Portfolio Day! Spring 2025 #SemesterRecap
This past semester, I tried to incorporate deeper emotional context into what I created. I thought a lot about the intersection between art and design. Inspired by the readings and coursework of a Motion design class, for each of these projects, I first decided on what story or information I wanted to communicate to the audience. All of the projects took off from there!
Cool to be Kind
This augmented reality (AR) poster was created for a group exhibition that explored what kindness meant to us. Created with Procreate, Moho, After Effects, and EyeJack, I wanted to demonstrate how acknowledging the emotional needs of others is an act of kindness. Being kind can mean validating someone’s feelings, even if those feelings aren’t positive or happy. Creating space for someone to grieve is an act of love.
UTD Student Counseling Center PSA
These two animations were a part of a group guerrilla motion design projection project. We highlighted the various mental health resources available through the UTD Student Counseling Center (SCC) and matched them to corresponding mental health states. This project was personal to me, as I have used TimelyCare for mental health help during grad school. I took on a significant amount of leadership responsibilities for this role, and I think it turned out quite well.
Aside from sharing about UTD’s mental health resources, I used this project to dive deeper into After Effects. I know the possibilities of animation are limitless, but it all starts with the vision and planning of the project. If you can storyboard it, you can make it happen! The final products aren’t 100% accurate to the storyboards I created, but it was still good practice for me to visualize and document what I imagined happening on screen.
In this project proposal, you can see just how much thought went into the making of the project.
Shout out to my other group members! Watch the full video with their contributions as well!
While I was so excited to create this project, I reached out to the SCC to get their perspective, but they never responded to me! We went ahead and completed the project anyway.
After compiling the 5 total videos for the project, my team and I uploaded them to USB drives and set up projectors in a secluded tunnel. Here you can see my classmates engaging with the work.
Vermillion
Have you ever felt invisible? How much of your self-image is impacted by how others see you?
Whew! There is too much to summarize here. Vermillion is the name of my Thesis/capstone project. This “villain origin story” deals with topics of invisibility and self-image. If you want to read all about the project and the progress I’ve made, check out my blog post with a comprehensive breakdown of the project!
If you want to read about the conceptual aspect and project development, check out this paper that takes a deep dive into the creation of the project from a research perspective.
Motion Design Word Animations
The purpose of these projects was to show the definition of the words through animation. I created these in After Effects and, following project guidelines, was only able to use black letters on a white background. Infinite/Finite was my favorite, and seeing it blown up on the big screen was pretty trippy. This project is also how I found my favorite sans-serif font (Arlette).
What else?
I got a paper published in an online animation blog! And one of the authors I cited left a comment!!!
I went to Black N Animated’s Career Summit (This happened in the Fall semester, but I’m still pumped)
I TA’d for motion design for the second semester in a row, and I even started leading the class on my own.
I’ve been studying a lot of illustration and background drawing techniques from LearnSquared courses and YouTube University.
That about sums up my semester! Thanks for reading!
