Gideon’s International Pasig City Camp International Day of Prayer

#Firsts, 2020, Adobe After Effects, Adobe Premier Pro, Video Editing

I was asked by my dad to help him organize an online prayer event for his ministry, the Gideon’s International Philippines where he serves as Pasig City Camp Chaplain. Along with the program, they gave me their photos, transcript, and audio recording. They also gave me their preferred music, although I had to sort them out from Youtube and royalty-free video platform, Pexels.

No copyright infringement intended.

Hymns:

At the Cross (Alas and Did My Savior Bleed)
https://youtu.be/WNogqB8Uli0

Come Thou Fount of Every Blessing
https://youtu.be/g10AJN3KHns

Great Is Thy Faithfulness
https://youtu.be/ErwiBz1QA4o

To God Be The Glory
https://youtu.be/TD_9P9DB4pw

Blessed Assurance
https://youtu.be/7SSJicZO6_g

Blest Be the Tie That Binds
https://youtu.be/N_AYrlHRm5c

https://www.pexels.com/video/a-group-of-people-trekking-a-desert-land-3835194/

https://www.pexels.com/video/beach-under-a-cloudy-sky-2355573/
https://www.pexels.com/video/a-rural-community-in-the-countryside-with-a-great-view-of-the-mountains-3845352/

https://www.pexels.com/video/aerial-footage-of-landscape-with-waterfalls-on-a-foggy-day-3785018/
https://www.pexels.com/video/aerial-footage-of-a-lake-surrounded-by-mountains-2815442/

Mailer Proposal (for work)

#Firsts, 2019, Articles, Mailchimp, Mailer, Miscellaneous/Mixed Media, News, Prose, Uncategorized

Last Thursday, I was tasked to pitch new content ideas for work. Aside from other things, I decided to go for a mailer. It’s not a hard sell, but if it is done well, it may just help boost our company credibility in the industry.

I came up with this rough draft by the end of the day, just to see if it is plausible to work on it within 8 hours’ time. The Morning Brew and Axios newsletters were my design pegs, using the standard MailChimp 2-column template for the design. If it all seems too copy&paste, please note that this is just an initial draft.

Unfortunately, I was asked to shelve it, so I’m putting it here (I hope I’m not doing anything illegal) just so at least maybe it could serve its purpose by at least embellishing my portfolio with some writing stuff (where it is extremely lacking).

I used the following data sources: Bloomberg for PSEi stats, Reuters for Philippine Exchange rate stats and Trading Economics for Philippine Inflation rate stats.

Sales Mailer Proposal

Sleeping Through the Heat

#Firsts, 2019, Adobe Photoshop, Articles, Graphic Design, Illustration, Literature, Non-Fiction, Stories

It started with Diddy. She called up Ma and told her, ”I’m not feeling well Ma, I want to go home. My friends say I’m running hot.”

Ma panicked. No one could fetch her. So she just told her, “Well, if it feels so bad then maybe you should go home.”

With her mother’s blessing, still just a sophomore in college, Diddy obediently went and rode the train home. There wasn’t any Grab or Uber at the time, and she didn’t have enough for a taxi.

When she got home, she went straight to sleep on the couch. Ma got her temperature, and boy, was she hot! Ma tried to get her to eat, but she just nodded off to sleep.

That’s all she did the next day too. And the day after.

Ma panicked. She called up my Aunt Marge. “Why is Diddy napping all the time and not bothering to eat?”

My Aunt told her to check Diddy’s pulse and skin quickly. “She might be drifting off to a deeper sleep because her heart’s slowing down.”

Ma checks Diddy’s blood pressure and lo! It was way too low. She’s dozing off farther than Ma had imagined.

Ma also looks at her arm, and just as Aunt Marge said, her skin was spotted with red. She pressed it to see if it would leave a pale mark. Diddy’s skin left a perfect, white circle on the depression on her arm. “Her blood vessels are popping because she’s growing too hot,” Aunt Marge had said.

“Oh no, it’s just as I thought! It is dengue,” Aunt Marge concludes when Ma tells her. “I’ve been getting a lot of cases lately.” Aunt Marge was a pediatrician. “The virus is changing.”

Ma was stumped. She knew all the signs, it’s repeatedly blasted on her favorite radio station every year every time the rainy season begins. It just slipped her mind. She never thought it could happen to one of us.

Then suddenly, Pa felt warm, too, and Aggi felt it next. They took to the couch and slept with the burning hot fever, but Pa was too stubborn to be sick long, so he got over it in about five days. “Younger cells multiply quickly, making the virus latched onto them spread faster.”

A few days after they did, I also catch a fever; and Tashi does too, not long after. There’s no cure for dengue, only water to keep the blood working and the body temperature cool. If we were in the hospital, we’d be plugged onto a dextrose giving us mainly water and extra nutrients to keep us fat while we sleep.

Ma didn’t want to bring us to the hospital. “It costs too much, and you might catch pneumonia.”

So she nursed us the entire time we were sick in bed, making sure that we drank water, though it tasted bitter, and ate food, even if we had no appetite. Up until now, my mother knows the type of mosquito that spreads the disease: a female Aegis Aegypti. These delivery girls only breed on clean water.

Luckily enough, nobody else we knew got sick with what we four girls had. It’s risky what my Ma did. Apparently, dengue is more prevalent in rich neighborhoods than in depressed areas because they are more likely to have clean water lying around. Even these tiny tiki tiki’s like their homes clean.

Dengue, just like any other virus, has strains. It manifests differently each time. Catching one means you will have immunity to that particular strain but not the rest. I had a classmate who had it every year. He must have been a very lucky kid to get a new strain each time he got bit.

In school, everyone makes a big deal if you’re out sick for more than two days. When you come back, you get treated like a hero. But honestly, we just slept through it all. I was only gone for two weeks, though Diddy was gone for much longer.

My dad would round us up to bring us to the blood chemist who’d prick our fingers and count our platelets. With each visit, the number gradually crawled up from a measly two digits to three, and rapidly on to four.

Pretty soon, we were well enough to feel the heat emanating from our bodies which kept us from sleeping still in one position, our sheets burning while our skin stayed stubbornly dry, making no effort to break a sweat and help us cool down.

Then we woke enough to feel the itch that came from the popping blood vessels of the fever, and we scratched our arms and legs until we had tiny bumps on our skin. The itchiest was at the bottom of our feet, which was only relieved when we wet it in cool water. In the approaching summer drought, it was a fleeting solace.

Finally, we got well enough to complain and mope around, watching television most of the time. I only drank milk. It’s the only fluid that didn’t leave a bitter taste in my mouth. At one point, I got well enough to want to do my project for art class — my long awaited obra maestra.

It was an oil painting, which I quickly regretted after inhaling the first five lungfuls of linseed oil fumes. I remember I took care to do it outside. The smell just chased me back in, the steaming breeze of March drawing close, making me lightheaded and lazy.

I did get to enjoy my rest in those two or three weeks away. It’s not such a bad way to die, considering all other options; but I really appreciate the fact that I lived through it. Nobody should die from dengue.

The cure is simply just to drink more water. It’s funny. It’s the same cure for cholera and malaria and the common cold.

Time Please Thank You Graphic

#Firsts, 2018, Adobe After Effects, Animation, Graphic Design, Lay-out, Motion Graphics, Tools, Video Editing

Another iVolunteer project.

Flexr

#Firsts, 2018, Animation, Graphic Design, Lay-out, Motion Graphics, Tools

My job title is as a content marketing specialist, but technically I was hired to be a content writer. One of the jobs I did was handling the social media of one of our brands: Flexr. I didn’t have any collateral to post so I made these using Canva and some gifmaker online apps. I also did some more graphic designs for our other brands.

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

Rudyard-Kipling-800x800

Been a Long Time, Here’s What I’ve Been Up To

#Firsts, 2016, Code, CSS, HTML5, Web Design

Hello, I missed this blog. I’ve been busy with my freelance job and Inktober since my last post. I have also gone to a couple of job interviews but so far, I’m still on the hunt. In the mean time, I’ve enrolled myself to some EdX courses just to have something to do (been stuck in the school system so long it feels weird to have an empty to-do list –old habits die hard) and reading tons of books on my lazy days, or just plain old doing house chores on the rare occasion I find the energy needed to actually break a sweat. Being a bum in the Alfonso house means enrolling in my mom’s finishing school on all things housewifery.

Anyway forget that, I’m posting here to show a preview of what I’ve been learning. It’s not much, yet but I’ve got high hopes.

https://codepen.io/AprilAlfonso/full/VmBrVR/

By the way, Happy Holidays!

HongKong 2016

#Firsts, 2016, Canon 1200D, DSLR, Photography, Unedited

June 29-July 1 2016

The Starting Point

Big Bus Tour

Across the Street

Tourists

At the View Deck

Mangkok

Aboard the Star Ferry

Victoria Harbour

Kowloon

Empty Street in Hong Kong

First trip out of the country!

I was feeling toxic for a long time and this was breather. This is a refreshing break away from my looming grad film deadlines.

Production Logo

#Firsts, 2015, Adobe Illustrator, Graphic Design, Logo Design

Production Logo

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License.

First Promotional Video: Org Work

#Firsts, 2014, 2D Animation, Adobe After Effects, Adobe Photoshop, Video Editing

Copy and Paste Password: NoCopyrightInfringementIntended

I was tasked to make this year’s Career Fair Promo video. Since I’m still a freshman and taking General Education courses (no majors yet), it is exciting to finally get to do some art related work for school. It’s also a little bit daunting since I have a lot of workload at the moment. It’s a solo work from story to final output where I’m directly placed under the College’s Career Placement Office Head, Ms. Lena Catalan who, thankfully, is a sweet lady. I used Photoshop and After Effects.

April Alfonso

Art Journal and Portfolio of April Alfonso

#Firsts

Gideon’s International Pasig City Camp International Day of Prayer

Mailer Proposal (for work)

Sleeping Through the Heat

Time Please Thank You Graphic

Flexr

Been a Long Time, Here’s What I’ve Been Up To

HongKong 2016

Production Logo

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License.

First Promotional Video: Org Work

To access, copy and paste
PASSWORD: NoCopyrightInfringementIntended

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License.

To access, copy and paste PASSWORD: NoCopyrightInfringementIntended

To access, copy and paste
PASSWORD: NoCopyrightInfringementIntended