storyboard

Frames: First Iteration

Feedback: First Round

It was decided that the aesthetic for presentation graphics should pivot to a more modern gallery style. Some notes for me to keep in mind were unique frame layouts, warm wood flooring, spotlights, accent walls, and essentially anything that supported the modern gallery aesthetic. I was also suggested a layout that I could follow for the frames.

Wall Iteration

Progress as of 2/24/26

Light Fixtures

After a bit of back and forth and tweaking, the backgrounds for the paintings were settled! The next thing to add was light fixtures- suggested by De’sha. The first image is my first attempt at them. However, I was requested to see how it would look if the lights were at different angles- similar to one of our main references. So, I utilized the light assets Asha made for the presentation poster!

Pivot Pt. 2

After some discussion with Lila and De’sha, another pivot was decided! To draw more attention to the frames and STAs, there will be a shift to a white background to all assets. Additionally, instead of statues we will do red velvet rope. It was decided that the statues may distract from the STAs in the frames too much. Below is the main reference for the background for future iterations of presentation graphics.

These are the most recent drafts as of 03-03-26. After adjusting the lighting of some of the STAs, it will finally be time to animate!

Animation

Doing a seamless scrolling animation was a lot more tedious than I thought! Since the animation had 3 main moving parts (roof detailing, frames, and velvet rope), it was a bit difficult to line up the cut from the end back to the beginning without a weird jump. However, with some help from Lila and adjustments, I was able to achieve a parallax effect with little jitters!

— Title Cards–

As presentation assets were finishing up, there were enough completed ones for me to easily create the title cards. These would be used to introduce an STA for the “Get to know an STA” segment. I built the design off of Sasha’s “Up Next” slides!

This is my first pass at the design. De’sha suggested I used a bolder font similar to Benton Sans for the “Get to Know an STA.”

Below are my next two iterations. I felt that the since both of the texts were bold, it needed something to seperate the two texts so I added the line. This ended up being the design we proceeded with!

— Reflection–

WINTER BREAK 2025

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I didn’t travel much, but I did spend a lot of time with family and catching up with my Houston friends! I also spent a lot of time in cafes with said friends locking in on portfolio work. This break was needed very much and I got the rest and start I needed for my personal work!

NOVEMBER 2025

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— Summer Marketing Pre-Roll Animation Continued—

This month was spent focusing on the pre-production for the summer marketing pre-roll! I spent a lot of taking making edits to existing assets as we received feedback as well as creating a new scene with the UT Tower.

UT Tower

The UT Tower background was pretty straightforward! While it looks complex, I was able to utilize and make adjustments to an existing tower asset created for the last pre-roll.

Boss Character

The edits to the Boss Character were rather simple! I was asked to make him look a bit older to sell the role to the view better.

Kitchen

For the kitchen scene, I was asked to make the space feel more like a home.