MENATL HEALTH: 

Produce illustrations or animations for Childline to help 13-18 year olds going through a tough time.

 

Our social media channels (Facebook, Instagram and YouTube) are there to communicate with young people, encourage conversations and reinforce the message that we’re there for them, whatever the worry.

we love our illustrations to be bold, warm, fun and engaging.

 

MAIN CONCERNS:

The top 10 searches on our site last year were:

• Self-harm

• Bullying

• Puberty

• Exams

• Anxiety

• Depression

• Games

• Suicide

• Sexting

• Sex

 

Creative requirements

We’d like you to produce illustrations and animations around some key themes, that will help 13-18 year olds going through a tough time.

The themes we’d like you to work with and bring to life visually are:

• Hope and positivity. Imaginative ways of showing the journey to better mental health, a life free of pain;

• Difficult feelings and experiences. Ways of representing dark thoughts, painful/abusive experiences and trauma.

 

Where will these illustrations and animations be seen?

These illustrations and animations would be seen in places like social media channels, when waiting to go through to a call or chat, when browsing our info and advice and specific topics or to welcome them into Childline and help them to feel reassured.

Supporting information

To help you here are some ways we support young people experiencing dark thoughts:

• Imagination

  . Imagine things are going well and you’re coping. In your mind, picture a favourite place. It could be somewhere real or made-up. Imagine you’re there. Create a mental image of yourself coping really well and getting help with what’s going on;

• Relax

  . Focus on 1 thing you’re doing right now. Concentrate on your body, not on your thoughts. You could have a warm bath or just lie down on your bed or the sofa. Try tensing your muscles and then slowly relaxing them, or taking deep breaths through your nose and out through your mouth;

• Positivity

  . Think of a positive phrase which reminds you that you can cope with things. It should be in the first person (‘I’ and ‘me’). And in the present tense (‘I am’ or ‘I do’ not ‘I will’ or ‘I am going to’);

• Exercise

  . Everyone enjoys something different. It could be running, walking, football, skipping, dancing or yoga. You could try a few different things and see what you like.

 

Dos and don’ts

Here are some dos and don’ts to help guide your creative thinking:

Do

• Focus on relatable worries;
• As a general rule, flat colour illustrations should be used as either vector-based graphics or hand drawn;
• Be representative – make sure diversity is representative of ethnicities, cultures and religions;
• Go for general rather than portraits so as many people as possible can relate to what we’re showing, for example show a generic bus rather than a London bus, or showing schools or exams in general rather than clearly maths or science;
• Use the Childline brand colours as much as you can (but don’t be constrained by them if you think another colour will help with what you’re creating). Guidelines can be found in the downloadable project pack;
• Often show don’t tell works well – show the way you feel because of a worry rather than the worry itself.

Don’t

• Show anything that may trigger a young person (causing someone emotional distress by reminding them of feelings or memories associated with a particular traumatic experience);

• Make the images too detailed or refined – we like a hand drawn feel;

• Show drinking, drugs, smoking, weapons etc.

 

Mandatories

There’s no need to use our logo or branding within your work. Please bear in mind that when it comes to the size of images, on social these would typically need to be 1200 x 1200 pixels, and for the Childline website we’d create a 1600 x 900 version. For the purpose of demonstrating your idea you could work to one or both of these.

Animations should be between 10 seconds and 1 minute in duration.

The deadline for entries is 5pm (GMT) on 28th March 2019.

What makes things a lot easier, is that there are basically only 8 primary emotional responses to choose from, one of which will definitely always do the job—at least according to Robert Plutchik‘s psychoevolutionary theory of emotion and his classification of their universal expressions: #anger, #fear, #sadness, #disgust, #surprise, #anticipation, #trust, or #joy. 

As a proof of concept, Pictoplasma asks you to pick one of Plutchik’s basic Emotions and turn it into an universal reaction GIF: a short looping animation that adds character to the discussion and can be posted as final response whenever words fail…

AS A PROOF OF CONCEPT, PICTOPLASMA ASKS YOU TO:

✔️ Pick one of Plutchik’s basic Emotions…

✔️ … and animate it as a reaction GIF, showing your character REACTING according to the chosen emotion (for example, your character should not simply be angry, but REACT angry)

✔️ GIFs should have a square ratio 1:1 (with min. 800 x 800 pixels)

✔️ Upload to Pictofolio, add the tag #CharacterReactionGIFs and let us know the primary emotion you’ve chosen in the about section.

✔️ Deadline for submissions is March 15, 2019

 

Children’s cover award 

Wonder by R.J. Palacio

With the nature of friendship, tenacity, fear and, most importantly, kindness at its heart Wonder explores fundamental truths about how people behave and how they should behave.