Well folks, my internship at the local library is going well, and in fact we just launched the new website. It is about a trillion times better (maybe more) than the previous design. For example, it has a color scheme, and organization. I don’t mean a “better” color scheme and organization; I mean a color scheme and organization, period. I designed the layout and did all the graphical work on the site, while the webmaster did most of the actual coding. We used some stock photography and some stock vector graphics, but most of it is made by me in Illustrator and Flash.

Not everything is exactly how I would have chosen to do it, as we had to present it to a committee who had some ideas about how it should be, but I guess that’s always to be expected. Since this is my first site that’s actually going online, I hadn’t really had to deal with that before.  Overall I’m pretty satisfied as to how it turned out, and definitely excited to have some work of mine online.

Now that it’s online and I still have time to spend there, I’m working on some new graphics for different parts of the site.  I’ve also been introduced to practical applications in Javascript and PHP, in which my education has been decidedly lacking.  I have read a couple of books on Javascript, and an online tutorial on PHP, but I have never actually used them in a web page.  Sad.

Not just my own, but my very own.  Yesterday I put together a demo reel of 3D animation and special effects that I had produced over the past few years.  Although most of my college career (should it really be called a career?) has been spent working on graphic design (including web design), the thing that got me started in all of this was computer animation.  I have been enthralled with CGI since I was about 12 years old, and when I got Blender  at 15, I’ve been hooked ever since.  It was through 3D graphics that I started doing graphic design (it was because of web design, but my knowledge of 3D graphics enabled me to do it).  Unfortunately I was unable to find a school with a 3D animation program in Louisiana, so I settled for graphic design, which I see now is fundamental to other areas of design, including web design and motion design. (more…)