Welcome, robot enthusiasts, to another Trial and Error update! Today, we’re excited to share what we’ve been working on over the past few months.

This season, our team decided to take on the Digital Animation Award sponsored by WPI (Worcester Polytechnic Institute). The theme, “The Artifact That Changed Everything,” focused on future archaeology and sustainable technology. This award emphasizes creativity and storytelling through animation—so let’s dive into what we created and submitted.

We began by brainstorming ideas and storyboarding the animation: how it would look, how it would move, and what sound effects or audio it might need. Our journalism team played a big role in this phase, throwing around ideas and sketching out story concepts to see what best fit the theme.

One early idea was a dramatic war scene, but we quickly realized it wouldn’t be realistic to complete in the time we had—especially since we were working with a beginner animator. Another idea, which ultimately stuck, involved an auction set in the future, where artifacts recovered from Earth were being sold after humanity had moved to Mars.

This became the foundation of our animation. The storyboard featured a ship arriving to retrieve a phone using snake-like mechanical arms. The artifact, an original iPhone, is then taken to an auction, where it’s sold to none other than General Mayhem. We handed the storyboard off to our animator, who roughed in the animation and then refined it. After that, we added sound effects and audio, completed the submission form, and uploaded the final video to YouTube.

As a bonus surprise, the following morning everyone on the team received a $1,000 scholarship from WPI—an exciting and unexpected reward for all the hard work put into this project.

We don’t yet know if we’ve won the Digital Animation Award, but regardless of the outcome, this project was a fun and valuable learning experience for everyone involved.

Thank you for reading—and as always,

Signing off,

General Mayhem

Click here to see our animation: Salvage Lot #601: Connection Reimagined