Practicum: Day 16 - 17

Yesterday, I got to help on a new project =D
We are building a custom Wordpress site for a local roofing company and my supervisor already had most of it done. I only had to add a few things here and there and create a few new custom pages.

Now that I've done custom pages a few times and know how to pull content from the Wordpress back-end, creating the pages did not take me as long as I thought...
What did take a long time was me trying to put in a jQuery slider on the home page that rotates certain testimonials. I have come to the conclusion that I am horrible at Javascript/jQuery =(

The good news is that at least I got the slider thing to work before I left for the day!

Today consisted primarily of photo-editing and enhancing as I was picking out images for the website's gallery and making banners.

Layers and layers of banners!

I also got a chance to join a meeting today. We reviewed one of the completed website's content and how the website's current SEO health is and now it can be further improved. It is amazing how much you can learn in an hour and a half.

Bad news is that I broke the navigation on the website and did not have time to fix it and will have to leave that for tomorrow... like I said... I am no good with Javascript/jQuery...

Practicum: Day 11 - 15 recap

It has been a busy week at my practicum and I feel like I have totally melted my brain by the end of today.

I had been finishing up some interactive elements and plugins for the project I've been working on.

The tabs on the homepage now have a cover triangle that move to whichever tab is active =D

And this took sooooo long to figure out, but isotope is finally working on the website and now visitors can filter the website's projects by location AND type. Woohoo!

Another brain-cell killing problem was when the carousel gallery was not working the way it was supposed to; images would not load until half way on the page, the slider would sometimes have an enormous height... and some other problems. The good news is that we have fixed all of this now!

I did get some breaks from coding here and there, editing some graphics and doing some data-entry tasks, but for the most part, my week consisted of staring at screens that looked like this:

Something special that happened this week though, was that I got the chance to tag along with my practicum supervisor to a meeting with a client and the web marketing specialist. I felt like a little baby learning to walk while I was in that meeting... I had no idea how little I knew about web marketing until the meeting. I was glad I got the opportunity to sit in =)

I feel like it was such a fulfilling week because we have finished 98% of the project I've been working on - 1% because we are lacking content, the other 1% is because we have not implemented the SEO and web marketing tools yet.

The other big project I have been helping my colleague out on is officially live now! Compared to what my colleagues have done, I feel like what I have done to help is almost nothing because it was such a big project.

Anyway... TGIF!
It's time to get some rest =)

Practicum: Day 10

Whoa. I have been exposed to so many mobility and accessibility equipments and accessories these past couple days because of the photo editing we have been doing. We have been editing and cleaning up photos to make sure that all products are on white backgrounds (as shown below), which took up the majority of the day.

The great news is that we have finished all the product photo editing!

The latter part of the day, I got to play with code again, to make sure that post excerpts on the Wordpress theme would show up differently according to the length of the posts.

I was pretty proud of the result!
The excerpts would show up in different ways =D

I am going to implement isotope into the theme, as suggested by my practicum supervisor, to use as the visual sorting system when visitors want to filter out projects. I have a feeling I will be spending my whole Monday doing that. Haha.

Practicum: Day 9

Although it was a productive day at work today, the work is not as interesting as usual because we just did a lot of photo cleaning up and looking for product images.

I must say, though, because of that, I have definitely learned to edit images as fast as possible while keeping them as decent as possible. There were some images where they had gone through some horrible previous edits. For example, a round edge (e.g. a wheel on a wheelchair) is all jagged. Those were the ones that took the longest to edit because I had to fix the edges so the edges of the products are not strange-looking.

A side note...

My practicum colleague told me that the company has been to Google seminars before and they got these cool glasses and water bottle from there!

I usually do stay longer after work hours, but today I stayed much longer, hoping to help finish editing the images as much as I could so we can move on to other fun stuff tomorrow!

Practicum: Day 8

Like I've said before in the previous post, the project I was working on was near completion, so I just made some minor tweeks here and there to make sure that the site's layout does not break on different resolutions. There were also some other things like editing/finalizing the custom post types and reordering some of the current posts on the website.

Since we are now just waiting on the client for content, I was able to step foot into another project!

My colleague is currently working on a large e-commerce website and needs help, so I after I've finished the minor edits on my project, I helped him with the product images.

We had to edit the images to make sure that all products were on a white background and that they all faced one direction to maintain consistency throughout the website. I've only done one category and there are many more, so I have a feeling that I will get to take a break from coding and will be touching up images for a little while =P

Practicum: Day 7

This is my first practicum post but it is actually not my first day at there. I've already been to work quite a few times before and I have been working on a custom Wordpress website for my practicum company's client.

The project I am working on is nearing its completion and I am now just fixing some responsive CSS bugs on the theme.

Here is my work-space set up:

Now that I am used to multiple screens, I don't know how I will be able to go back to using just one monitor anymore.

And a super duper bonus is the office dog, Stinks! He is super cute and keeps us company while we work. Whenever we leave the office for lunch and come back, he always welcomes us back by running around everywhere =D

I have already learned so much from my practicum and I have just started... It makes me realize that what I have learned from school is really just the tip of the iceberg!

Colorful Wig Sisters for Filming

One of the many projects we've been working on is a short video which has to be edited in After Effects.
We went out to film footage for the project one Wednesday morning and Allison and I got to dress up as crazy, colorful, wig sisters ;)

We had to act snooty on camera... Have we mastered the "I'm better than you" look?

We were walking down the streets in downtown, and needless to say, we got many people questioning why we were dressed this way.
What I've learned though, was that people are not surprised by how crazy you act if you dress normal, but are surprised by how crazy you look even if you act normal. Interesting.

We had a lot of fun filming and I was so surprised at how quickly we got all the footage we need. Maybe we are just naturals at playing our wig sisters characters ;D

3D and pixelated

So...
This past week or so, I've been working on my infographic resume.
I am doing a 3D pixelated look for the theme. Here was my work in progress in Illustrator:

This was just one small part of the whole infographic. In case you don't know me well enough yet, that pixelated character is me, and beside me is my cat!

The whole process involved a lot of extrude and bevel in order to achieve that 3D look.

One draw-back I found from using this technique was that you cannot just transform and flip the elements horizontally because the 3D technique does not transform properly since Illustrator isn't meant for doing 3D work. When I needed to make a duplicate of anything but wanted it to face the other way, I basically had to delete the 3D effects, rearrange the elements' layer order, put the 3D effect back on, and then tweak the position of each elements after - almost as if I were doing the whole thing all over again.

However, I found this project quite fun to do and it turned out to be much better than I had imagined. Initially, I was worried about not knowing what to put on the infographic, but it turns out that less info and more graphics worked out better for my style.

I got some feedback on the infographic today, so I'll be posting the final design in the next post, after I've made some of the suggested changes =)

Personal Branding

I feel like I have not thought about, talked about, and dreamed about anything but assignments and projects. How is it possible that there are so many things to do but so little time? =(

Anyway, one of the many things I've been swamped with if my personal branding design!

I have my logo done, which is a circular arrangement of my first name - see if you can make out my name from the logo ;)
After creating the logo, I thought about actually designing another one since I wasn't sure if the current logo color scheme and design would match my portfolio website design. Fortunately, after adding the logo onto the site, I was proven wrong.

On the right, I'm working on my signature. I thought it would be nice to include this at the end of emails along with the rest of my email signature. However, I haven't thought about how I should fit it in with the rest of the design since the signature is so "organic" looking, whereas the rest of my designs are very vector-like.

I guess I'll have to keep playing around with the placement, and possibly colors, of the signature and see what works best!

Filming and audio for VA promo video

Last week, we went to get some filming and voice-over recording done at Virtu Apparel for a promo video we are working on for them.

We had a fun time recording the voice-over in the conference room.

Here is Han, very excited about testing out his new mic.

Going over the recording with Allison to make sure that the voice sounds good.

After the audio was done, we went around filming the process and machinery the company used to create designs on garments. Seeing how the designs were made and just seeing the machinery there was like a whole new world to me. I never knew there were so many techniques used to put a design on one single garment. Many of the techniques were things I have never even heard of, like debossing.

I'm excited to work on the video and see how everything comes together!

Rotoscoping for the first time

I am no longer a Roto Brush virgin because we are working on an assignment which requires us to utilize that tool. Let me just say that I am not a fan of doing this type of work...

I'm not saying that the tool itself is a bad tool, I am just a very impatient person and having to carefully select something over and over again, frame after frame (and only one frame at a time) is really not my thing.

The whole process was so frustrating because any keys I accidentally press on the keyboard may result in some unwanted crazy thing happening. I have never felt so nervous while working on an assignment because one false move can mess up what I've already worked on.
By the time I was finally finished the assignment, it was already past 8 o'clock. Never, ever, underestimate the time it takes to do any type of video editing...

Almost a photoshoot

Yesterday, we were instructed to take photos of ourselves around campus to show our student life - specifically photos that show us actually doing productive things like working on class projects, group meetings, presentations, etc.

My classmates and I went around the campus snapping photos of each other and somehow we all ended up outside the BCIT building. A small group of us stood in front of the sign and attempted at a nice group photo...

(I'm that tiny one on the right...)

Hmm... I guess group photos are hard to coordinate, especially when you've got a goofy bunch.

What I can say... Great people make a great candid group photos =)

Taking the blame off "group" coordination now...

Maybe it is just me who is so horrible with photos. I can't seem to keep a straight face.

(Rob Larkin on the right being all disappointed in me)

In the end, I did get some decent not-goofy photos of myself. Along with those decent photos, I also added a bunch of photos of my team and I working on another project to my Flickr album.

Ending the post here so I can get myself some last bit of sunshine before the day ends!

3D Type - Cherry Awessoms

I've finished my 3D typeface!

These letters were created from petals of cherry blossoms. Hence, the name Cherry Awessoms... Get it?

My work space

This is what my work space looks like. Usually, there is much more clutter, but let's not start off with the worst first impression ever.

Aside from the actual computer and monitor and techy goods, I also need snacks to munch on, and something to sip on, and of course music playing in the background. You would almost always find nail polish or nail products around the desk as well because I get a lot of inspiration for nail art from the internet, so I would do my nails in front of the computer.

What does your work space look like?