STA Work Blog

Suloni asked myself and a few other STA’s to review a new course designed to help freshman become acquired to UT online courses. I enjoyed this opportunity to provide feedback for this new tool as it allowed me practice on thinking critically about user-experience and bring back my knowledge on effective presentations/speaking.

I believe the tutorial has the power to be very helpful for students, however, I expressed concern about the delivery of the information and the service name itself (Connect the Dot Com). The name is not at all descriptive or relevant, and I was worried that students who would like help becoming familiar with online courses will not access this tutorial solely because the name does not give any hint or reference to its content. Hopefully, the team responsible for this project will utilize mine and other STA’s feedback to refine this tool; it has such potential!

 

Additionally, I noticed that the course home page and the video footer uses an outdated version of the LAITS Development Studio logo. Oops!

 

 

Along with doing the UI design for the Racial Geography Tour website, I was also asked to put together a style guide that encompasses the styles of both the 360 video and website. This style guide not only organizes the art direction of the project, but serves as a tool for the professor to see the cohesiveness of the two mediums as well.

Here is the style guide that lays out typography, color, video imagery and symbols, and website imagery:

RGT_styleguide

Last week, I mostly worked on my U1_10 illustration and cascade re-documentation updates on the Google doc with the other STA’s. I also worked on a LAH flyer using one of the Microsoft Word newsletter template.

Here are the details regarding the U1_10 illustration: Polina and Oleg are sitting at the kitchen table, resting their face in their hands so that they have an identical, bored appearance (if face in hand it too hard, I’m open to other options). They’re listening to Boris (grandpa) read from a book he’s holding in one hand.

<initial sketch>

<mid-progress>

…had to make adjustments to the chairs to make them ~fancier~ and also fix a few other things, like Oleg’s facial expression to look more “bored.”

<final> –> added shadows to the chairs & fixed Boris’ awkward looking palm.

LAH flyer

<my previous flyer>

<using the already-made template>

Lately, I’ve been working on the new unit banner for RUS412K. The style is supposed to be very smooth and painterly, so I’ve been spending a lot of time trying to blend everything out while keeping the colors vibrant. This isn’t a style I normally work in because I really enjoy very expressive brush strokes, so it’s a bit challenging! I’ve been loosely using the following image as a reference. I’m trying to keep it as accurate as possible, since that’s very important to Dr. Rice.

 

 

I’ve also been busy assigning illustrations and providing feedback and meeting with other STAs to talk about illustration work flow… So far everyone has been understanding very well and have begun working on their first illustrations, which is very exciting!

I also started doing some sketches for a new Russian illustration.

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).

I’m just trying to figure out what plants would look nice on the windowsill. I could probably recycle a background from a previous illustration since it’s supposed to take place in one of their rooms.

I also started working on a new self portrait for the STA blog since I got a swanky new hair cut this summer!

I’ve started working on the U15_3 illustration. So far, I made two versions of the sketch. The first looked too much like Boris was talking and thinking about the Banya instead of just daydreaming about it. In the second draft, I changed Boris’s gesture to make it look more like he is teaching. I also added tiered seating to make it look more like an auditorium.

I’ve also started working on the taxi object creation assignment. I’m not yet finished, but I used a stock image of a van and traced it. This particular object is taking a bit longer than usual because it is more complicated.

https://sta.laits.utexas.edu/blog/2018/07/10/23586-2/

Canvasser Documentation

This week I had the opportunity to meet with Tate to talk about documenting Canvasser so that people can easily learn how to use it. It is a difficult task since the program is full of knacks that make it tough to use and learn. We decided that the best way would be to create a BIG interactive, the father of all other interactives. In here we would bit by bit explain how to use every part of Canvasser, from particles to drag and drop. Then we actually opened Canvasser and we scratched that idea completely. We realized that Canvasser already has a learn and a samples sections and that the best way to learn Canvasser would be to use it. The problem is that some of the tutorials are not even complete. Some of the samples don’t show any process either. We would need to go back and fill things like that in and hopefully after that Canvasser can truly be a one stop shop for making HTML 5 animations. I feel like it will be fun to learn a little about how Canvasser was made in the process.