KB Research – Background in Illustrator

Completion Status: Started on Oct 25

This week I completed a draft of my background that I’m doing for the KB research! I added on the following steps, shown through these images:

And then this is my final version so far:

 

STA Blog Banner

I’m also excited to announce that my submission for the STA blog banner was chosen! I had a lot of fun making this background; I decided to go the route of “mentally I want to be here”, so now everyone’s caricatures gets a beach day field trip.

Summer Marketing

Project: Summer Marketing
Client:  LAITS
Staff guidance: De’sha
Description/plans: We Finalized the design for the Fall Postcard, GPC Desktop Monitor, and Digital Display. I also began editing the Tution Guide PDF.

 

Fall Postcard

 

GPC Desktop Screensavers

Digital Display

Summer Marketing: Fall Postcard

Project: Summer Marketing
Client:  LAITS
Staff guidance: De’sha
Description/plans: Right now we are designing the Fall Postcard that will be mailed out to students’ permanent (home) addresses to get them to start thinking about their summer plans (aka taking an online summer course with LAITS)!

After our Summer Marketing meeting, we determined #4 as our strongest design, but we will continue workshopping #1 to potentially have another strong option.

 

     

 

Group Meeting 10/30

This week De’sha shared her passion project with us! De’sha is very well-spoken and inspirational when she speaks about her passion project DEFINE. It was nice to hear someone tell us how they found a project that also aligned with their skills and passions.

KB Research – Background in Illustrator

Completion Status: Started on Oct 25

This last week I’ve mostly been focusing on preparing research for another STA tutorial on the Knowledge Base. After learning a lot about Illustrator on my own and through classes, I wanted to propose an Illustrator tutorial in which an STA would create their own background in the program. My hope would be that the tutorial is something that is able to be done even by a “non-artist” and focus on breaking down simple steps to create a more complex whole. I’ve felt that this was important because I consider myself someone who isn’t very good drawing by hand or in a regular digital art program, so I want to decrease the barrier to making illustrations. I think this tutorial will also yeild a specific shape-based style, which I also think might be good knowledge if a client were to want something to that effect.

 

Starting with step one, here’s my inspiration board:

And then getting into the real creation of the image, here’s a step by step image process:

And then my next steps will include continuing to add gradients to create depth and add interest, changing color schemes, adding shadows and highlights, and more!

 

After getting this far I’ve noticed that there’s a bunch of useful tools that I can talk about in the tutorial and how using multiple together can be really helpful, including using the line width tool with the blend tool to create perspective, the blend tool to easily duplicate shapes, the pattern tool to create the vines or the leaf pattern, draw inside tool to cut off shapes, and a few others. Besides just the literal sense of creating a background I’d also hope that STAs would learn about these tools and start thinking of how to reapply them to other projects.

 

 

Summer Marketing: Fall Postcard

We started to explore a more whimsical appearance to the Fall postcards with colorful lines wrapping around the UT tower. The second version was generally liked, so I’ll just be making edits/adjustments to the design to make it stronger.

 

Basic Training: Custom Course Graphics

Drumroll please…. presenting the completed custom course graphic design menu! Earlier in the semester I was assigned to a custom course graphic task but I didn’t have much experience with it. Afterward, I decided to complete this training so that the next time I have a similar task, I’ll be well prepared.

Animation Training

This week has been dedicated to my new animation training of creating a rigged walk cycle. I completed my character design and learn a ton ab Illustrator. It’s a very intimidating program at first but like all software, it gets easier to figure out. Here’s my final design.

I made all the limbs different groups and was able to organize the character pretty well. Next up is rigging in After Effects!

This was actually pretty hard to find a tutorial on surprisingly. A lot of tutorials on after effects rigging rely on an After Effects extension called DUIK. Apparently it’s one of the best extensions for After Effects, but I don’t need any more fancy tools so I stuck with vanilla After Effects (DUIK also costs money and I don’t think that’s the best move).

I found a tutorial on After Effects layer parenting and was able to attach all the limbs to the appropriate joints.

Here’s my progress on the walk cycle.

https://utexas.box.com/s/whr4jxsn20pprek068pwg98fh5wg45sq 

It’s very robotic and kind of unsettling to look at, but I plan to just get the key poses done and then to add more aniation principles later.

I’ve been having a lot of fun with this project! I’m learning new programs, I’m designing a character, and I’m practicing something I really love! I’m excited to see the final look.