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

RUS412K Illustration

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RUS412K Illustration

I got a new illustration assignment from Kathy, and it’s a super cute setting with Oleg, Polina, and Grigorij all painting in a museum. I think it would be very cute if Oleg just throws his arms and legs up in the air in joy as Polina is turned around to look and Oleg’s painting, but I’m not quite sure what I want to do with Grigorij yet.

I misread the description of the illustration, and put the wrong parent in before. I tried to give everyone a different art style, with Tatsija’s being clearly more professional.

More RUS412K Illustrations

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I’ve been doing some more work on RUS412K illustrations.

U4_8 scene description: Polina and Oleg are next to the window in one of their rooms. The windowsill is covered with various plants (4-5 plants total). Polina is holding a ruler, as if to measure them, and Oleg is holding a plant guide book (Определитель растений)

For this illustration, I opted to reuse a background that Chloe made for an older illustration.

I removed some stuff and then sketched in Polina, Oleg, and some plants.

Oleg’s supposed to be holding a book, but the cover’s impossible to read because of how small it is!

I zoomed in a bit and altered the cover to better match the reference image provided, but it’s still too small.

So I zoomed it in one more time (a lot!) and make the book bigger. Isn’t it cute how you can only see the top of Oleg’s head? I’m going to redraw this background and the objects since I had to zoom in too much, making the lines fuzzy. I will also be changing Polina’s expression to one that is more neutral.

 

I also started sketching out U2_8: Polina and Oleg are at a museum of ethnography, looking at a room with different costumes respresenting various forms of traditional/national dress, like Japanese, Chinese, Indian, Native American, French, German, Arabic, Russian, etc…

 

Persian Learning Resources UI

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ANNNNOTHER UI PROJECT WOOOOO.

I’ve genuinely been enjoying myself with these UI projects! I am working again with Kathy to update the interface for the Persian Learning Resources site. I have attached reference images below!

Current:

Rough:

 

New refs from Suloni:

https://www.laits.utexas.edu/ppp/learning.php

 

And an update on the portal page and Conversations of Iran Today page!

and with added buttons:

COIT home + Dropdown menu