Childhood Trauma and the Brain 

An animated short film for the UK Trauma Council looking at the latest neuroscience related to childhood trauma. 

Click on any of the gifs below to watch the film.

UCL_Earliest_Years_CLIP
UCL_Autobiographical_Memory_CLIP_short
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UCL_Reward_System_CLIP

Over a number of months we worked with UCL Professor Eamon McCrory and Anna Freud Centre project manager Liz Lee to translate a very complex topic into a short film.

Here are some of my initial character designs.

UCL_Designs_for_website

 Use this slider below to see how our initial rough sketch turned into a finished design. 

We follow the lives of two main characters, Jon and Jasmine, seeing how traumatic events in their early years had effect on their social interactions in later years. This animation's purpose is to explain the latest neuroscience behind childhood trauma. For this we needed a visualisation for the brain. We looked at the colours associated with brain imagery and categorised them into the three systems we were discussing in the film.

UCL_Anna_Freud_Treatment_by_PinchMeProductions-3-1

We needed the brain activity to work with the 2d designs, so we tested out a few options using the Trapcode Particular pluggin in Adobe After Effects.

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SH01_Brain_Activity_Spheres
Jasmine_Flared_Brain_Activity
Jasmine_Graphic_Shpere_Brain_Activity

Voice Artist - Corinne Harragin

Animators - Kim Alexander and Dave Connelly