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Sketches
Jan 2025
The project began with a set of character sketches that I created to represent six of the most common forms of mental illness. Each character was designed with its own personality, shape, and symbolic features, and from the beginning I knew I wanted them to interact somehow. At that stage, I wasn’t sure whether they would become part of a visual artwork, an animation, or some other creative health tool — only that they needed to exist together in a shared space.
During my transdisciplinary module, the idea of designing a board game first emerged. Initially, the game wasn’t going to be about mental health at all. The concept I started with was based around energy levels, and I used my six characters as “testers” for that prototype. But as I worked with them, the project naturally started to circle back to mental health. The characters became more than placeholders — they became the seeds of what would eventually become Mental Forest.
Looking back, these early sketches were the spark that carried the whole project forward. They gave me a cast of symbols to work with and helped me translate complex emotional ideas into approachable, playful designs. Even though they shifted in purpose, the characters became the bridge between my personal explorations of mental health and the public-facing outcome of a creative, interactive game.
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