Two Mississippi Gulf Coast Community College students, Gavin Eley of Biloxi and Carlin Taylor of Long Beach, won the Humanities Oral Presentation for Two-Year Colleges at this year’s Mississippi Undergraduate Honors Conference.  Eley and Taylor presented on the creative research and process of making a 3-D animated short film. 

The conference, hosted virtually by the Mississippi University for Women in February, allowed students in undergraduate honors programs at Mississippi colleges and universities to showcase their research projects in oral or poster presentations.  

“We felt extreme shock at winning,” Taylor said.  “After the segment talking with our judges, we thought for sure we would not win as they had fairly intimidating questions.  When they announced our name at the end of the conference, we were speechless. We really did not know we had done so well until we saw the feedback from other colleges and students.” 

Taylor, a multimedia art and animation major, said he teamed up with Eley because Eley knew the software Blender well.  “I had this idea about doing a short film but didn’t feel I was proficient enough in Blender.  Gavin knows it so well, so we just naturally started talking about what we wanted to do.”  

Eley, a chemical engineering major, said he enjoys doing basic game design but had never done something like an animated short film.  “This is my first time getting involved in animation at this level,” he said. “Without Carlin’s interest in the field, I would probably not have even delved into it. The project started with us discussing how he wanted to make an animation, and since we both worked with Blender, we started work on the project.”

Taylor and Eley still have work to do to complete the project. “We do plan to continue working on this project and present a finished animation later this year,” Eley said. “I was initially motivated to do this project because of Carlin and how we decided to have the character progress through the story, which is very unique. The Honors presentation win and award has certainly jumpstarted us to get back to working on it even harder.”

To view their presentation, visit https://athenacommons.muw.edu/muhc/2021/humanities/7.