This semester, I completed my first Honors Enhancement by completing a faculty-guided independent project for my major course GAND 410: Intermediate 3D modeling. For this project, I decided to focus on an aspect of the class that we did not spend much time on but I believed could be a valuable part of developing my resume and professional skills. My project focused on the process of rigging a 3D character for animation. Rigging is the process of creating a hierarchy of joints within a 3D model that the animator can use to move and manipulate the character. I learned so much from doing this project. Before this class, I knew nothing about rigging. Now, I have my own functional human character rig for my professional portfolio. This project really helped me to develop new skills that round out my resume and open up more options for me in the future.

Besides what I learned for my professional life, I learned some lessons for my personal life through this project as well. One of the biggest lessons I learned was about time management. Having an extra major project to do on top of my other schoolwork was tough. Within the span of two weeks, I had this project, another 3D final project, two drawing final projects, and a communications speech due. Originally, I was panicking about getting it all done in time, but early on I sat down, listed all of my projects and due dates, and figured out which were priorities and which could wait a little longer. I worked hard to get things done and ended up feeling less overwhelmed by work than I have in past semesters without an Honors Enhancement, all thank s to a conscious effort to manage my time and prioritize.

            I also learned a lesson in dealing with the unexpected. About a week or so before my Honors Enhancement was due, my computer screen went completely black. I had to send it back to the company to fix the monitor and would not be able to get it back until after the semester was over. I had the program installed on a home computer, so I commuted home every day after class in order to complete the project. I had also initially planned on demonstrating my project on my laptop, but clearly that was out of the picture. I tried to borrow a friend’s laptop the day of the presentation, but she had a different version of the program and my file would not work correctly. Still, I had anticipated ahead that something might go wrong with the technology and had created a poster with detailed descriptions and lots of images to help illustrate my picture. I also ended up doing some acting to help illustrate how my model moved! Overall, I was able to turn what could have been a catastrophic experience into an opportunity to learn how to improvise and make the most of a bad situation. Below, I have attached my final poster so you can see my process for creating this project.