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

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Here is one of the visuals I submitted for the STA interview video. I just made a few characters in the style of what would be shown in the RUS simple animations. The interview was fun to do, and I got to sit in a room where people put me under bright lights and asked questions. It was fun when I wasn’t nervous and could speak coherently. I was asked about my time overall as an STA, what projects I worked on, and any advice I had for other STA’s. I loved doing the animations and I hope to do more projects like this in the future!

 

https://sta.laits.utexas.edu/blog/2017/08/17/21158-2/

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Here is a completed interactive graph for TBH I have made in Canvasser. In the first image, you’re supposed to drag the pin to the year and number where you think immigration was the highest. Then you press “done” and the actual graph shows up (the second image), and you can check to see if you got it right! I made this by using images, objects, and adding the interactive components in Canvasser.

https://sta.laits.utexas.edu/blog/2017/08/17/21136-2/

Sim2

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Recently I’ve been working on a new interactive for the History class in which students learn the origin of foods. It’s been mostly trial and error and this interactive has forced Ruben and I to change a lot of the features of Canvasser, especially the particle system (hopefully for the better). If you want to check out what they look like here’s the link:

https://dev.texasbeyondhistory.net/canvasser_content/food-pathways/tofu/food-pathways.html

eForensics Canvas Assets

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These are some graphics for the ANT366 Canvas page. Banner image and a few buttons. These are essentially images of 3D bones pulled from the website, flattened and tonemapped to reduce the color range of the bones, so they look more cohesive with one another.

Latin 507 Initial Illustrations

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Latin 507 is going live soon and the this course is a little different than last years 506. Dr. Steve Lundy is using more historical/mythological stories to frame his Latin language lessons this time around. This means the illustrated characters are more tied to actual historical and mythological characters, and that they are engaged in some more serious activities than the Latin 506 characters were. The new cast will still be talking, praising, walking, and so forth, but there will potentially be more violence, and other less pleasant activities, like when Romulus stole all the Sabine women at swordpoint (The rape of the Sabine women).

 

We didn’t want the characters to feel too different this time around, but we didn’t want caricatures that seemed out of place while (potentially) killing and stealing one another. So I’m drawing with the same palette and stroke style (line drawing with mostly flat fill colors) but on characters that are more anatomically correct. Here are several characters from the first round.