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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!
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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.
Hello! Over the break, my family visited my brother in Kyoto, Japan, and we spent a few weeks traveling to nearby cities. I had an amazing time exploring the local foods and desserts, wandering around gardens, temples, thrifting, admiring the unique sewer covers, collecting stamps, and using the wonderful public bathrooms. I will definitely miss the convenience of the konbinis on every street, where you can find pretty much whatever your heart desires (I personally go for the banana milk smoothie).
My favorite location I travelled to is a little island called Naoshima, which is a small, mountainous location known for the public art scattered all over (and the island is in the shape of a cat!). I journaled some of my trip in my sketchbook, so here are some of my spreads:
Although I had a great trip, it’s nice to be back in Austin. I’m excited to see what this semester has in store for me, and am looking forward to getting back into STA projects. My goals this semester are to continue working on illustrative and UI/UX projects, and to grow communication skills with clients and fellow STAs.
Client: Jonathan Cortez, the Carranzas
Task: Create a website/branding to introduce The Carranza Chicano Archive.
Status: In progress, implementing
Clean, Iconography of the Chicana/o movement inspired
I started the design process by looking at inspiration. The client wanted the design assets to reference iconography from within the Chicano movement, while keeping a dynamic look. The client also wanted the color palette to be made up of deep burnt orange, mustard yellow, navy blues, and forest greens.
Create a repeatable abstract motif/banner graphic for the site. Indigenous iconography (Aztec & Mayan).
Several options of implementations of the above assets.
The client wanted to include a Hunab-Ku somewhere on the homepage, so I tried several different variations and placements.
We ended up choosing to going with it being in the hero section, with a transparent background.
This break was mainly a chance for me to rest after the craziness that was last semester. That said, during the first week, I worked for LAITS a little bit and also worked on my portfolio :’). For fun, I caught up with old friends from high school, went on a cruise to the Caribbean with my family, and watched a ton of Star Wars!
As I come back as an STA for this spring, I am beginning the semester by reflecting on how I spent my time over break. After a long, busy semester, I definitely felt it was necessary to catch up on my rest. However, I also spent a lot of time working on various projects as well.
At the end of last semester, I was appointed as the digital marketing chair for Texas Lassos. So over break, I spent time creating various materials for this semester’s recruitment season.
Here is the recruitment calendar! I used Procreate for this and it was a bit tedious- this post took a while, but I am very proud of the final result.
Here is the recruitment teaser video! This project was a lot of fun because after designing the layout, book cover, book pages, and bolo tie in Adobe Illustrator, I transferred the files into Adobe After Effects in order to create the opening book effect. I have basically zero experience on After Effects, so this was honestly very intimidating to me, but I found a few tutorials that really helped, and after many hours, I had my final result. I am also very proud of this project- the final version is exactly what I envisioned.
Here I have two flyers for events I created using Canva Pro & Adobe Photoshop. This was a fun experience because it allowed me to play more around with Canva- I tend to avoid using it because of its limiting quality of being able to mostly just use existing assets, but for these flyers with a very quick turnaround, it was incredibly convenient.
Last project I worked on prior to the semester starting was a graphic for an upcoming profit share. I used Adobe Photoshop for this, creating two size variations, and am very happy with how they turned out.