The purpose of the Digitally Connected studio was to explore issues of youth and media through an animated video. The final video was displayed at a conference called “Youth and Media” where it was used to begin a discussion about how how media and technology effect youth. Our video, “Space Mission” discusses the positive aspects of how media effects youth, specifically, the internet as a resource for independent learning.

We wanted to make a cartoony, heartwarming video about a baby who loves space and spends his time on the internet learning about rockets. The baby eventually becomes a toddler and builds a rocket from blueprints he found on the internet. The toddler finally realizes his dream of going to space. The message of the video was that the internet is a great place to explore your hobbies and learn about new things. The inspiration for this concept came from our own lives. To us, the internet has been a huge source of knowledge and help when learning new skills.

We used Adobe Illustrator to create the the characters and environments and used Adobe After Effects to animate them. The story we planned out initially was much more complex, but it proved too long and complex and we had to cut a lot of it out.