My first week of the 2026 fall semester has been a blast. I started off the week by attending one of my shifts here and continued work on the voting PSAs. We are just about finished with them right now, but I will go more into detail regarding the videos later on in this blog post.

I’m taking 4 classes this semester and I’m very excited to learn a lot of new material and skills. I will be taking 3D modeling and texturing, games and interactivity, solo studio, and 2D animation for games. I hope to take what I learn in these classes and translate them into my work as an STA.

This week was filled with making the final edits to the voting PSAs. There are a total of 8 videos, all with varying audios and slight variations to animations. Being able to reuse animations and assets has helped reduce the work load immensely, allowing me to complete tasks much more efficiently.

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Register to Vote

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Election Day

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Early Voting

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It’s far too early to start advertising these PSAs, however I’m happy to have them near finished. If there are any changes or edits needed, they will be simple and quick to adjust.

I haven’t posted here in a moment so I thought I’d take this chance to show what I’ve been working on. I had been tasked to create a background design for the collab lab computers, like the ones in the design lab. I was instructed to keep the theme interesting but not too distracting from the lists of tasks listed.

I first developed a simple style with a textured gradient found through Adobe Stock images. I wanted the background to feel uniform, so I adjusted the text bubbles to match the colors. I created 4 different versions to give my director a variety of options.

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I was happy with the results, however it wasn’t what we were quiet looking for. The background was too simple and the text bubbles were not contrasting enough. I was tasked into finding a background with more movement and to revert the text bubble colors to black text and white background.

I went back onto Adobe Stock images to find an abstract piece that was more visually interesting. I came upon the one shown below and went ahead and made edits accordingly. I went with just 2 variations this time since I was given specific instructions on what needed adjusting.

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I’m much happier with the result of this version. I feel the overall design is much more contrasting and visually appealing. I have not heard from my art director yet, so I’m currently waiting on feedback.

There is one other project I’m working on, however I’m not sure how much of it I can share. What I can say though is I’ve been tasked to create a poster for a certain group of STA students.

Today I put my full focus into getting as much done as I could to prepare for the voting PSAs. I finished storyboarding for all 3 versions; register, early voting, and election day. I was able to finish all of the assets that I included within the storyboards. Since I’m starting this project very early, these assets and storyboards are not finalized and are subject to change.

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I don’t have much else to write today. I will be working on the animatic next so I can start planning what kind of animations and effects I want to add.

For my past few shifts, I worked on finishing up all of my training requirements. I’m happy to say that I’ve completed all tiers of training. I learned a lot of valuable skills using several Adobe programs. I look forward to learning more skills and becoming more efficient in those programs.

The tier 3 training module required me to make a short intro animation for a class. I wanted to practice some simple transitions and focus on making them as smooth and aesthetically pleasing as possible. I went for a “start-up” style when the screen starts out black and reveals the graphics seconds later. In this storyboard, I planned to end the animation with a black screen, however after receiving feedback it was decided that it would be best not to.

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I’m pleased with the results of the final. I enjoyed adding small details, such as a brief and subtle blur when the text is revealed, much like a camera focusing in on a subject.

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Here are some other smaller projects I worked on. I changed the backgrounds, colors, text, and some minor imagery.

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Now that I’ve completed the required training, it’s time for me to work on a bigger project. I’ve been tasked with creating the 2026 Fall Voting PSA animations that will advertise and inform early voting, registering to vote, and election day to students and faculty. We’re in the early phase of this project, so there isn’t much to do except make some rough storyboards and assets. I’ll show some progress of what I’ve done so far in my next blog. Thanks for reading.

I continued working on my training assignments today and was able to do most of our Tier 2 Course Graphics training. I mostly used Illustrator since it’s what I’m most comfortable with, however I did dabble a little bit into Photoshop and After Effects. I was required to make custom graphics for a class that can be used in studio, class and Canvas. This includes backgrounds for video recordings, powerpoint slides, and interactive Canvas assets. Images used in this project were found on Pexels, a website where people can share their images royalty free.

I started off with brainstorming ideas of what and how I wanted my assets to look. Because I chose the class “Earth’s Dynamic Environment II”, I wanted to portray Earth in some way. I wanted to focus on using images of Earth material and animals while adding Earthy overlays to bring them all together. I only spent about 5 minutes on each mood board to avoid over working them.

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After sending the mood boards for approval, I decided on using close up images for a minimalist/artistic style and adding a green overlay to unify everything together. At first, I wanted to go with a very muted green to give the assets a serious feel, however after receiving feedback from my trainer I increased the saturation, which I ended up being very happy with. This increase in saturation would also help the color look more rich on video.

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Overall, I’m happy with the progress I made. There were a few times where I misunderstood the instructions and had to redo a few assets, however I’m glad to continue to learn new skills and techniques.