Featured Assignments
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Return to the Silent Era
So far, 75 people have completed this assignment and it has 8789 views.
The dawn of cinema had no audio; silent movies created an atmosphere with music and the use of cue cards. Take a 3-5 minute trailer of a modern movie and render it in the form os the silent era- convert to black and white, add effects to make it look antiquated, replace the audio with a musical sound track, and add title cards for the dialogue. As a prime example, see Silent Star Wars. One of the best sources for music is Incompetech or the Internet Archive. For the title cards, try a google image search
Computer Books for Kids
So far, 17 people have completed this assignment and it has 4696 views.
Take a well-known kids book and recast it as a computer book. Look for inspiration here: http://www.somethingawful.com/d/photoshop-phriday/childfriendly-computer-books.php
Splash The Color
So far, 143 people have completed this assignment and it has 9535 views.
Color splash is a technique to emphasize details- you remove all color from a photo, and then restore original color to a single object, e.g. a green apple on a table. Think of the Girl in the red dress from Schindler's List. You can do this in a number of ways with photo editing software or using mobile apps. The answer lies in the Google
Create a READ poster
So far, 42 people have completed this assignment and it has 5980 views.
Since 1985, the American Library Association (ALA) has tried to sell reading books as cool by showing celebrities reading their favorite books. You can read about the history of this promotional campaign here. Experiment with this tradition, introduce a celebrity with a book who hasn't been recognized yet, but should be. Or use the poster you create to poke fun at a public figure, or do something else all together. have fun.
Batman and Robin Running Scared
So far, 8 people have completed this assignment and it has 6312 views.
There's an awesome Tumblr blog created by That Design Bastard filled with animated GIFs of Batman and Robin Running away from sh*t. The cool thing is the site posts a PSD file of Batman and Robin running with a transparent background so you can make your own. He even encourages you to submit your GIF to him for consideration. Time to get those two caped crusaders running scared!
Alternative Book Covers
So far, 20 people have completed this assignment and it has 7036 views.
Take a title of a well-known book and re-design the cover to suggest something entirely different. For example, the book cover for Cormac McCarthy's The Road (an apocalyptic novel about a father and son facing the end of the world) is reframed as a feel-good book about effective parenting (see image). Original idea found through this design contest on Book Ninja in 2008. Image credit: Ingrid Paulson's reimagining of The Road by Cormac McCarthy
One Archetype, Five Movies, Five Seconds
So far, 51 people have completed this assignment and it has 5367 views.
Create a five second video of one archetype from five different movies cutting together one second of each. Examples could include: Prisoners, Thieves, Beauty Queens, Kings, Robin Hoods, James Bonds, Bank Robbers, Assassins, Bad Boys, Kung Fu Masters, Femme Fatales, Sports Heroes, High School Bullies, Rogue Police Officers, Brainiacs, Pregnancies, Principals, Mean Teachers, InspirationalTeachers, Gunslingers, Gangsters, Monsters, Bartenders, Warrior Princesses, Swordsman, Knights, Mad Scientists, Nerd Girls, Obstructive Bureaucrats, Sidekicks, Wise Old Men, Hardboiled Detectives, Tough Coaches, Swooning Ladies. Check out an example here: http://www.michaelbransonsmith.net/blog/2012/03/26/dollhouse-of-nerd-girls/
At Least It’s an Ethos
So far, 6 people have completed this assignment and it has 4688 views.
Take the line from the film The Big Lebowski "Say what you will about National Socialism, Dude, at least it's an ethos" and change National Socialism to a different -ism, like, for example, [[Veganism]]. Here is the GIF for you to use as a template to change National Socialism to a different -ism. Now here's the trick, after that you need a GIF to setup the punchline. So Walter Sobchack is referring to Nihilism in the scene we are quoting when defining National Socialism as an ethos, my idea for this (now convoluted) assignment came from Tom Woodward's unsettling animated ...
The Boone Gorges Parent-Child Headswap
So far, 10 people have completed this assignment and it has 4448 views.
Swap the heads of parents and children. Inspired by the work of Paul Ripke
One Story / Four Icons
So far, 275 people have completed this assignment and it has 14230 views.
This idea was first suggested by Tom Woodward and has been a long standing popular ds106 assignment. The assignment is to reduce a movie, story, or event into its basic elements, then take those visuals and reduce them further to simple icons, four of them. Write your blog post up but do not give away the answer, let people guess! The challenge is to find the icons that suggest the story, but do not make it so easy. For icons a great resource is The Noun Project.