Week 4 Assignment - BCST 119

Graphics Project – Overview

The project asks you to tell an original story in a slideshow composed of 5 to 10 slides containing carefully formatted images and text.

The project is divided into three assignments that you will complete during weeks 4, 5 and 6 of the course. Each assignment has specific directions that you’ll see when you click on it, but here is an overview:

• This week’s assignment (Assignment Week 4) is to write a script, draw a storyboard, and gather images for your project.
• Next week’s assignment (Assignment Week 5) is to produce 1 slide from your project, learning how to combine images and add text to them with Photoshop Elements.
• The last week’s assignment (Assignment Week 6) is to produce the remaining slides for your project, and export the project as a slide show and turn it in to me through Insight.

Click here to see an example of a completed graphics project (.pdf file).

This week: Assignment - Graphics Project Script and Storyboard
This week's assignment is to write your story, make a storyboard, and collect images for your graphics project.

Part 1. Create a story:
Tell us a story about a time when you were faced with a problem, you took action, and you resolved the problem. You may use up to ten slides to tell your story. Like every drama, your story has three Acts:
• In Act 1, you tell us where and when the story happens, and what the problem was that needed to be solved.
• In Act 2, you tell us what action you took.
• In Act 3, you tell us how your action resolved the problem, and any important results that the experience had for you.

Write a script for your story:
By 'script' we mean the written words that will appear on your slides. If you plan on telling your story in five slides, your script should have five sentences (or five paragraphs) that will appear on your five slides. You want to leave room for your images, so you should make each sentence short and effective.
• Be sure to write complete sentences with a subject and a verb in active tense.
• Use a conversational tone that is direct and clear.
• Limit the length of your sentences to about twenty words.
• Be original. Find what YOU want to say and find the best way to say it.
Remember, the written content will be layered on top of graphics and images. You must be very economical with what you write!

Part 2. Create a storyboard for your story
A storyboard is an essential tool for organizing a visual story. Most multimedia projects go through a storyboarding phase. Pixar, the amazing animation studio that created Toy Story and Cars, uses storyboards to fine tune every detail of their films before production begins. A storyboard looks like a comic strip. Each frame shows a shot from the film. Your storyboard should have one frame for every slide that you want to make. Each frame should have some of the text from your script written on it. Use your storyboard to figure out exactly how you want to slice up your script and what images you want to use for each slide. The storyboard is not being graded, so use it as a sketchpad to draft your project. Don’t spend any time making it look beautiful.

Here is a blank storyboard template that you can print out as many times as you need. I recommend that you sketch out each slide, including text and graphic ideas, until you figure out how you want your script to be delivered and what images you need to find or create.

Click here to download storyboard template (.pdf file)

Part 3. Collect images for your project.
Once you’ve finished your storyboard, you should have a clear idea of what kind of images you’re looking for. Sometimes your project dictates the images that you’ll need. For example, if you’re telling the story of your family who immigrated to the US, you’ll want pictures of them, or maybe maps. Every project will be different, and you get to choose the images that go with your script.

Visual Content Rules:
• You can borrow images from the internet – Google Images is a good search engine
• There should be about five to ten images to the story
• You can use images you have taken with your own camera
• You can scan printed pictures to use in the project if you have access to a scanner
• At least one of your images must be a composite in which you have edited two images together.

Procedure: On the Week 4 block you will find an explanation of how to copy images from the internet. Search and save the background images for your project into a new folder that you create for the project in the Pictures folder of your computer. I suggest that you store graphic elements in a separate sub-folder for each slide in the project. If you have ten slides, you should have ten folders with appropriate names. Be sure that the files retain their proper extension to the files that you save, whether it is .jpg, .gif or .png.

Choose images of an appropriate size; background images should be at least the size of the project’s output resolution (larger than 800 x 600). Why is that important? Well, if your background image is much smaller than the output resolution of your project, Photoshop will have to enlarge the image to fit the project. The image will become fuzzy, and in extreme cases where the original file is very small, you’ll even begin to see blocks of pixels when Photoshop enlarges the image.



You can see this effect in the example above. Note how fuzzy the straight lines of the text become, and how 'blocky' the image at the bottom is. If you can, always use original images that are 1.5x larger than your output resolution (FYI when we use these pictures we'll be working at a resolution of 800 x 600 pixels, 72ppi. If that doesn't make any sense to you don't worry, it will next week!).

So to summarize, this week you'll write a script, draw a storyboard and start gathering images. SUBMIT YOUR SCRIPT ONLY by clicking below.

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