This semester, I’ll be stepping away from my role as an STA as I take on a new opportunity at an AI-tutoring startup. Being part of the STA Program has been such an enriching experience, and I’m incredibly grateful for everything I’ve learned during my time here.

This past fall, I had the chance to work on our STA Alumni site, Dr Christopher Beevers’ Mood labs site, Dr Elliot Tucker-Drob’s Lifespan Development Lab, as well as Dr Mark Ravina’s Clioviz maps interface. All of which deepened my skills in web design, research, development, and design decision-making. Each project challenged me in new ways and allowed me to grow as a designer and problem-solver.

A huge thank you to my amazing managers, Leilani Cabello and De’sha Bass-McClellan, for their guidance, support, and mentorship. Working with this team has been an absolute joy, and I’ll miss collaborating with my fellow STAs.

I’m excited for this next chapter, but don’t worry, this isn’t goodbye. I’m looking forward to what’s coming up, and I’m hopeful that my path will cross again with the STA Program down the road. It’s been a great experience, and I’m definitely keeping an eye on what’s ahead!

Been a while since I’ve updated my blog but there’s been a really big project I’ve been working on since January that I’m excited to talk about!

MSAI Logo and Animation

I was tasked with taking on the MSAI logo creation and animation this month and it actually went in a different direction than I was expecting. Here’s the logo that was finalized.

The animation actually had to go through some iterations. Here was the original concept.

After showing to the PM, we realized that it came across as plants growing from the brain rather than the nodes being stimulated by the brain. After a meeting to discuss a new direction for the animation, here’s what we came up with.

This was actually not only a preferred animation from the client, but it was also a pretty simple animation to complete which I’m really happy about.

DELL IPE Online Course Creation

This project has been quite fun to work on as it emphasizes my focus, character animation!

I’ve been working with Shanda to make animation for Dell’s IPE Online Course where they’ve requested for us to animate specific lecture slides for them. These are essentially medical scenarios they would like animated. This project will most likley last a couple months as they’ve requested 6 animations that span to be 5 – 8 minutes so right now I’ve been focusing on making reusable animation assets that can make our project pipeline faster.

Shanda is the Illustrator on the project and has done wonderful work to make the characters! Here’s the lineup.

With all these characters, here’s some of the animations I made beforehand to prep for the slides.

Since then, I’ve been making an After Effects template that can be used as a master file for all the animations needed.

Those are my main updates for now. Next I wanna finish up the animations assets and make a project tracking sheet for this project for the whole semester.

⋆˚✿˖° January Projects ⋆˚✿˖°

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Custom Static Stingers

Beginning of this month, I got to assist in some custom static stingers that I assume will be used in an actual classroom! Even though the task was really simple, I was really excited to help create assets alongside a project!

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Custom Studio Course Graphics

I chose the ART 3800 option in creating the custom studio course graphics and specifically went the cubism movement route in creating the graphics! To be honest, it was a bit of a struggle trying to develop a theme as there was more freedom on my end, but it ended up being good practice in navigating course themes!

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Basic Training: Shapes and Patterns

The next training checklist I completed was creating basic shapes and patterns in Photoshop. I sound like a broken record but these tasks really help me in becoming familiar with the capabilities of Photoshop! It was really cool that I could create my own palette and create a grid just by pressing a few buttons!

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2025 Summer Marketing Poster

This project was really fun as it allowed me to work more in Illustrator and get used to developing mockups and test versions for a final draft! First I developed a color palette with the help of Marissa and then decided to use a pale yellow color for an accent color!

After some feedback, we decided with the blue color and keeping more the same color palette! I reformatted the posters with the changes shown in the left and middle posters! Finally we decided to keep the poster in the same tone and lighten the gradient to show the background lines better!

⋆˚✿˖° December Projects ⋆˚✿˖°

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Learning the Principles and Elements of Design

Another training checklist I completed was understanding the principles and elements of design! l did most of the recreations in Photoshop so it was beneficial in getting myself use to using the software! I remember being really proud that I recreated the Girl Scout logo without using the brush tool!

⋆˚✿˖° November Projects ⋆˚✿˖°

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Style A & B Course Graphics

Earlier this month, I got to create course graphics for any course of my choosing so I chose AAS 310! This was my first time working with Adobe Photoshop, so it was definitely a struggle understanding the nooks and cranny at first, but once I got the hang of it, it was such a breeze! I’d love in the future to actually get to create some course graphics Professor Jin could use as I feel like I could’ve incorporated more of the course’s elements and themes!

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Basic Training: History of Design

I did some more of my training checklist and one of my favorites was recreating this punk rock poster with a character from one of my favorite shows! A new feature of Photoshop I learned was its custom fonts and filters! It’s amazing how each time I use this software I learn something new!

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STA Self-Portrait

Lastly, is my self portrait for the STA blog! To be honest, I always have a hard time doing any sort of self related pieces but it was actually really fun getting to create like my own avatar/persona! My first month as a Design STA has truly been so wonderful and I can’t wait to continue this journey ◝(ᵔᗜᵔ)◜!

Summer Marketing

Feb Post #2: Animated Instagram Reel listing the “Top 3 Reasons” to take UT summer online courses.

Spring Postcard: Finding our graduate to feature on the postcard :0