CSC 1040 - Pictorial Essay Guidelines

The pictorial essay is a semester-long project in which you assemble images to present a topic of your choice. Instead of using words, you will be using images to relate your subject. With these images you will weave support for your ideas about the subject. Some of the guidelines for written essays apply here too:

• Clear topic: Choose a topic that matters to you and that you know well. Your essay topic need not to be grandiose, many fine-grain subjects make fine essay topics.
• Stay focused while presenting many facets: Your in depth understanding, appreciation and keen observation on the subject are the important ingredients to a successful essay.
• Build support for your ideas, flesh them out: Try to convey your enthusiasm and interest in the subject. Aim to convince, bring the viewer to your way of thinking
• Originality: An image is considered original if it is either a photograph that you have taken or created yourself by using photoshop or some other digital image manipulation software. You can use someone else's image(s) as a starting point, for example, by combining them or manipulating a particular image so as to create something new. What counts is not how much you have modified an image, but that the overall sense or message conveyed by the resulting image must be original to you.
• Create a logical structure: In terms of organization (logical structure) divide it into approximately 6 "chapters" around which you work your ideas. Each chapter should contain several original images that you have collected.
• Presentation matters (even more than in the written essay!)

Grading of pictorial essay

• Image quality
• Powerpoint slides
• Oral presentation
• Poster
• Website
• Animation