STA Blog

STA Work Blog

STAs: Student Technology Assistants

Who We Are
LAITS: IT and Facilities Director, Joe TenBarge initiated the Student Technology Assistant program in 2004. STAs are UT students who work on a variety of projects in collaboration with UT faculty and LAITS staff members. STAs assist College of Liberal Arts faculty members and administrative staff with print and web design. From building presentations, to creating audio/visual works, and producing online classes in the LAITS film studios, STAs are instrumental in helping COLA faculty realize their vision for multimedia projects that enhance their teaching and the students learning experience. By the end of their student careers, STAs have portfolios which demonstrate their accrued technical and design skills.

Prospective STAs:

Creative and technically inclined students are appointed as STAs for one year, with the possibility of being rehired as long as they study at the university. Applicants for the program are hired before both long semesters. Interested students may look for postings on Hire-A-Longhorn when positions are available. Positions will have Student Technology Assistant (illustrator or web designer) in the title of the job post.

Faculty and Staff:

Faculty & Staff with questions about services, please contact us.

https://liberalarts.utexas.edu/laits/contacts.php

  • Audio Services: Michael C Heidenreich, Audio Services Manager
  • Video Services: Kelly Webster, Video Production Supervisor
  • Graphic Design & Web Design Services: Suloni Robertson, Art Director / STA Program Manager

History Faculty New Book Series Poster

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I was asked to create an 11″ x 17″ poster for the History Faculty New Book Series this academic year. The poster needed to contain event, author, and book information as well as photos of the authors and/or book covers. In order to display different styles, I created three initial drafts of the design varying in color scheme, layout, font, and graphical elements. These are pictured below:

  

I then chose only the latter two to send to the client for feedback per Suloni’s advice.

The client decided to go with the green poster’s style. Additionally, they requested the circular elements be changed to squares and that both the author portraits and the book covers be included in the design. Using this critique, the following designs were created:

 

U9_3 Illustration

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The last illustration I finished was the Unit 9 Scene 3 illustration.

Scene Description:

Oleg and Polina are at an apiary. Both are wearing those big hats with nets and watching how a beekeeper opens a hive.
To start, I created a rough composition in Photoshop like so:
After getting approval for the composition and making minor tweaks (such as zooming in slightly in order to get rid of some of the empty space in the scene), I began lining the illustration. I thought giving Polina and Oleg matching hats would be very cute and fitting!
I traced over the beekeeper and boxes and started coloring in the box panels that hold the bees in order to get a feel for what colors the drawers should be…
After blocking in colors, I thought about adding some bees flying around in order to create interest and context for the illustration. I also painted in clusters of bees to make it a little more realistic.
I added nets over their hats and a tree in the background in an attempt to fill up some of the empty space in the illustration. The tree is a linden tree — this way we can tie together two illustrations involving bees as the other involves Polina and Oleg inspecting a linden tree branch.
We felt that the tree needed a little more detail, so I tried to shade the leaves a little more…  I also added some more individual blades of grass to tie the colors together more.
I ended up redrawing the tree to make it a little more realistic and called it done!

U12_3 Illustration

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The illustration for the U12_3 scene depicts people riding in the back of an old pick up truck sitting on furniture. The houses in the background should show ornate and traditional Siberian wooden buildings.

I pieces together multiple scenes and objects to construct a rough draft of the scene. I chose to use a truck later on that had a more open bed, but I stuck with older style of furniture

The background of the scene was my favorite part of the scene to do. I loved drawing the ornate windows and woodwork of the houses. The background couldn’t be too detailed, but enough to show that traditional woodwork. The truck and the furniture were hard to fit into the scene to get the perspective right, but I think I got it down.

I cleaned up the drawing and added more trees in the background to fill out space. The tonal renderings were simple in the background and required just simple shading. On the truck, however, I wanted to show the shine of the coating as it drove in the sun, and the shading was much more dynamic and had more contrast than the background. The people are simple in the drawing but require some detail to make it look more realistic.

Overall this was one of my favorite scenes to illustrate!

U11_2 Illustration

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The U11_2 illustration depicts Polina and Oleg in the a movie theatre, and on the screen shows an Eastern Orthodox wedding with traditional elements. This scene was going to be interesting because of the lighting. I have to think of the shadows and highlights of the scene because of the movie screen.

 

I started a rough sketch of the scene. Oleg and Polina are sitting towards the back of the movie theatre so they can be more easily seen. The scene of the screen shows the bride and groom being adorned with crowns as part of their wedding ceremony.

I started the final draft of the illustration, keeping more simple draping around the screen on the sidewalls. The scene on the screen was also initially more simple, with more detail but on the bride and groom.

My tonal rendering showed the lighting on the side walls with a more diffuse effect, with the side drapes with stronger shadows, and a very strong highlight on the edge of the chair. I also added more people into the scene.

After talking with Suloni and Kathy, we decided that the movie theatre needed more ornate decoration, including wood framing around the screen and the drapes on the side wall. It just felt a little incomplete in the sketch before and need more detail. The people also needed to be more detailed, so I gave some of them hair and made some of them children, etc.

I was given the task to color the scene, and I initially chose to do a blue wall color. The chairs were a red velvet.

However, I think to go in theme with an older, more classic style of cinema, I tried out the color red for the movie theatre. I also changed the drapes to red and made the wood framing a warm brown. I gave more detail to the wedding scene, including adding more decor to the church walls and cieling and adding more detail to the crowns and adding shadow to the bride and groom’s clothing.

 

This was the hardest but most rewarding scene I had to do. It was hard to get the correct shadows and highlights in the theatre, and also finding a balance of detail on the screen and in the audience.

Latin 507

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This week was an illustration of Horatius Cocles, a legendary soldier who supposedly fended off an entire Etruscan army while the Romans behind him destroyed the bridge into the city.