Moody Monsters is a research project that translates young people’s emotional concepts into a co-created digital world. Developed through workshops, the project invited school children to sculpt their inner emotions into ‘Moody Monsters,’ which were then brought to life in a larger-than-life immersive environment.

2024-2025

3D World-Building Photogrammetry Immersive Installation Interactive Design Workshop Design Co-Creation

My Role

Co-Director, 3D Designer
Collaborator

Ruby Bell
Sound Design

Lian Dyogi

Awards

Helen Hamlyn Design Awards finalist for people-centred and inclusive design

Features

Art Plugged, London World, QPR

Showcases

Imagined Realities Artist Residency at FRAMELESS Immersive Gallery, London Now Play This, Somerset House, London Polycam HQ, USA

Context

The UK is facing a rising mental health crisis, with one in five children and young people (CYP) aged 8–25 having a probable mental disorder (as of 2023). The primary barrier to mental health support in CYP isn't access, it's emotional literacy: the ability to identify and articulate feelings. At the same time, this generation is more digitally immersed than any before, with phones, social media, and online games woven into the fabric of their daily lives. Digital technology is often framed as part of the problem. Moody Monsters started from a different premise, where we asked: “How might we use digital storytelling to engage with these challenges?”

Concept
We were fascinated by the ways people visualise and personify their emotions. Language, as a tool for communicating feelings, can only go so far, especially for children and young people. We believed that externalising feelings as relatable characters could yield unexpected and interesting concepts that could help us understand ourselves and each other better.

Research
Throughout the research phase, we engaged with a network of mental health professionals and UK-based organisations specialising in and working directly in the field of young mental health, including charities such as Young Minds and Place2be. The most important finding, and the one that shaped every subsequent decision, was that young people must be at the centre of the design process from the beginning, not consulted at the end. That finding led us directly to co-creation as the project's methodology.

Creative and academic research ran in parallel. Guided by the immersive world-building of Pixar, TeamLab and Shaman Garage, ethical frameworks from Collective Wisdom, along with the emotional literacy of Atlas of the Heart, our references shaped both the world-building aesthetic and the emotional framework supporting the work.

"Ethical engagement in co-creation means prioritising the well-being of all participants, ensuring that the process is as enriching and non-exploitative as the outcomes."
— Collective Wisdom

CO-Creation MethodoloGy
We designed a co-creative workshop framework with three stages: introduction to emotional literacy concepts and tools such as the feelings wheel; hand-modelling their feelings in Play-Doh using prompts; and scanning those models using Polycam, a phone-based photogrammetry tool, to digitise their creations for the virtual world.

PILOT WORKSHOP
Before working with young people, we ran a pilot workshop with our peers to stress-test the framework. The pilot confirmed the hypothesis; the physical act of making unlocked richer, more personal responses than words alone. But it also exposed some clear friction points. The prompts were too complex, making the process of personifying emotions less intuitive. The photogrammetry process was too slow and technically unreliable. To troubleshoot this issue, we constructed a lightbox with a rotating disc to ensure consistent 360° capture, removing lighting variables and cutting scan time.

Co-creating with young people

Following the success of the pilot, we hosted a 2-hour co-creative workshop with students aged 13-14 from Kensington Aldridge Academy. Guided by a custom information and activity booklet and the 'Feelings Wheel,' participants sculpted their inner emotions in Play-Doh, gave their monsters an identity, and sketched out the environments where those monsters might live. The sculptures were then captured in the 3D scanning booth using Polycam.

Ethical Considerations

Our primary concern was the risk involved in working with young people as co-creatives, as well as the discussion of potentially sensitive subject matter around mental health. Our ethical safeguarding involved getting signed participant consent forms for both students and guardians, no video recording and no public use of facial images that disclose identity, ensuring DBS-certified staff and designated gatekeepers were present throughout the workshop, and enabling Guided Access on all scanning devices.

World-Building
We started building the world the monsters would inhabit right after the pilot workshop. We explored various concepts and decided on a heart-shaped fictional place for emotions, inspired by Atlas of the Heart. Using Play-Doh, we constructed a base landscape and 3D-scanned it using Agisoft Metashape for integration in Unreal Engine.

After the workshop, the students' character stories and habitat sketches were used to spatialise each monster within the world, placing them in environments that reflected their specific traits. We even crafted additional environmental elements for each character. The digital pipeline moved from 3D-scanned models and textures in Cinema 4D through to final build and rendering in Unreal Engine. The hand-crafted origins of the assets were deliberately preserved: the organic imperfections of the clay models and thumbprints gave the digital space a texture and warmth that would have been impossible to achieve through digital modelling alone.

The Final Surreal World
The final environment is a navigable, real-time world built in Unreal Engine, a singular landscape subdivided into distinct terrains, each one shaped around the monster that inhabits it. The aesthetic sits deliberately in the space between handmade and digital: warm, tactile, and grounded in the clay origins of every asset, but rendered with enough depth and atmosphere to feel like a place worth exploring. We didn’t want it to necessarily read as a children's world, nor as a clinical simulation, but as somewhere emotional, a little strange, and genuinely inhabited.

Interactive Experience Prototype

We built a navigable prototype of the Moody Monsters world, allowing audiences to explore the environment freely and at their own pace. Approaching a character triggered a dialogue revealing that monster's backstory, inviting the audience into the inner life of each creation. Rather than presenting the characters as spectacle, the interaction is designed to build empathy and start a dialogue around emotions.

Immersive Installation at FRAMELESS
The project culminated in a 6-month residency at FRAMELESS London, the UK’s largest permanent multi-sensory gallery. For the Imagined Realities exhibition, we scaled the experience into a larger-than-life cinematic immersive installation, featuring a bespoke spatial soundtrack by Lian Dyogi that invited visitors to physically inhabit the emotional world of the Moody Monsters.