Ellyse
Walker
Walker
I am a Computer Science undergraduate student at Michigan Technological University, expecting to graduate Spring 2024.
I am a technical and artistic person with a passion for visual design and computers. I am seeking a career that merges those two interests, whether that be UI/UX or Computer Graphics.
My two favorite classes in college have been Computer Graphics (CS4611) and Graphic and Information Design (HU2645). Both classes taught me that my strength and interests lie where visuals and technical thinking intersect. In Computer Graphics, I learned about ray tracing, color models, textures, shading, bumpy objects, 3D projection, 3D transformations, and matrix math in a graphics context. In Graphic and Information Design, I learned how to use Adobe Illustrator and I learned about the principles of design.
In general, I am a very visual person and love working with visuals in multiple different mediums. Growing up, I mainly worked with paper and pencil drawings, but my interests in visuals have shifted to include other mediums as well. I enjoy embroidery, and I am learning how to sew so that one day, I can design and create my own clothes. In addition, I also enjoy making digital art and graphics with Adobe Illustrator and the app ArtFlow. I am trying to learn 2D animation with Adobe Animate, and would like to learn 3D animation using Blender as well so I can make short films. The goal I am working towards for my digital art and 3D models is for them to be lifelike, whether that be photo-realistic or animated in a realistic way.
Over the course of my career, I would like to make professional 2D graphics and 3D renders. I would like to also master rigging 3D models to create realistic animations. I enjoy creating color palettes, and would like to create color palettes in my career as well.
My relevant academic and work experience includes UI design, graphic design, OpenGL, CAD, and front-end web development.
In high school, I was on FIRST Robotics Competition Team 503 and I started learning about how to make web pages so I could help develop the scouting web application. I also took an engineering drawing class, a 2D CAD class, and a 3D CAD class (which used Autodesk Inventor).
In college, I joined the Chem Store project in the Humane Interface Design Enterprise (HIDE) in Spring 2022 and was working on front-end development. In addition, the same semester, my group in my Team Software Project class decided to make a website called Schedule Helper to make selecting classes easier and I was working on UI/UX and the front-end for the project. In Fall 2023, I took Computer Graphics. We learned about concepts such as normalmaps, bilinear filtering, displacement mapping, specular shading, etc. Our OpenGL programming assignments had us implement various concepts we learned in class. At the same time, I took Graphic and Information Design. The class primarily was focused on using Adobe Illustrator to create vector graphics, but we also used Adobe Photoshop for two of our projects to visualize our designs in their real-world contexts. We also learned about mind-mapping and Behance as tools for brainstorming and inspiration, and we learned about the Principles of Design. In Spring 2024, I came back to HIDE, but this time on the Human Factors team. This time, I wanted to refine my UI design skills and learn how to use tools such as Figma, while learning and applying concepts like the Gestalt Principles.
In addition to group project experience, I also have relevant work experience. In Summer 2022, I worked as an intern at Lear Corporation. My role was to develop an application for the company's plants. The application was made using .NET 6 Blazor and used the Telerik UI for Blazor component library. At my internship, I designed light and dark themes for the application and implemented a toggle that allowed you to switch between color themes of the site.
