Preparing An Animated Series Concept For A Television Ready Pitch, Weston Hooper

Master of Fine Arts in Digital Media Culminating Experience

Television pitches are the first step towards launching a series. This paper focuses on that process and answers the question, “from developing concept art to preparing a polished and professional pitch, what are best practices for winning a network contract?” Getting a pitch requires several steps, such as finding an agent or a producer, and presenting the story, character relationships, and artwork to show your vision. Using my project, “Dynamite Decoys,” to create a story line, sketches, turnaround sheets, and key art scene pieces, I put it all together to formulate a television-ready pitch.

Erwin's Second Story: Founding A Community Theatre, Bailey Robinson

Undergraduate Honors Theses

Erwin, Tennessee is a small town located just outside of Johnson City. The town is beautiful and the people are kind, but it lacks one thing - a community theatre. In an effort to increase student interest in the local high school drama department, allow community members of all ages a chance to perform, and to provide entertainment to the small town, I have worked to form a community theatre named Second Story. Founding a nonprofit community theatre comes with many challenges. In this thesis I will walk through my efforts and what all went into this labor of love. …

Justification And Compliance: Public Health Ethics In A Post-Covid America, Nathan Alan Turner

Undergraduate Honors Theses

The severity of the COVID-19 pandemic and the high-profile nature of the public health response make it a natural context for exploring the current state of public health ethics. This paper explores this topic from two perspectives: justification and compliance. Libertarianism and utilitarianism are two frameworks that dominate the question of how public health interventions are justified. Consequently, this paper analyzes the events of the pandemic to determine how these frameworks fared in terms of offering reliable means of justifying the interventions needed to curb the spread of COVID-19. Consideration of these events suggests that a framework centered around actionable …

Libby In Limbo, Moriah Claire Hall

Undergraduate Honors Theses

Libby in Limbo is a scripted narrative podcast that follows Libby as she moves back to her small hometown, gets a job as a librarian, and learns to navigate life in a small, tight-knit community. This podcast serves two main purposes: to create entertainment media about a library that does not promote harmful stereotypes about libraries and to create awareness and accessibility of scripted podcasts.

Visual Development Of The Night Sky Circus, Rebeca Ortiz

Undergraduate Honors Theses

This creative thesis explores the process of visual development and how one can apply it to their own body of work. Visual Development encompasses the entire concept design process, from the idea to the final design. Vis Dev artists document their journey to depict how an idea becomes a fully refined and polished concept. They illustrate a wide variety of elements, such as characters, costuming, props, and environments. The development of all of these factors then allows the artist to cultivate an imaginative and creative world that could be used for multiple forms of entertainment, such as animated films, video …

Diversity Of Programming By Race And Gender In College And University Band Concerts, Liz Liss

Undergraduate Honors Theses

While there are many women (and others of non-male genders) as well as people of color who compose for concert bands, they are often not given equitable recognition or representation. Over the past several decades, pushes for diversity within the classical music realm and higher education have sparked numerous discussions surrounding current practices (Bond 2017, 154; Bowman 2020, 10; Cumberledge and Williams 2022, 4; Peters 2016, 22): who are we inviting into our programs, whose music are we playing, and who are we representing? Despite these concerns, there has been very little research to provide answers to these questions within …

Foundation Of Empire In The Tudor Era: Further Explorations Of The Northeast And Northwest Passages, Richard H. Lloyd Iii

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The British Empire is often traced back to the late sixteenth century and Sir Francis Drake's circumnavigation, but Tudor monarchs had been eyeing expansion beyond Britain long before Drake. John Cabot, commissioned by Henry VII in the late fifteenth century, became the first European to step foot in the Americas in five centuries. Half a century later, adventurers like Richard Chancellor and Sir Hugh Willoughby sought a possible Northeast Passage to Asia, interacting with the Sami and Russians along the way. These expeditions and others like them, funded by the English monarchy and merchants, aimed to expand the kingdom’s economic …

Understanding The Persuasive Attributes Of Twitch Advertisements: A Study On The Effects Of Current Advertisements And Sponsorships, Colleen Sharkey

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The research in this study aims to investigate the effectiveness of Twitch’s current advertising option, which includes mid-roll, pre-roll, and sponsored streams. It will focus on usefulness of content, brand credibility, purchase intent, and streamer credibility. Twitch has seen a surge in growth and attention in recent years, with an average of 31 million daily visitors and 1.3 trillion minutes watched globally in 2021 alone (Twitch Sales, 2022). However, despite Twitch’s growing popularity as an entertainment and entrepreneurship platform, little research has been conducted on the impact of its advertising options on brand perception. This study seeks to address this …

Japanese Canadians In World War Ii: Neglected Historiography, Clayton Huff

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

During World War II, Japanese across North America were forced into internment camps out of suspicion and wartime hysteria. The historiography has chosen to focus specifically on Japanese Americans and their experiences. Academic and popular history is overwhelmingly focused on Japanese Americans, with minimal discussion ever given to Japanese Canadians or Mexicans who were interned. Tens of thousands of Japanese Canadians were interned during this tumultuous time. By ignoring their testimonies and hardships, history has forgotten these oppressed people. This thesis seeks to examine the current historiography of Japanese Canadians and compare it to that of Japanese Americans while also …

The Hysterical Woman: An Analysis Of Trauma In Gothic Women’S Literature And Modern Horror Film, Molly Holdway

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This thesis explores trauma related to hysteria through themes of confinement, isolation, and motherhood in the works “The Yellow Wallpaper” (1892) by Charlotte Perkins-Gilman, The Haunting of Hill House (1959) by Shirley Jackson, and The Babadook (2014) directed by Jennifer Kent. Hysteria is explored first as a diagnosis and then as a weaponized term meant to keep women facing isolation and grief in a continuous state of oppression. The gothic and gothic horror genres display these themes through the dark nature of the human mind, which is vital in understanding the stories of the female characters discussed and the …

Witness, Revival, Testimony, Laura Ann Schroeder

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The artist, Laura Ann Schroeder, discusses her Master of Fine Arts thesis exhibition, Witness, Revival, Testimony, which was installed at Tipton Gallery in Johnson City, TN from March 2, 2023 through March 31, 2023, with a public reception held on March 24, 2023. The exhibition consisted of a collection of sculptural works and installations that evoke scenes and memories from the artist’s childhood. This body of work deconstructs the traditional family dynamic and the private domestic space through recreations of everyday life. The artworks are primarily made with repurposed consumer textiles and techniques like stitching and quilting that have historically …

Brand-Funded Documentary Films And Climate Change: An Aristotelian Rhetorical Analysis, Matthew Rossetti

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This paper examines the concept of brand-funded documentaries that center on the issue of climate change and uses Aristotle’s Rhetorical Triangle to better understand how the films use rhetoric in communicating their message. A rhetorical analysis was conducted using four brand films from Amazon, Corona, Patagonia and REI and the results are intended to demonstrate the best methods of persuasion and the most effective rhetoric utilized in brand-funded documentaries. Because brand-funded documentaries not only make an argument about a particular issue, in this case climate change, but also must communicate a particular brand’s values and commitments, examining the rhetoric in …

“It’S Alive!” The Birth And Afterlife Of The Gothic Genre, Tanner Linkous

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This thesis explores the development of the Gothic novel in England throughout the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. This thesis establishes the Gothic as a literary mode of middle-class terror by analyzing Gothic novels within the historical context of the Industrial and Democratic revolutions. This requires an in-depth understanding of politics throughout both centuries and this thesis engages with several sources such as Maggie Kilgour’s The Rise of the Gothic Novel which adds important context to my claims. Additionally, I use several contemporary sources such as Godwin’s Caleb Williams, the writings of Edmund Burke, and On the Pleasure Derived from Objects …

Powerful And Powerless: Reconfiguring The Agency And Supremacy Of Women In Selected Festivals In The Yoruba Town Of Isaga Orile, 1900-1958, Olusegun Olatunji

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This thesis discusses how the gender dynamics and religious festivals of the Yoruba people in Isaga Orile were not affected by colonialism. The study draws on various accounts, particularly from the Church Missionary Society’s journals, to attest to colonialism's restructuring of male political hegemony. Focusing on two major festivals, Gelede and Oro, the study argues that men's inclusion in Gelede reinforces female supremacy, while the Oro society shows men's hegemony and restrains women from its activities. The study found that gender dominants in these festivals played complementary roles by mirroring female and male roles within the Isaga Orile political system. …

Consuming The World: Poetic Appetite, Memory, And Identity In Li-Young Lee’S Food Poems, Claire Liszka

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Food is a universal human necessity, yet food often serves more than a biological purpose as it informs individual and communal identities, and even facilitates memory. This thesis explores personal memory, the development of identity, and an almost reverential connection to nature in several food poems by Li-Young Lee in Rose (1986) and Behind My Eyes (2008). Born in 1957, Lee has been writing poetry since he was young, studying under Gerald Stern in the late 1970s, and he is known for writing sublime, transcendent yet incredibly accessible and expressive poetry. This thesis gives an overview of food studies and …

Bibliotherapy: A Literary And Linguistic Analysis Of Literature, Matthew Curry

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Bibliotherapy—the process of utilizing literature for its therapeutic properties—has been around for centuries; however, it wasn’t until a surge of research in the 1920s that the process became recognized as an adequate method of therapy. With the rising mental health crisis looming over the United States, the time to develop, establish, and advocate for a bibliotherapeutic curriculum in K-12 public education is now. Using literary works such as Gary Paulsen’s Hatchet, Helena Fox’s How it Feels to Float, and Laurie Halse Anderson’s Speak, this thesis establishes the literary, therapeutic, and pedagogical reasoning for the implementation of such …

Tell The Bees That Transcendentalism Is Lost: The Search For The Lost Transcendental Space In The Bee Poetry Of Emily Dickinson And Sylvia Plath, Adyson M. Ross

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Ralph Waldo Emerson’s bee poem, “The Humble-Bee,” expresses the nineteenth-century transcendentalist philosophy of finding wholeness and oneness in nature while Sylvia Plath’s twentieth-century bee poems function as a response to Plath’s feelings of alienation and repression, indicating that transcendental peace is lost in the postmodern era. Emerson’s poem indicates the spiritual fulfilment found through observing bees and highlights the harmony between humans and nature, but women of the nineteenth century find difficulty achieving this same level of freedom; Emily Dickinson reclaims the language of transcendentalism in her bee poetry to explore a world otherwise denied to her. The effects of …

Ready, Fire, Aim! Creating Game Animation In Restraint, Jarrett Mcgill

Master of Fine Arts in Digital Media Culminating Experience

Just like other artistic disciplines, animators are tasked with bringing characters to life through movement, whether for personal or professional motives. Games are a diverse field that sees a wide range of animation needs, but there lie consistent threads that lead to the success of a video games movements aesthetically and functionally. For aspiring animators there remains one consistent question: what does it mean and entail to create animation in the highly competitive game industry? This culminating experience paper aims to discuss the similarities and differences between student and professional work to highlight the importance and what it entails to …

Lighting Styles And Moods In Unreal Engine, Maggie Shelton

Master of Fine Arts in Digital Media Culminating Experience

This writing covers the process of lighting stylized and realistic scenes in different moods in Unreal Engine. Lighting can be used to express a mood in an environment, which can aid storytelling in films and games. Lighting in Unreal consists of positioning directional lights, sky lights, spot lights, point lights, and rect lights, as well as various fog effects that help create the ambiance of the scene. This project utilizes free Epic Games Pack content to show the lighting process for different moods in several environments. The use of lights and colors are an important part of designing a game …

T. Hanks For Nostalgia: The Power Of Tom Hanks And Film Branding, Jacob Higgs

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

In March 2020, Tom Hanks announced he had contracted COVID-19 while shooting the Elvis Presley Biopic in Australia. On Instagram, he encouraged fans to take the disease seriously and be aware of how severe of a disease it was. Character brands and nostalgia have been found to foster trust in products and encourage relationships with those brands. Using the lens of nostalgia and uses and gratification to examine Tom Hanks as a character brand, the researcher analyzed five blockbuster films with Tom Hanks as the lead character. The study used narrative thematic analysis to observe Hanks and the depictions of …

Viewer Interactions In Animation, Megan Smith

Master of Fine Arts in Digital Media Culminating Experience

The art of animation can be viewed in a multitude of ways. Passive viewing, in which an audience is merely observing the acting and are unable to alter the animation in any way, such as watching a TV show or movie. Interactive camera viewings, such as Augmented Reality and Virtual Reality, in which the viewer can manipulate the content visually in the same way you observe the world, by moving the camera around in a digital space. Interaction-dependent viewing describes animations such as video games, where the player has full control of the character’s actions and the timing of those …

Designing And Creating A Prototype Board Game, Kurtis Woodward

Undergraduate Honors Theses

Abstract

The goal of this project was to create a fantasy style board game prototype that is playable and enjoyable for people new to fantasy tabletop gaming. I assembled a group of 4-5 regular tabletop board game players to play test the game as well as a second group of 4-5 family members and friends to play test who aren't regular board game players. We began with a general base game that evolved with each playtest from feedback given by the playtesters. After about 18-20 play tests, I settled on game mechanics and moved on to creating the assets of …

A Director's Take On The Curious Incident Of The Dog In The Night-Time, Billie Williams

Undergraduate Honors Theses

This paper examines what it is like to be an assistant director. The play, The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time was adapted from a book by Mark Hadden that is structured as if the main character was the writer. The stage production reworks that concept and turns it into a “play within a play”. The story is about a boy named Christopher, his broken family and his struggle with autism. When the director, Cara Harker first approached me about being an assistant director, I struggled with anxiety and not feeling like I had a real place in …

Racially Segregated Housing And Its Impact On Urban America, Bailey Norris

Undergraduate Honors Theses

Throughout the late nineteenth century, into the twentieth century, and the twenty-first century, Black Americans have faced displacement, segregated housing, and limited economic prosperity. Due to this inequality, Black American’s face difficulties as they try to resurrect their hopes of the American Dream. To assess the experiences of Black Americans and the impact of racially segregated housing on Urban America, an examination of legislation, state-funded segregation, structural and systemic racism, and the acts of individuals in creating barriers to success for Black communities becomes necessary. This thesis works to understand and answer the question: to what extent does racially segregated …

“The Escapades Of Cat & Dog” The Process Of Creating A Children’S Book From Start To Finish, Cosette Simmons

Undergraduate Honors Theses

The focus of this thesis project was to learn and understand the amount of work that goes into children’s book illustration, as well as bringing the story of another’s to life. “The Escapades of Cat & Dog” was written by my grandfather, George Petrella, to tell the story of my mother and her sibling’s pets going on kooky adventures. The script was given to me back in 2017-2018 not to long after my grandmother, Jane Petrella, passed away due to cancer. The result consists of a 36 page 9 by 9 inch fully illustrated book intended to be …

The Process And Flow Of Animation: For The Record, Dylan Gordon

Undergraduate Honors Theses

A comprehensive study in the processes of animation in various forms, from concept to simple layout animation to complex overlapping action and splining, and even lighting and texturing, I will be using a popular podcast musical as a basis to study the pipeline that’s used to create an industry animation.

Visual Development For Wellspring, Jane Frances Anderson

Undergraduate Honors Theses

The primary focus of this thesis is the study of visual development for worldbuilding, starting with creative writing and documentation and translating the written content into visual concepts in both 2D and 3D. This project includes an original narrative, setting, and characters and explores aspects of the visual development pipeline. The content below contains work in visual research, 2D character design, 3D character sculpting, 3D printing and assembly, hard-surface modeling, matte-painting, illustration, compositing, and heavy creative writing.

Exploring Eclectic Styles And Original Compositions In Bluegrass And Acoustic Music, Justin Alexander

Undergraduate Honors Theses

In the creation of my thesis project, I aimed to record a collection of music that highlights my influences and creative voice as an artist within the bluegrass/acoustic music genres. In collaboration with friends and colleagues that I have met during my time at East Tennessee State University, I have successfully recorded a project that surveys my current influences and creative voice as an artist, instrumentalist and composer. One goal I had for this project was to highlight compositions that I have written on acoustic guitar. Before attending ETSU, I did play some acoustic guitar, though I was primarily a …

Say His Name: Othello, Paul Robeson, And Racism In America, Brett Strother

Undergraduate Honors Theses

In Shakespeare’s Othello, Othello faces societal pressures of racism as he marries Senator Brabantio’s White daughter Desdemona. This creates the main plot, and the villain of the play, Iago, plots against him which leads to the destruction of Othello’s reputable character. Othello is transformed into a violent, murderous husband by Iago’s villainous ploy fueled by using racial slurs, and Othello’s final form matches the name his enemies assign him. Stripping Othello of his name and portraying him as “the Moor”, a term used to describe a category of Black persons viewed as barbaric, is a tactic used throughout time …

The Impact Of Social Media On The Publishing Industry: A Case Study Of Author Colleen Hoover, Chloe Foster

Undergraduate Honors Theses

Thanks to the BookTok community, adult romance author Colleen Hoover has taken the world by storm. Anyone that has had access to TikTok within the past year has probably had a Colleen Hoover book appear in video on their “For You Page,” the page on TikTok where users can scroll through content that follows an algorithm which learns about the user’s specific interests. However, Hoover has been writing and publishing novels since 2012. She had already published more than a dozen novels by 2020, yet her popularity has only grown since she made her appearance on social media. Her book …