Concept-led.
Illustrated in 2D.
Built as one fluid journey.
Working from an existing script, Mahmoud shaped the film’s central visual idea: addiction as a fluid state that continuously changes form, scale and emotional temperature.
The material needed to carry psychological, behavioural and physical information while staying accessible to a broad audience. A literal treatment risked feeling graphic or judgemental. An overly abstract one risked losing the message.
The central idea treats addiction as something fluid: it changes form, fills available space and gradually distorts the world around the character. That metaphor gives every sequence a shared visual logic.
Bodies, rooms, substances and landscapes morph into one another. Changes in scale and negative space show control slipping away, while recurring circles, tunnels and suspended figures build a sense of repetition and dependency.
2D illustration creates enough distance from literal trauma to avoid stigma, while keeping the experience human. It also allows inner states, physical effects and everyday life to exist inside one visual language. The textured surfaces keep the film tactile rather than clinical.
A 2:40 awareness film that translates an information-led script into a coherent emotional arc, giving the National Rehabilitation Center a distinctive and memorable visual system.
Selected moments reconstructed as rough production boards, with composition, action and emotional beat considered before surface and motion.
Storyboard study / graphite draft / sixteen chronological narrative beats
The script was developed separately. Mahmoud shaped two films within the four-film campaign, taking each one from the first visual idea and storyboard through illustration, creative direction and final 2D animation. This case study presents one of those films.