Monthly Archives: April 2016

Capstone Proposal – Food Waste

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Food waste is a big issue in America, but it’s not only because people aren’t finishing their meals at restaurants. A large portion of food thrown out is food that people feel unsafe eating— because the date on the box was yesterday’s. Unfortunately, these dates do not always reflect safety, can mean a number of different things and sometimes are even just made up by the manufacturing companies. These arbitrary dates are the only reason perfectly good food is being thrown out and often the label simply means that after the date, the food doesn’t taste as fresh.  So, for this project, I will be taking a closer look at the different types of expiration dates and what they mean, how much food waste is caused by them, and what we can do about it. With the labels’ text varying greatly (best if used by, expires on, etc.) and each one meaning something different, it is difficult for consumers to know what exactly the label means.

The two different media objects I will create are going to be an infographic that visually shows current data on food waste and an animated video (created with After Effects) that explains the current labeling system. The two will work together to show the user that food with a date from yesterday does not always mean that it belongs in the trash. That knowledge alone can cut down the amount of food waste drastically, so I will focus on making this message clear, informative and impactful.

Nic Stevens – Capstone Proposal

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Drinking and driving has been an issue for many years, and unfortunately has only been getting worse. I thought it would be interesting to address the consequences of drinking and driving such as injuries, deaths, DUIs, jail time, fines, suspended license. The two media projects I was planning to create were going to include the infographic file as well as an animation. They are both relative to each other because I want to relay a strong message that will stick with my audience in these two mediums.

 The infographic is going to pose as an ad, and contain a simple caption, however the image below the caption will be powerful. An idea that I had for the infographic includes two things. The caption will say something such as “Don’t Drink and Drive”, or “The Faster You Drink, The Faster You Crash”. I will then have a picture of a medium/close up shot of an individual drinking a full glass of beer. Inside of the beer, I am planning on drawing a car using Adobe Illustrator and make it look like the car is crashing into the individual’s face. I may also use Adobe Photoshop to make the face look damaged around the lips. This will relay a simple, yet powerful message to my audience.

The animation will show various statistics. I am also trying to develop a script to possibly contain a cartoon skit demonstrating the consequences of drinking and driving.

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Health Impacts of the Animal Industry

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For my Capstone Project I want to explore the animal industry’s impact on both the health of an individual and the Earth. I will briefly summarize the wide scope of the animal industry on my site but in order to keep a coherent focus I will concentrate on meat and dairy and the impact these products have on both the health of the globe and the individual. While I will primarily be focusing on the negative aspects of the industry, there are a few benefits to it as well that I would be biased to ignore—though as I will make clear, the great majority of the industry’s impact on global well-being is undesirable and greatly outweighs the few benefits the industry provides. I will create an infographic using vectored images as well as a remixed video using clips from other CC videos.

Animals used in agriculture take up a lot of space and occupy land that used to be rainforest or that could have been used to grow crops for human consumption. This results in decreased biodiversity as well as hunger across the globe. Carbon and methane from these ruminants become trapped in the atmosphere and the air we breathe. Their waste contaminates water through improper disposal.

However this is not all. While there is a relationship between high rates of meat consumption and obesity, heart disease, stroke, and a variety of other medical conditions, not to mention its propensity to transmit diseases, milk consumption has been linked to obesity, osteoporosis, and cancer due to both natural and artificial hormones within it.

The animal industry has suffered large profit gains in recent years at the expense of small farmers, and it is slated to grow even larger as the world population increases. We must remember that our resources are not infinite, and there is a limit to how large anything can grow before it will collapse upon itself.

Capstone Proposal / Peralta

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Over 100 years ago , an art movement had begun. Starting with Winsor McCay, the creator of the first full-page comics ‘Rarebit Fiend’ and ‘Little Nemo in Slumberland’ (these were some of the first psychedelic graphics). Shortly after that we saw Marcel Duchamp paint a mustache and beard on a reproduction of the Mona Lisa, to question and subvert the fine art world.
Here we are in the beginning of the 21st century Lowbrow art, which has been influencing design, film, fashion ,advertising, music and television for at least the last half century, is barely recognized as a high art form. Ultimately, some artists eventually find themselves among the highly accepted artists such as the likes of Picasso, Miro, Duchamp and Cezanne, but not without battling their way past the high priests who hesitate to show their work.
Lowbrow ( a term coined by Robert Williams in the mid 1960s ) art is varied and complex. It is a combination of pop-surrealism, cartoons, narrative, pervasive, kustom kulture, retro illustrative, expressionist and psychedelic punk, just to give you some idea of the enormous scope. Cartoon art, however, would be the single most powerful influence. Cartoon art seems to shape pop-surrealistic art both stylistically and philosophically, especially since its insurrection in the 1960s with underground comics and psychedelic posters.
My intention with this three page website is to introduce the viewer to a brief history of “Lowbrow” art, a comprehensive timeline as an info graphic and a partially animated mash up several wonderful pieces of art.

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Johnny Fairchild Capstone Project

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The topic I will be exploring will be the positive benefits of children who are involved in youth athletics. I chose this topic because number one I am actively involved in volunteering in sports, and second because I believe there is a strong correlation between the lessons playing sports teaches you and being an effective adult.

It has been my understanding that participating on a team, especially at a young age can do a lot to instill a plethora of invaluable life skills such as responsibility, accountability, perseverance, teamwork, and that is just to name a few.

My project will compare statistical data that shows youth who participate in some sort of sports team ultimately end up being more successful in life. The medium I will use to communicate this be an infographic that presents the data I uncover in a very eye friendly and easily understandable format. The meat and potatoes of my statistical research will be comparative data that identifies how kids with some youth sports affiliation do better in school, go further with education, and ultimately are more well rounded people.

The second medium I will be using with be a remix video that I will use to explore the effects of sports as a tool for life skill learning. I will use a voice over narrative, and include action shots from the actual youth sports I am involved in as well as interviews with players and parents.

I will also address some of the negative connotations surrounding some youth athletics. For example I will highlight some of the safety changes in youth football that are geared towards making the game safer for our kids.

Capstone Proposal

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the subject I am going to do for my capstone project is on the subject of cell phone use while driving. you are more impaired when talking or texting while driving, than when you are drunk. First, I am going to go and search for all information on impaired driving and then narrow it down to cell phone use while behind the wheel. Making sure to focus on that one topic instead of using information about impaired driving as a whole.

Capstone Proposal

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With the rise of mobile devices, people are able to stay connected to one another more easily than ever before. Unfortunately, with this advancement in technology, people have began using this freedom everywhere, even while driving. In 2014 by itself, there were 3,129 distracted driving related deaths. Most advertisements on television and the internet focus on teens as the culprits behind distracted driving. As teens make up a lot of the statistics given on this topic, they don’t represent the whole picture. After some research, I’m sure I’ll find that this demographic isn’t the only group practicing unsafe driving habits.
For my capstone project, I will focus on distracted driving as a whole. With research into the topic, I will begin to uncover what steps are being taken to reduce distracted driving.
In terms of what I’ll be producing for this project, I’ve decided that I want to make an animation, and an infographic. This project will be statistic driven, so I plan on taking advantage of this by creating an infographic that will encapsulate these stats. For my animation, I want the viewer to witness the actual impact of distracted driving. I will use images of horrendous car crashes and other pictures that are a result from distracted driving. I’m hoping to make this animation as dramatic as possible, to really drive my point across.
With this capstone project, it is my aim to raise awareness on distracted driving.

Capstone Project – Oberg – Vote! It’s your right!

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The subject matter that I have chosen is voting. Voting is a fundamental right for the peoples of the United States of America. So much so that, since the creation of the United States Constitution, there have been four amendments that specifically address voting rights. In my Capstone project I want to address these amendments and their importance. I also want to address the historically low voter turn outs for federal, state, and local elections. The two media objects I am choosing for my capstone project are remixed video and animation. I am going to use the two media objects to separate the federal election information from the state and local information, while the website is going to give a general overview of what our rights and responsibilities are with regards to voting.
For example:
The Fifteenth Amendment prevents the government, both state and federal, from inhibiting a citizen’s right to vote based on their ‘race, color, or previous condition of servitude.’ Now, while this addressed race color and servitude, it still did not allow for women to vote.
Due in large part to the women’s suffrage movement of the early 1900’s, the Nineteenth Amendment was ratified prohibiting the denying of the right to vote on the basis of sex.
The Twenty-Fourth Amendment prohibited the requiring a poll or other type of tax in federal elections which was preventing people with little money the opportunity of voting.
The last one is the Twenty-Sixth Amendment which reduced the voting age to 18 allowing all those of majority the opportunity to vote.
So, as you can see, the right and responsibility of voting is so important that the Constitution was amending four times to allow all the opportunity to vote.
However, many people still do not take that opportunity. In 2008, just 56.8% of the voting age population turned out to vote. In 2012, it dropped to 53.6%, and those were presidential election years. In 2014, a non-presidential election year, the turnout dropped to just 36.3% for federal elections such as for congress and the senate.
This isn’t even taking into account state and local elections for representatives and measures that can directly face our lives.
This article isn’t to try and sway you from one side to another or to pick a particular mandate. That is for you to decide. However, if we all do our part in voting for who and what we believe will best help our society then we are taking personal responsibility for choosing who can best represent our needs. It’s that important.

Randi Higbie – Capstone Project Proposal

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The focus of my Capstone Project will be bringing awareness to and addressing body image issues as they relate to teens and pre-teens. I initially intended to focus solely on issues involving teen girls but quickly realized after speaking with friends and colleagues that teen boys are equally as influenced by societal pressures to conform to a certain standard of beauty and attractiveness. The questions that will shape my research are “What is normal?” “What is beautiful?” “What is healthy?” “Why are our differences not embraced instead of shunned?” I do not want this piece to be negative or depressing but hope it will encourage viewers to pause and think about how they contribute to and reinforce stereotypes and standards both consciously and subconsciously.

Some of the inspiration for my project came from the Dove beauty campaign, the “Play Like a Girl” campaign and the organization Girls on the Run. I was also inspired by stories from my friends of things their children have said, done or been affected by in regard to how they feel about their bodies.

My project will include an infographic or animation containing statistical data related to average height/weight ranges, healthy ranges of body fat, cholesterol etc., prevalence of eating disorders among different age ranges, quotes from teens discussing the pressures they feel and/or things they think and say about their bodies. I will also create a video mashup of positive images of different kinds of beauty and clips from other campaigns addressing positive body images and potential interviews with women in my circle. I want all of the elements of this piece to be empowering and positive.

Capstone Project

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For my Capstone Project, I will focus on the social issue of climate change. According to Massachusetts Institute of Technology, “Climate change is any substantial change in Earth’s climate that lasts for an extended period of time.” Thus, not only does climate change pose a threat to us today, it will cause even greater harm to future generations if it cannot be mitigated immediately. In fact, prominent political figures such as Senator Bernie Sanders and President Barack Obama have stated that climate change is the biggest threat facing both our nation and the world today. Climate change is a very big deal!

To convey the importance of what climate change is doing to our environment, I will produce both an infographic and remixed video that contain shocking statistics and information to support my claims. Both media objects can be easily embedded in the website that I create and they will strongly illustrate the dangers of climate change. I envision that the infographic will be newly generated by me and it will consist of short facts placed over an image. Alternatively, the remixed video will consist of many short Creative Commons video clips that I will put together to present a visual story of the devastating impacts of climate change. I hope that my two media object along with my website dedicated to the impact of climate change will open people’s eyes and inspire them to take action for their own wellbeing, in addition to the well-being of their children, grandchildren.