Visualising teenage psychosis: Headspace, a mental health intervention service uses “out there” animation to communicate their services to teenagers via social media.

The challenge

One in four young Australians experience a mental health issue, but most won’t seek help. Headspace wanted to produce an online video to help teenagers feel more comfortable about talking to a counsellor.

The methodology

Raise awareness of both the issue and the Headspace service by telling the story of how one of their counsellors (Lucy) dealt with her own psychosis and came out the other side.

The outcome

Headspace counsellor Lucy’s personal story is sensitively visualised in a way that only animation can achieve.

“Trying to find a creative team that understood the sensitive nature of our work was a challenge. However, from our first meeting with Jumbla, we knew that this was a team of empathetic and creative professionals who took the time to understand the complexities of our project and accommodated the needs of our organisation, and of the young people who work with us.”

Samantha Michelson, Communication and Stakeholder Engagement Officer
Headspace Bentleigh

 Jumbla is a large, Melbourne based, animation production house. The bulk of our work is content for marketing departments and TV commercials for advertising agencies. As such, we get all kinds of challenges. But this one required our animation team to get inside a teenager’s head. Quite literally.

Lucy, a one-time psychosis sufferer, told us her story. We recorded it, and then set about finding a way to tell it in a style that others of her generation could relate to.

Most of Jumbla’s work only utilises one single style or technique per video. But for this job, we dove deep into our bag of animation styles.

“We might have over-indulged a little on this one,” Executive Creative Director Callan Woolcock said. Suffice to say, Lucy’s psychosis story involved “numerous” visual ideas to tell her tale.
“We were able to explore a lot of different techniques - 3D, 2D, and frame-by-frame animation,” confirms Callan. “It was a fun project to tackle. We would have loved to have kept pushing it but there's always a limit and a deadline you need to meet.”

It was an opportunity for our animators to let loose with a montage of styles rarely (if ever) seen together in one video.

A recent upgrade of Jumbla’s in-house audio facilities was given a good baptism of fire in the production of the Headspace “Lucy” video soundscape.

As much as the Headspace piece is a visual experience, the sound department produced a “soundscape” track that really complemented the kaleidoscopic visuals.

“The soundscape really brought the video to life and Sean (composer and engineer) was great at capturing the atmosphere and mood I wanted to get out of this piece,” Executive Creative Director Callan said.

“We are thrilled with the wonderful, high-quality end product that Jumbla has handed over to us. It is meaningful and beautiful and will be a fantastic resource for us, for a long time to come.”

Samantha Michelson, Communication and Stakeholder Engagement Officer
Headspace Bentleigh