Finals

Well...it's half way through Finals week and I haven't started ripping my hair out yet. I've already finished my paper for one class, and took 2 exams. Lastly, I have my final project in Advanced 3D Graphics. We had to create a character model. You start with just a simple box and you mold the thing until it looks like a character. Once you have the character modeled, you create the bones inside the character. It gets really confusing at this part. You have to make sure that the bones are the right size, located at the right places, etc. The next step is to rig the bones. That is actually tougher than it sounds. You have to make sure that things are linked properly and that everything bends the right way and in the right direction. Lastly, you skin the character. What that means is like when you move your elbow, the back of your elbow stretches and the inside of your elbow shrinks. You skin the character so all the skin around the joints stretch and shrink in the right places. Once you have all that working correctly, you get to animate the character and make it do some interesting things. For our final project, we have to animate the character in a scene. My character walks across stage (which a walk cycle...not easy!!), sits down at a piano and plays twinkle twinkle little star. It was a challenge to get the fingers to actually play the right notes and the right time, but I managed. I don't have the final video rendered out yet, but the minute I do, I'll add it to my blog for you guys to see.

I can show you my final character model that I created tho. This is an elf that I created. It started off as a box, and you can kinda see where that was at. You change the box so that it has many faces and then you start pulling things out and reshaping things. The hardest thing about my creating my character was probably getting the nose to look right, the mouth, and the chin. Every time I would pull out the chin the mouth would get distorted and I would get discouraged; so I stopped tying to pull out the chin. I'm pretty satisfied with the results. It was actually one of the easier projects I've worked on.

I will add my final animation once I have it completed. Have a great Christmas break everyone!!!

Phonathon

There is an organization on campus called the Phonathon. It's an organization, but it's also a job. A group of students call alumni of Dakota State and raise scholarship money for the university. It takes a special person to work for this organization because you have to be able to handle rejection.
I've worked for the phonathon now for 4 years and absolutely love it. I started my first year at Dakota State as a caller. I won the Student Ambassador award my first semester and then the Top Fundraiser award my second semester, the next year I was the over-all Top Fundraiser again. My third year at the phonathon was a little different. I was promoted to Student Supervisor and have been in that position ever since. So needless to say, I've met a wide range of students. I got to work with students when I was calling and now I get to work with students as a supervisor.
This year, the group of students we have working at the phonathon are great! They have almost raised half of our goal ($100,000) in about 2 months calling time. We only work Sun-Thurs from 6:14-9pm. We play a ton of games, nightly, weekly, and semesterly! We have major incentives and prizes. You get paid to call. It's the best job I've found on campus and believe me, I've had my share of them! Another nice thing is that when there is no school, there is no phonathon...what beats that??