ECO304L Animation : Proof of Concept

This week I have mainly been working on the ECO304L animation. I was instructed to create an animation, possibly a stop motion, that consisted on money origami folding into different shapes. Preferably the professor wanted the origami shapes to be different money currencies.

I created two proofs of concept. One is a stop motion and the other is completely animated.

 

 

We decided to go with the second choice because I will be able to include different currencies and the design will match better with the complete course graphics.

Microeconomics

So macroeconomics was the hardest AP test I took — no joke, I redrew a graph (in pen!) four times. Oh well. When I got this assignment and noticed it was style B with no pre-chosen image, my brain suddenly grew cobwebs. I had no idea what kind of image to pick: is money too literal? is a city too macro? is a neural net of connections too meta? Who knows, so I suggested all of them.

 

Thankfully, the professors picked a photo. But it was way small, so Poonum suggested I recreate it. (original at bottom, mine at top)

Here’s how I did it.

1. Reverse image search the original image to find the historical image to put into the tablet (I used TinEye, which I usually use for journalistic projects for image verification)
2. Open PSD doc in 1920×1080 and put in historical photo.
3. Search Pexels or something similar for a copyright-free picture of an iPad. I looked for one without anything covering the edge.
4. Cut out the tablet in Photoshop, then put it in the 1920×1080 doc.
5. Search Pexels again, but this time for hands. It took me a few minutes to find a hand in the proper shape to “grip” the tablet.
6. Cut out the hands in Photoshop, then paste them individually into the master doc.
7. Layer the iPad in front of the historical photo and use Quick Select to select the black screen. Hit delete. 
8. Move and resize the photo as needed to fill the iPad screen. Make a group folder for these two.
9. Take the left hand and align it with the iPad so that it looks like it’s gripping it. There will probably be some overlap from fingers we want “behind” the tablet — just erase them with the eraser tool.
10. For me, the other hand looked janky, so I deleted that layer and then duplicated the left hand one, then flipped it so that it looked like a right hand. Add the hands to the iPad+photo group folder. 
11. Back to Pexels. Find a city image. Layer it behind everything.
12. Adjust the size of the hands + iPad + photo as needed.
13. Select the background image layer. Go to color balance and adjust until it matches the hands (for me, this was signifcantly warmer than the original background image).
14. Select one of the hands. Adjust brightness + contrast until it matches the background. Do the same for the other hand and the iPad layer.
15. Done!

Here are the course graphic drafts I’ve made:

ISPRII Style Guide is Done!

The remaining pages of the style guide include PowerPoint templates and mockups of the logo on different accessories, including a t-shirt, a laptop sticker, a notebook, and a mug.

E316 Website Content Transfer

This is a hard project to express visually. Most of the tasks involved making sure that the pages of the English department’s old website were successfully transferred and formatted to fit the new Grav website. However, I ran into an interesting issue in which a plus sign in the slug of one of the pages was creating duplicates that couldn’t be deleted until we asked Ruben to do so by going into the file manager.

Here’s a screenshot of the old and new websites:

After Effects Training Posts

After a couple of weeks, these new intermediate trainings on motion graphics and logo animation (as well as a reference page on Keyframing) are mostly ready to be put to use!

Here are the links to the Logo Animation and Keyframing posts that I authored, along with their respective banners designed on Illustrator and After Effects:

• Intermediate After Effects Training: Logo Animation

• Keyframing: The Very Basics

GOV 365W PPT Template

This was a very time-sensitive task on creating a PowerPoint template for the Human Rights/World Politics using the official UT palette and the image background shown below.

ISPRII Style Guide

At the final stages of this project, I’ve been putting together a Style Guide to present to the clients, including the different types of logos, the color palette and font selection, pairings and alternatives, and mockups.

Photo IDs

Texas Global PowerPoint Redesigns

The new styleguide provided by Valerie was a nice way to refresh these outdated designs for the old PPTs. Here are some slides of Technology Description and Market Validation: