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, Director of Studio Operations & STA Program Coordinator
  • Video Services: Kelly Webster, Video Production Supervisor, Video STA Supervisor
  • Graphic Design & Web Design Services: Suloni Robertson, Art Director / Design & Coding STA Supervisor

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Russian

I made some iron angles and step stool angles for the bathroom set. Pretty quick and simple:

NWAV

Made the mug and t-shirt designs for NWAV 49! Dr. Hinrichs wasn’t sure on what company he would be using, so I just used Custom Ink and Zazzle to create these mockups for him.

I especially like the look of the mug:

T-shirt color variations; he seemed to like the navy one the most:

Psych CE

I made the title lecture slide and website mockup with my logo:

Racial Geography

Made a little more progress on Racial Geography. I added some subtle shadows, readjusted the heading text, and justified the info text (transcript and bib). I am currently working on trying to make the sections into dropdowns (the weird squares are supposed to be dashicons, but they’re acting a bit weird).

https://sta.laits.utexas.edu/blog/2018/10/31/25586-2/

RUS412K Final Animations Background Progress

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RUS412K Final Animations Background Progress

Wanted to share some of the beautiful progress everyone has made cluttering up and adding details to the bathroom backgrounds! These backgrounds are essentially complete now! The second angle has a little bit of dead space on the back wall, but I think I’m going to crop in for the animations using that angle anyway so it shouldn’t matter! Special thanks to Valerie, Chloe and Estella for helping with adding details.

RUS412K Teethbrushing Progress

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RUS412K Teethbrushing Progress

I made some progress on this teeth brushing animation as well! We typically haven’t shown teeth for these characters, so I thought it would be humorous if this character had humongous teeth when she opens her mouth, as if these characters all have giant teeth and are just hiding them.

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RUS412K Animation Peeling Apples

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RUS412K Animation: Peeling Apples

Heyo! I just wanted to share some progress gifs as I worked through this animation of apple peeling. It ended up being straightforward, but there was some new stuff I did here that I haven’t done in previous animations.

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New Assignment for Animation!

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Today I was given an assignment by Tate. I was tasked to draw some books on top of a stool for the bathroom scene.

In order to start, I had to reinstall brushes in Photoshop for one of the computers in the development lab. I wasn’t sure why it was lacking so many brushes, but I took the liberty to install the necessary brushes for the Russian animations. It took some time to get the right brushes because I forgot which pack they came from. Regardless of the time suck of installation, I finished the assignment! Here’s the progress of it:

When a stool isn’t enough, some books will suffice!

 

I used the reference books that Tate provide in the .psd file and then turned down the opacity on them. Then I lined the books in #1e1d1c1 with Kyle’s Amazing Cartoonist Nib 2 and painted some white behind the line art layer so that when I use watercolor to color the books, the color will show up better (like priming it I guess?). I made a separate group for each book with four layers each. After lining and priming, I added colors using a Watercolor Big Round brush. Once I painted the books, I created a clipping mask for all the colored layers. And then I turned it into Tate! Yeah!

I was taking my time for past assignments, but I think I should start working more quickly and more efficiently. I did this in one day in order to save everyone involved a some time.

That’s all I did for this shift!