Day 16: Full Work Week #2

So this work week has been far less busy than last week. Basically I’ve been going into work, coming back home, working out, having dinner then chillaxing for the night. So nothing too big to report on. Everyone at work has been ramping up for the site visit next week. This site visit is where the National Science Foundation comes in and they judge whether they should be funding $20 mil for the next 5 years. No big deal right, haha. Anyways, I guess one cool thing is that I am going to be demoing what I’ve been doing next Monday for the NSF. How crazy is that?!?! I’m going to be showing a bunch of important scientist how I make the art/animation I’m doing for my internship and talk to them about art and science. So that will be quite exciting and nerve-wracking all at the same time. Oh and best thing about this (well not maybe the best…), I’m demoing right next to all the sweet learning robots my lab has been making. So I’m going to be demoing about animation next to bunch of arguably, the most advanced robots in the world…no big.

Otherwise, one of the programmers and I have been working on creating a racing game using the CERT2 software. It’s sweet, he’s made it work that when the webcam detects you are smiling, my character will smile along with you(so getting the emotion mirror thing to start working). So he’s then built a code for Flash, that when racing, the more you smile, the faster the car will accelerate. He did this all in a day…so crazy! And he was nice enough to include my characters from the emotion mirror I’ve been working on b/c he wanted to show off my art cause he'll be demoing the game at the site visit.

Lastly, today I made one of the grad students misty eyed when I was showing him the stuff I was working on today:

After showing him, he told me “you artwork just makes me get all misty eyed” and I turned and his eyes were watery but he was smiling. I have no idea why seeing my drawing got him so emotional, it was just a quick drawing of a dog in a go-kart, but I think I understand part of the reason why. This lab has been putting in so much time and really have been coming out with some pretty incredible work, but with having an artist on board, it’s only going to make their work stronger and get better results. I’m so glad to be helping them out for the summer, they really are doing such amazing things in this lab and being able to use my ability of drawing/animating to help improve the work they are already doing, words cannot describe. I honestly feel like I’m doing nothing compared to what all the scientists/programmers are doing, I’m just the undergrad artist who is polishing everything up and making it look presentable and appealing for kids. But everyone in the lab is just amazed by what I am doing and I can just tell they are excited to have me there. It’s incredibly nice to work at a place that really, really appreciates you and the work you are doing…I don’t think I’ve ever experienced that, at least with my art. And their excitement for what I’m doing makes me excited to keep on getting better and better.

~Lauren