Project 5 SCAA

13 Nov 2013 Leave a comment

Meme Time

Project #5

Date Submitted: November 13, 2013

For this project, my goal was to create a meme that expressed my opinion on more than one subject, all which I find extremely important. I quit smoking cigarettes eight weeks ago and I cannot even describe how difficult and miserable it was. After kicking the nasty habit and seeing what the addiction was doing to my body, I couldn’t (and still can’t) seem to understand why something so horrible for you is legal…especially since I am a passionate believer in the medical benefits of marijuana, which is ironically illegal. My inspiration for this project came from a study I read that stated that Cannabis can prevent cancer caused by the consumption of cigarettes. This literally blew my mind. When I read the article I felt like the polar bear in my meme…confused.

I had spent a lot of time trying to get inspired for this project by looking at tons of memes on social media websites and Know Your Meme. For a while I was determined to come up with a really humorous meme. However, once I had read the new study on Cannabis, I instantly changed my mind and decided to create a meme that was funny yet informative, AND expressing something I am passionate about.

There are a bunch of websites that let you create memes for free…I used one called Meme Maker. Other than the project being extremely late, I am disappointed with the top caption. No matter how many times I tried to re-do it or fix it, I could not get the number to show up correctly. It should say: Annual deaths caused by cigarettes: 400,000. However I am satisfied with my project.

SCAA #4

06 Nov 2013 Leave a comment

by fsarris in Project 4

Project #4 SCAA:

This project was hands down the most challenging one for me. With that being said, I would like to start this SCAA by saying that my project 4 did not at all turn out how I had expected it to. I was hoping to create a Twine that would tell ‘my story’ about my interest in music from the 60’s. My plan was to create a story on Twine that would take you to different youtube videos of live performances from some of my favorite artists at Woodstock. My Twine takes you to one youtube video of Janis Joplin live at Woodstock. As I’m writing this critique I am starting to change my mind on how I feel of the outcome of my project. I actually like that I was only able to have one youtube video and that the whole thing is very simple. I like it this way because it doesn’t say too much about me. I am a little hesitant when it comes to posting my personal information online, so I like that my Twine requires a lot of imagination from the viewer. It kind of doesn’t make since–I’m sure my viewers go through my short boring Twine and wonder, ‘what’s the point?’ So I guess in response to that questions I’d say to my viewers, ‘you tell me!’

I cannot tell you how many tutorials and articles and step-by-step guides I had to read and use to figure out how to make this project happen. In the end, it all came down to my amazing classmate Caitie helping me with using Twine and html coding. Although I probably never would have been able to make it work without her help, I still learned a lot! Watching her work and trouble shoot was really helpful because watching her do it sort of showed me how to go about trouble shooting and how to find solutions to any technical challenges I face. One of the most helpful tutorials I used was this one:

My classmate Caitie had showed us this and it really came in handy. It helped me get my Twine story set up, and it helped me better understand how Twine works.

I found it very difficult to get inspired for this project, but I have many reasons as to why I think this: One, because I felt out of my comfort zone–I’m a much more hands-on type of person so my mind kind of went blank when I tried to think of how to make an interactive website, that also had to reflect my lens…Which leads to my next reason: I find myself still having some difficulty figuring out what exactly my lens is. When my classmate Caitie had announced to the class the tool Twine, I felt like it was up my ally. My goal was to tell a story with less words and mostly visual/audio elements. I know it doesn’t show the viewer much about my lens, but I like it that way because I am still struggling with what things about me I want to make public, and what I want to keep private.

Overall, no I am not exactly impressed with my work, but for the short amount of time and all the technical difficulties I ran into along the way, don’t suppose it’s all that bad!