Wesley Ferrell

Aspiring Digital Media Professional wferrell0709@gmail.com

Hi there. Welcome to my portfolio site. I am an aspiring digital media professional, currently residing in San Marcos, Texas. I completed my degree in Digital Media Innovation in December of 2023. The skills I've learned in this program include social media management and analytics, web design and publishing, videography and visual storytelling, mobile media development, and TV news production. I also graduated with a minor in media studies, for which I've written numerous essays. I'm eager to work on any projects that involve shooting and editing video, I find it very rewarding. My dream job is to work for a gaming publication as a games journalist or as some part in the production of a film.

Media Design

Mock Magazine Design

In this final project for my media design course, I was tasked to create a 12 page spread for a magazine. I created this using Adobe InDesign.

Front cover of my food magazine concept. It's titled Confections.

This is a mock newsletter for a local shelter here in San Marcos, TX. I chose their organization because they fixed my feral rescue cat at no cost. They're dedicated to making access to neuter and spay services available to all pet owners, which I think is super admirable.

Social Media Analytics Reports

In my advanced social media and analytics course, we were assigned in groups to design posters highlighting the social media engagment of the gradute college's various social media platforms. These calculations included average likes, shares, reach, comments and percent change. These are the designs my group came up with. These were designed on Canva.

Thumbnail image of our group's analytics reports.

Writing

Media Criticism

I completed my minor in Media Studies during the spring semester of 2023. I have written various essays using different lenses of media criticism:

A think piece I wrote about Netflix's Squid Game about how its use of Jungian character archetypes contributed to its worldwide appeal.
My final paper for my media criticism class was about the Cartoon Network series Steven Universe and how it tells a subtextual transgender narrative
Women in Women's Narratives: How Peter Jackson's The Lovely Bones Sidelines Female Characters - This was my final paper for a film studies class. My professor reccommended I enter it in an essay contest, but I never ended up going through with it. I was proud to hear she was impressed.
A film review I wrote for The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent starring Nicholas Cage as Nicholas Cage. This is my first and only published article (so far), and I'm so grateful to Unleashed LGBTQ for giving me this awesome opportunity.

Journalism

My degree in digital media innovation has taught me various journalistic techniques and has equipped me to write professionally and concisely. Much of my writing is hosted on wordpress sites/blogs I have created for various classes I have taken within my degree:

The JRPG Report - My first experience creating a wordpress blog. I have a few articles about JRPG's I wrote throughout my first semester as a DMI major in 2021.
My Multimedia Journalism Blog - This self-hosted Wordpress blog is home to all of my work from the spring of 2023 that I completed for my multimedia journalism class. You can also visit this blog by clicking on the Wordpress icon in the About Me section.
Local Art Update: Graduating Artists and Summer Plans - This is a compilation of multimedia journalism I conducted in my last month of my multimedia journalism class. It is hosted on the Texas State Multimedia Journalism website. It's comprised of a traditional article, a photoseries, a video, and an audio-package.

Web/Mobile App Design and Development

Unofficial Smartt Team Website

This mock website was created for my web design and publishing course. It is a self hosted wordpress website for a New Braunfels based team of realtors. The website also hosts a short video commercial I shot for the project detailing their annual thanksgiving pie giveaway.

screenshot of Smartt Team unofficial site

Life and Times @ 306

This webpage was created as part of an assignment for my web design and publishing course. We were tasked to tell a story and host it on a website. I chose to spotlight how my previous job operated, since the business model is somewhat uncommon. This project also included creating a short video story to be embedded on your site through YouTube.

Figma Application Prototype

This is an application prototype I created for my mobile media development class in the spring of 2023. The app is an idea I had for a mobile social media platform for gamers to write reviews for people who would actually want to read them. It also functions as a collection and backlog tracker. It was created using Figma. Aside from prototyping, I also have experience programming in the swift language for iOS.

Screenshot of my application protoype created with Figma.

Glide Application

I created this application that locates second-hand shops in and around San Marcos created in Glide, a low-code, no-code option that creates applications from a Google spreadsheet.

Quixpert Concept

My final project in my digital media innovation capstone class involved researching a concept, creating a prototype, and creating a website to market the product. From this project, I learned how to apply design thinking, conduct market research and develop a product or service. The service we conceptualized was a social network for journalists and expert sources to work together, similar to HARO and ProfNet.

Screenshot of my gallery section of the quixpert site.

Videography

Capturing the LIGHT

This short documentary film about a local multimedia artist, Francisco Alvarez a.k.a. LIGHT, was my final project for a visual storytelling class.

Mock News Package

This was filmed as an assignment in my multimedia journalism class. Shot, edited, and written by me.

Final Video Pkg - MMJ

This video was filmed as 1/4th of my multimedia journalism final exam. Shot, edited, and written by me.

Old Main Story

This video was filmed as an in class exercise in a video production course. Edited by me.

Tantra News Package

In my final semester at Texas State I was a crew member and reporter for a news show titled Bobcat Matters. This package was put together entirely by me, with some help from a colleague, Dylan Sallee. I wrote the script, shot the majority of the footage, and edited the video.

Soap Shop News Package

Another package created for Bobcat Matters. This one was Dylan's idea so he wrote the script, but the video is mostly shot by me. I also edited the video.

Interests

Outside of my work I really enjoy playing video games. I'm a huge Nintendo buff, and I'm particularly fond of the GameCube. I mostly play retro games from the console generation with GameCube, PS2 and original XBOX. I find that those games resonate the most with me. My current favorite is Jet Set Radio Future on the original XBOX. The franchise had been dormant for over 20 years until recently, when SEGA announced that a third installment in the Jet Set Radio franchise is currently in development.

I also enjoy cinema. My favorite movie is "Lars and the Real Girl" with Ryan Gosling, directed by Craig Gillespie. The premise is really strange, but the movie is really heartfelt. I won't tell you what it's about because I feel its best experienced the way I first saw it, completely blind. I was watching Showtime movies in a hotel room late at night when it came on and it moved me to tears.

I really love music as well. One album I listened to recently was from a Japanese artist called Cornelius. The album is a blend of a lot of different genres like rock, psychadelia, and IDM. My favorite track right now is Lazy. It reminds me of the music from a game I love, Katamari Damacy.