Harold Heart lives happily with his best friend and roommate Bernard Brain in their house (representing the body) until Dorothy Diabetes, a trouble-making ghost on the lookout for somewhere to haunt, moves in and causes mischief.

At first Dorothy Diabetes’ disruptive nature goes unnoticed by Harold Heart, highlighting how the risk of cardiovascular disease in a person with type 2 diabetes can be increased without immediate impact on the heart’s health. However, Dorothy Diabetes’ presence in the house eventually pushes Harold Heart to breaking point, raising his risk of a cardiovascular event and leading him to have a heart attack.

After his heart attack, Harold Heart and Bernard Brain learn that, by adapting their lifestyle to include healthy eating, exercise and appropriate medication, they can live alongside Dorothy Diabetes and lower the risk of Harold Heart experiencing a further cardiovascular event.

Online attention span is as short as 8 seconds and there’s a high level of noise around the topic of type 2 diabetes on Facebook (our primary campaign platform). To maintain the viewer’s attention and cut through the noise, the animation’s characters needed to be instantly loveable and relatable. This was achieved with thorough storyboarding, where we got to the core of how the personalities of Harold Heart, Dorothy Diabetes and Bernard Brain, and the world they live in, could be animated on-screen to make the user sit up and pay attention.

We focused on how small moments of characters (i.e. shrugs, sighs and smiles) could be animated to be as captivating as the big (i.e. Harold Heart’s heart attack), to show depth and personality in our stars. This resulted in animation of high technical quality, with characters whose actions and emotions feel as real as the viewer’s beating heart.