Fall 2017

The Peter J. Werth Entrepreneurship and Innovation Institute aims to promote student entrepreneurship by providing access to resources, fostering startups, offering courses, and raising awareness of opportunities to explore their ideas. It allows students to network with professional entrepreneurs, funds student projects through awarded grants, and create student maker spaces to promote campus innovation. A five member ATION team was tasked to create digital content – namely an animation or video – that highlighted the values of the Institute and its members to create awareness for their programs.

At the start, the team was met with a few challenges. The largest of all was the ‘to be’ announced rebranding of what was once called the UConn Entrepreneurship & Innovation Consortium. This would, therefore, cause a re-edit of the project. However, even with a postponed announcement, the team was able to take the project at face value to meet the overall goals of the assignment.

Initially, the team came up with three concepts. First, a traditional, live-action interview with members of the Institute. Second, a character based animation where a character would assimilate into life as one of the member programs. And thirdly, an infographic animation that used statistics and graphical elements in an explainer style video. After meeting with the client, Kathy Rocha, the third option was selected due to its versatility with future changes within the Institute.

The team, consisting of Joey Spagnuolo, Rachel Wright, Katie Sawosik, Dan Araujo, and Joel Torres, honed in their strengths to produce quality content. Joey took the lead as co-project manager and scriptwriter; Dan was lead animator, video editor, and asset creator; Rachel was also a co-project manager, assistant animator and asset creator, and both Joel and Katie were co-asset creators and assistant animators.

A professional, yet eye-catching color palette of blues and yellow was crafted for the delivered animated video, combined with clean, flat vector 2D graphics. This was paired with a voiceover from one of UConn’s drama students and an inspiring background soundtrack.The team also surprised the client with a printable infographic based on the information in the video that could be distributed to both members and clients.

Ultimately, the exciting project came with a few challenges that were overcome through working together. The team successfully accomplished the initial goal: to create a video that explains the Institute and its benefits at a glance and were happy to utilize their digital media skills in a real-world application.

Project Team
Dan Araujo
Joel Torres
Joey Spagnuolo
Katie Sawosik
Rachel Wright