I just created my first scene of virtual reality.  Holy cow.  It took me multiple attempts between the first try and the final cut to come up with a simple sequence that I felt proud of.  For a while, I found these multiple attempts at creating a scene to be very frustrating.  I couldn't wrap my head around the technology, there were so many balls to juggle, and there were so many folders within folders within folders, hidden in obscure places on the computer desktop.  There were moments where I was convinced that I was going to blow the entire assignment due to my technology illiteracy in the field of virtual reality.  "This is big, lady.  Don't screw it up," I remember thinking to myself repeatedly.  But, when, after trial and error, victories and setbacks, my sequence was exported and I saw the final cut on a full-size computer screen.  I was in awe, as I realized, "You created that sequence, girl.  You're the artist here."

The parts that I enjoyed the most involved the creation of the setting of my scene.  I felt like a landscape artist, the ones from the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.  I was painting my own landscape of lush green, mountains, and water.  I was using a computer mouse, though, not a paintbrush.  Nevertheless, I was creating artwork.  I was the painter of the scene and there was a sense of pride to being able to think that.  As an artist, you're building something that, until a certain point, has only existed in your imagination.  That's the beauty of art.  Your product has the power to be anything you want it to be, and anything goes.  This is especially true for the world of virtual reality.

There was a moment after I realized that everything had gone well where I thought, "That was easier than I thought."  I'm starting to think that perhaps the anxiety that I felt over how well I would do on a technology-heavy assignment such as this one exacerbated the situation and, in a way, paralyzed me from being able to do the work for a while.  It wasn't until I focused, and really focused, that I was able to actually get the work done and the work process began to run smoothly.  So I am confident that, for the next assignment, I won't allow the panic to take over, however daunting the task may be because accomplishing this assignment became an unexpected confidence boost.