Flippper Internship Experience

3D modeling, animation, and software development

By: Tyler Benavides | At: Flippper | Founded By: Sabine Braunschweig

Showcase

I learned the skill of 3D modeling and animation during this internship to create visual demos for the product we were developing.

This skill will be useful when I transition to a career in software development after college, as I'll likely be working in the tech industry with modelers, UI designers, and artists.

charging_demo_video_tbenavides.mp4

page_demo_video_tbenavides.mp4

Foundational Literacy

It's difficult to pick a single foundational skill that was practiced during this internship. The elements that I believe I improved include Financial Literacy and ICT Literacy.

ICT Literacy

I learned how to work with a Raspberry Pi and 3D model during this internship, so ICT literacy is the primary skill I developed. Online tutorials and blogs became my lifesaver during these past two weeks (not excluding staying up late to learn new features).

In all honesty, having some experience with Blender beforehand, as well as graphics programming experience, assisted my learning process a lot. There was a point where understanding how to use a program became trivial, and some previous exposure to that tool was greatly beneficial.

Financial Literacy

This is a skill that I wasn't expecting to learn about! But I was pleasantly surprised.

Because Ms. Braunschweig is looking for investors for the product, I worked alongside Andrew when considering the cost of components, as well as features that would have to be cut or minimized for initial prototypes.

Having Andrew's insight was also very helpful when considering how the software of the product would flow together with the hardware.

Competencies

Competency is a very valuable attribute that I plan to bring to my future career.

This internship improved my motivation and initiative to learn new skills despite time constraints.

Critical Thinking & Problem Solving

These skills were critical during the entirety of the internship and ended up influencing what I ended up learning.

When applying, I spoke to my strengths regarding programming, as that's what I assumed I would be working with during the internship. Still, after setting up a Raspberry Pi, I realized that creating a prototype of the product would be difficult without the main component - e-paper.

Knowing that a digital prototype wouldn't be viable at the state of the project, I talked to my team to see what else I could work on. Dhruv had a few unfinished 3D models that he made previously, and I figured that re-making them using the updates designs we made would be beneficial.

While showing my models to Ms. Braunschweig, she brought up the idea of animations to show to investors what the product would be capable of. This eventually became the majority of my work during the internship.

Over my experience as a software developer, I've learned that using critical thinking and problem-solving often means that there is almost always a solution to a problem, even if that means that you have to change your workflow to solve it.

Character Qualities

It's difficult to pick a single foundational skill that was practiced during this internship. The elements that I believe I improved include Financial Literacy and ICT Literacy.

Initiative

This skill was crucial during this internship experience.

Without the critical thinking skills I described earlier, I wouldn't have ever had the intution to pursue skills that I considered myself mediocre at, whethet that's 3D modelling, UI designing, or financial planning.

Taking the initiative to dive into these new skills despite little previous knowledge will help me learn new programs and tools to better understand the responsibilites of my future co-workers.

Persistence & Grit

This skill was the bread and butter of my internship experience and is something I'm unfortunately good at.

To learn the skills I needed to complete the animations I linked above, I often had to stay up late into the night reading tutorials for bezier paths, subdivisions, and rendering.

Simultaneously, it was really fun learning how to use these tools!

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