I have been learning to enjoy the simplicity of life here in Laval. I love having my best friend here to experience everything with me. We can laugh at anything as we live life together. Simple joys like buying pain au chocolat and fromage blanc avec speculoos from the bakery on the way to work become the highlight of the day. Our first week here has been full of learning software. I am becoming familiar with the vocabulary of 3D Modeling: extruding, bending, connecting, welding, bridging, insetting. The double monitors have made it easy to work alongside the tutorials. I have learned a lot in the past three days about manipulating shapes and adding modifiers. It is fairly straightforward and intuitive at this point. My greatest joy was figuring out how to tumble around in the space by hitting alt + scroll wheel. We spent time touring their showroom with a man from Latvia named Andrei. He showed us 3D tvs and all sorts of gadgets. We saw an educational system for doctors to learn how to perform surgeries on the eye. On one screen we were able to dissect the parts of a cell in 3d. Additionally, we played with dolphins and rode rollercoasters in the 3d cube. On their HTC Vive, we became familiar with 3d painting in Tiltbrush. It was a fun morning of dreaming what could be possible with virtual and augmented reality.

They briefed us on our two projects that we would work on while at EON. The first involves transforming French Revolution paintings into dissectible, 3d spaces that teachers can manipulate to create history lessons. We recreate pieces of the painting behind important figures to allow them to animate. Secondly, we will tackle an educational app geared to teach children about volcanos. We will be fully invested in the process of coming up with the teaching material to place into this app as well as modeling the volcanos. We will display the parts of a volcano, the types: effusive and explosive, and demonstrate the advantages and disadvantages to living near a volcano. We will animate the volcano so that it is evident how it effects the people living in a village we will create at the foot of the volcano. I am excited to have an opportunity to learn this technology and I already have ideas of how I could use this in the future.