BC Women’s Hospital
Animating how to care for people with lived experience of sexual assault to ensure care is trauma-informed.
Role
Illustrator
Animator
Agency
Fernwood Creative
Client
BC Women’s Hospital
Ending Violence Association
Date
April 2023
THE PROBLEM
Some members of the healthcare system are unsure how to care for people who have been sexually assaulted. The leadership at BCWH wanted a video to help their workers understand the best practices in an empathetic and engaging way.
THE SOLUTION
Create an illustration style that’s animatable and topic-appropriate and storyboard out the provided script. Consult with professionals to ensure the motions and treatments are accurate for how the workers are meant to do.
BCWH wanted to include a diverse cast of characters to represent survivors of different races, genders and ages, and initially wanted to include first responders. Finding sensitive ways to showcase women in trauma was a challenge but a welcome one.
As the storyboards evolved I played with a balance of ethnicities and lifestyles as well as environments until we landed on what the BCWH found to be their audience. I added just enough information in the backgrounds to imply where the characters were while still keeping the focus strongly on them. I also used colours from their existing report material to ensure it read as part of one campaign. The colours are also used to tell the story of trauma to hope by starting with a darker motif and ending brighter. The healthcare workers are always brightly coloured whereas the women at the start are monochromatic to show that they’re in a muddy headspace.
While developing the style and communicating with the BCWH about what type of diversity they would like to see in the characters I quickly drew and sent a few prototypes to gauge their reaction. I find that people often don’t know what they want until they see it so sending something like this will often result in helpful feedback like “I love the body size representation” or “gender-inclusive representation is so important.” This way I know what to lean into during the actual character designs that will ring true for the client.
Results
The video was well received by BCWH and EVA as well as their other affiliated partners. While it’s too early to see if the training has created tangible change in the healthcare community, we’re hopeful that the message will sink in. The founder of Fernwood Creative has recommended me for other projects since they enjoyed working with me so much.
Learning Outcomes
There was a lot of cooks in the kitchen with this project and, due to the sensitive nature of the subject, there was a lot of on the fly changes. On top of that, there were a lot of discussions between the clients about what to include since this subject is ever-evolving and needed to be technically correct. I think I would have padded my hours to include more meeting times since even “quick” meetings ended up being hour long discussions which, while fascinating, weren’t part of my freelance rate. This would have bothered me more if the cause was less virtuous but I’m willing to bend my rules for a feel-good project.