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

Canvas Appstore Project Day ONE!

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Beginning the Canvas Appstore Project

Project: Canvas Appstore
Completion status: Started October 19 2018
Staff guidance: Chris Pittman
STA team members: Jac
Description/plans: Download a server & start running some code! Also meet with Jac about UI design.
To be completed: Not really sure to be honest 

After my orientation I immediately jumped into my first project. It turns out that UT is trying to build an Appstore for different Canvas add-ons! It looks as if I’ll be using the design elements that Jac has created to code into CSS.

So, to begin, I met with Chris and got the lay of the land on Git. Later, I started to install MAMPS which is the server that I’ll be using for this project. I ran into some issues when confirming that I could run my files on this server, so I reached out to Chris and hopefully I can get that sorted out for Monday. I also met with Jac today and she gave me some great notes on how to code the CSS for this project so that’s super exciting!

I also took a tour of the LAITS Studio and took my photo for the STA poster!

 

 

Animation

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A Spinning Laundry Detergent Box

 

Today I mainly worked on creating a laundry detergent box for the Russian animations. I started with just the line work and Tate made it into this spinning animation!

Then I finished up by coloring and shading the object. I’m eager to see the box with its logo!

And You Guessed It…Vlabs!

 

I’m hoping to be done by Sunday and I’m going to start working on a new project regarding Vlabs

 

Project: Vlabs UI and Design
Client /Prof: Dr. Kappleman and Adrienne Witzel
Completion status: Started October 19 2018
Staff guidance: Suloni Robertson
STA team members: n/a
Description/plans: Design the Vlabs site’s navigation style, header, banner, and branding
To be completed: tbd

 

Anyways, here is an update of what the lab that I have been working on looks like. I now know everything there is to know about craniums.

 

 

 


Week of 10/15

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Week of 10/15

This week I did some object creations for RUS412 and made some pans and a bowl. Pretty simple stuff. They’re going to be dishes for the cafe owner character to wash. I approve of this cafe system where the boss has to wash his share of dishes too.

I also quickly edited an ID for Dr. Joan Neuberger of the History Dept., who apparently won an award from the American Historical Association, so congrats to her! They wanted her ID up ASAP so that it would match the image on the press publications. Good thing the image was already very nice so I didn’t have to do a lot of edits and could upload it quickly.

Here are some other COLA IDs I edited this week:

For Sanika’s orientation (welcome!!!) I helped her with the STA Handbook PPT portion. She already knew how to use Powerpoint, so I just showed her how to find/paste the server path and also how to use The Noun Project to get icons. She picked some cute ones for her PPT; you can see a preview on her blog 🙂

Finally, I’m making more voting PSA cards for the online classes.

Exxon Donor Thank You Video Quote Pages

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I’ve also been working on some “Quote Pages” for a Thank You video to Exxon for their donations to UT programs. I’ve tried a few different things for it and have attached some of my iterations to this post.

 

The first iteration, I leaned heavily on Premiere plugins for this since I haven’t made anything like this for LAITS before and it helped me get some footing for where to take it:

 

 

I then tried a variation that included the color image, but Kelly preferred the gradient image. This one also accommodated portrait style photos if needed.

 

 

Following Kelly’s critique, I made some modifications to the intro transitions:

 

 

Then I tried Kelly’s suggestion of fading in the gradient at the beginning of the quote page, and I think we’ve reached a point where the formatting is essentially finalized:

 

 

Now I’m working on some color variations for the text box and title line; should have this finalized by tomorrow!

vlabs and animation

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Vlabs and First Animation Assignment

 

As per usual, I’ve been working on vlabs. I think I will be able to finally finish Lab 10 by the end of this week. Yay!

I also completed my first animation assignment. I was assigned to create an object symbol for a short animation of a soccer ball. Here she is! That’s all I have for now!

 

 

 

RUS412K Final Set of Animations Update

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RUS412K Final Set of Animations Update

I’ve been chugging along with the pre-production for the RUS412K animations and just wanted to share some the progress I’ve made! Here is the new Cafe Kitchen, with two different angles:

And I used the lovely apples that Estella made to create LOTS of apple variation and some giant piles of apples to go in the space:

And this is the Apt Bathroom, shown with 3 angles:

Complete with a washing machine door that opens and closes!

And a buncha angles of this toothbrush

Already we’re getting through the preproduction stuff super quickly, but I’m hoping to use any extra time we have to really add clutter to the backgrounds and make them more real and entertaining!