online portfolio

For my final project in Interactive, I designed and built an online portfolio of my work using DreamWeaver. Thanks to my generous cousin, Martin, the site is actually live as he is hosting it for me temporarily. I will eventually have to setup my own space and domain to be more professional, but just don't quite have the funds to do so yet. What is currently up is what I submitted for my final, but I definitely want to continue to develop and tweak it. I'll be taking an intermediate Interactive course next semester so looking forward to that.

Side note: The form on the contact page doesn't actually work, since I'm waiting for my professor to set it up for me as he said he would.

So without further ado, voila!  This semester's labor of love.

semester wrap-up!

I just finished my third semester of grad school! Only one more to go...

The past 3 weeks have been quite stressful and busy but now I can relax and recap the last few weeks.

• I was given the opportunity to teach a set of two, two-part Intro to Final Cut Pro Workshops to Parsons MFA Fine Arts & Photography students. Yet another opportunity to lend and exercise my talents to the department I work for. The first class I taught was definitely nerve-wracking as it was my first time ever teaching a class...and to students who admit are not the most tech-savvy people no less. So that was definitely another challenge in itself. But the first section went well and I was able to adjust my lesson plan and better my way of explaining things with the second group.

• I completed my internship with the online media team at Rolling Stone. Funny thing is that on my last day I was able to go on-location for the first time since the summer and it was a fun shoot. So the internship was book-ended with  a good first day, meeting Wyclef, and ended with a delicious pork loin cooked by Deane Sheremet. Although, I completed my time with one team, I will be returning to Rolling Stone at the end of January for an internship with the web design team. And if you haven't checked rollingstone.com recently, go now. They unveiled their redesigned site and I helped with a lot of the backend migration of their media. I'll post more videos I helped with as they become available on the site.

•  I will post my final project from my Interactive class separately.

• Last week one of my professors was able to get our class free admission to a live streaming TEDWomen conference  at the Paley Center. Although when she spoke about it, we were all under the impression we would be attending the actual conference, but it was still pretty interesting and a nice little perk to being a Media Studies student.

• Book recommendations (both were used for a comparative analysis between Pixar & DreamWorks Animation): 
• The Pixar Touch, David Price (read parts of the book for research last semester and read more this semester. Very inspirational, and only made my love for Pixar even greater)
• The Men Who Would Be King, Natalie LaPorte (an inside take on the drama behind the story of DreamWorks, kinda felt like a gossip mag)

This is probably the most text-heavy post I've ever written for this blog so I'll leave it at that :)

Happy Holidays!

banner ad

For my interactive class I had to design and animate a banner ad with Flash. I made an ad for the same product I used in the simple website I created many weeks ago. And it works like an actual ad too..so click away!

video roundup 11.16.10

Get ready to pump those fists in the air!

Off the Cuff with Peter Travers: Mike "The Situation" Sorentino

The Situation Reveals Whose Abs He Wants

And some styling techniques: Get a Sleek A-List Blow Out

parsons fine arts mfa open studios

I'm actually getting a chance to put my design skills to use in the real world. I work in the Fine Arts department at Parsons so I was asked to help out with publicity materials for an upcoming event. Now, I can't take complete credit for the design because I wasn't the person who started it. I was asked to revise the first draft with a few requests. So I kept the original concept and made some adjustments to enhance the design and clean it up. I think the only thing I can take full credit for is the part with the names.

And so based on this poster, I was asked to create a postcard to match it.

interactive

So I haven't really posted anything from a course I'm taking this semester that focuses on interactive media/web design, but that's mainly because we haven't really done anything worth sharing. Most of the class is learning about the tools we'll need to build our final project. The main program we use is Dreamweaver. Although I've played around with Dreamweaver before, I've never really fully understood what I was doing, so this class is helping me use it correctly.

Even though we haven't done too many projects, I might as well share what I did for my first assignment last month. All we had to do is build a simple 3-page website showcasing a product. And while the screen shots below may present the site as something quite simple, but it was actually a lot harder to build than I would have imagined. And the problem with screen shots is that you can't see the interactive part of it! (Well besides being able to navigate from page to page the only other interactivity are the links with rollovers..haha)

video roundup 11.6.10

Just to reiterate, incase you haven't been following, the links in my "video roundups" are videos I have helped out with in one way or another during my internship.

RS Live: Secret Sisters

RS Live: Everest

N.E.R.D Perform Live, Talk about 'Nothing'

5 Reasons to Watch...90210

Atlanta's New Housewife: Kim Zolciak Has "No Talent"

And here are some I didn't have anything to do with but would see my bosses editing.

So if you love Conan, watch on! Behind the scenes at Conan O'Brien's RS Cover Shoot

Want to learn how to make a Waldorf, Old-fashioned, or a Manhattan?