Shaytu Schwandes Education: BA Digital Arts & Sciences, University of Florida Professional Interests: web design, vehicular design, industrial design, character design, environment/level design, graphic design, architecture
Industrial
This is a personal project that focused on the Mobility vs Productivity trade-off with current computing systems and proposed a solution. The project spanned 14 months and sprang from the idea of designing a truly unified computing system. I explored user interface, hardware, and software. The key concept is a unified/shared hardware system which allows for cumulative computing power. I designed an operating system, handheld, tablet, and dock to illustrate my concept.
This design was supposed to be simple, professional and very easy to read (thus the rather large font size). The website was designed and created in a little over a week.
Redesigned the Vetstreet.com website under the direction of the senior designer. They provided direction but I did all the design, graphics, and coding. The design colors and styles were pulled from print material already in distribution to unify the print and digital language.
This was a redeign of the www.chemexcoffeemaker.com website for a masters design course. The website is supposed to reflect the elegant simplicity that the product itself exudes. The earth tones relate to the pure coffee which the product itsefl produces. Note: I do not take credit for the photos.
Print
I redesigned the menu for a local business as part of a masters design course. Since the business brought food and movies together, I made the menu reflect this by using movie quotes relating to food to divide the menu sections. The high contrast colors increase low light readability which would be important in a theater. The short height is to keep the material low so it doesn't interfere with the movie.
This is a tongue-in-cheek categorization of motorcyclists laid out for a magezine. I wrote the language as well as created the page design. Note: I do not take credit for the photos.
This booklet is designed to give adults/parents a way to impress teenagers with Guitar Hero skills. I prepared the languaged in addition to the design. Note: I do not take credit for the photos.
Ender's Game is a fantastic book that touches on many topics. This poster is meant to convey one of the many aspects of the book.
This is an article that I wrote and designed about my experience with automobile racing. Note: I can only take credit for 1/2 the photos.
Graphics
I'm not sure if this really looks like electricity, but that's what it reminded me of. This wallpaper looks so good on a dual monitor setup that it makes me wish I had another monitor.
Another happy accident. I really like the way the color explodes onto the city in the form of graffiti. Notice the green glow on the buildings. Do you recognize the city?
This is my first fully illustrated character. I made this for ScubaMonkey Software, thus the double play on words. The proofreading markings came to me out of the blue and are one of my favorite elements to the image.
Game Related
This was a semester-long, game design group-project during Spring 2004 at the University of Florida, made up of 3 classmates and myself. Look at the Pirates of the Cerulean Sea web site and the documentation web site below to find out further details. The Adobe Acrobat file is a low-res copy of the 88 page book that was compiled with the game images and content we created during the semester.
This is a deathmatch (DM) map for Unreal Tournament 2003, the award winning first person shooter PC game. I created it as a Digital Production Studio semester long assignment for Fall 2003, at the University of Florida.
The map is based around an abandoned mine on Mars where NASA was doing research by digging into the ground. They mysteriously lose contact with the base and send out a rescue team. The mystery deepens when the rescue team stops responding.
This map features custom meshes, custom textures, reused meshes, reused textures, animated particles, a waterfall, a functioning elevator, hidden and unlockable powerups, and animated menu details.
After finishing the map, I created a guide for other beginning level designers on how to approach the aspect of building a map with no prior experience. The document is called "You want to make a UT2003 map" and is an organized approach to utilizing the current online resources for learning UnrealEditor and creating a high quality map.
Low poly 3D character conceived, designed, modeled, rigged, and animated for ScubaMonkey Software. There are 1194 polys. The movie shows the animation sequence for the different behaviors in the game; attack 1, attack 2, idle, move, etc. This was my first 3D character that I had taken nearly (except for UV mapping and texturing) completely through the creation process, and I very much enjoyed the experience!
This was my design entry for the 2002 Motor Trend Automotive Design Contest: Racecar for the year 2020. I entered as an Amateur: Over 18 years old. These images are the straight renders form 3DSMAX, resized from 3300x2400 for printing, before a little editing and formatting for the contest. The color scheme and overall design was inspired by Lotus, This project took approximately 4 months to complete, while working and taking summer courses. This design actually won an award for 2002 Motor Trend Online Reader's Poll Finalist!
This was my design entry for the CIAS 2003 Motor Trend Automotive Design Contest: Tuner Car for the year 2020. I entered as an Amateur: Over 18 years old. I didn't do as well this year as last with no special recognition of any kind. I sure did learn Illustrator 10 well though!!! I sketched out all of the views prior to scanning them, tracing them in Illustrator and adding the rest of the details and color.
Environments
The lighting in this image really makes it feel alive. This was a personal piece that I did to learn more about the software Terragen.
A personal piece with much Photoshop editing. Only the terrain and water are supported features of Terragen, so the "light springs" were edited in. I also used a custom texture map within Terragen for the terrain. I enjoy imagining the experience of seeing this in real life.
Traditional
Assigned drawing from figure drawing course focusing on light. I found it as an interesting twist to include the light source at the bottom of the image, since I have never seen it done. It really seemed to help push the sense of depth.
Independent study drawing of my keys with a rubber eraser stretched across them. The drawing was supposed to push value and shading.
