For this blog, I will be sharing some work that I’ve done both last week and this week. Last week, I ended on sharing my progress with some trainings I’ve been doing. After showing the progress I had made on my logo, I’ll be showing the final logo animation and some mock-ups.

I’m happy with the end result, however I will need to wait on feedback before officially finalizing this project

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For my next training, I chose to practice some painting in Photoshop. I’m already familiar with digital painting in other programs such as Clip Studio and Procreate, so I wanted to see how my skills would translate.

I was tasked to paint the provided reference, which was a red tea pot. I first started by painting the silhouette of the tea pot, added the shadows, highlights, and details. I did not spend too much time cleaning up since this was just practice.

I was next tasked with finding my own reference and paint it using what I had learned. I decided to choose a simple black and white image of a vulture I found on Pixabay. I find it easier to paint in black and white rather than color. The first image is the reference, the second image is the painting.

This was definitely my favorite training project and I’m pleased with what I created. I hope to do more paintings and illustrations like these in future projects.

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As of right now, I’m learning how to create a custom website in Figma. I don’t have access to the concepts I created or what I have done at the moment, so I will have to show you another time. However I can say that I have been having a lot more fun than I thought creating a website of my own.

Besides trainings, I have been assigned new projects. One of them is creating the STA Presentation Poster. I’m running out of time writing here (again) so I will have to show you next week… again. I just have so much to share, it’s impossible to share it all within 30 minutes. Thank you.

Other than making some minor adjustments and edits, I finished everything I could do with the voting PSA animations this week. I’m now waiting to hear any edits or adjustments that may be needed before the official release of the PSA’s. In the meantime, I spent a lot of my time working on my trainings on Knowledge Base.

I first started with making pixel art in Illustrator since it was something new for me to try and seemed the most fun. I decided to make some artworks on my family’s pets since the tutorial used a dog as an example. I made 4 variations of each pet, each time experimenting with Illustrators generative color palettes. I had fun playing around with it and creating some unique color combinations.

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Next I learned how to make an 8-bit animation in Photoshop. It’s a simple and quick way to make a small animated piece. I wanted to make something a bit unusual, so I cropped a mouth and animated it to look as if it were laughing.

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The next training (and probably my favorite) was designing and animating a logo for myself. I wanted to go with my online username that I use for my art accounts, Kodicthyo. I also wanted to portray one of my characters that I created and have had for several years, Nyx. I’m pretty happy with how it turned out. I was struggling with the animation portion, however I’m glad I continued to push through the frustrations because I learned a lot of new things that I never would have learned had I not pushed myself.

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I’m out of time here, so I will have to show the rest of my projects next time I come in. Thank you for reading, as always.

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.