Healthcare creative often errs on the side of the literal: infographics, bullet points, smiling hands-holding - designed to convey clarity, but rarely to stay with the viewer. POP Creative Studio’s TEM-PLE project breaks with that norm. It transforms awareness of Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome (EDS) - a complex, often invisible connective tissue condition - into a space for feeling, reflection, and human truth.

In collaboration with branding agency WMH&I and the amazingly talented photographer Kristina Varaksina, the campaign aimed to support music production duo TEM-PLE, aka Suzette and Aurora Partridge. Aurora had received an EDS diagnosis - 10 years after she first began seeking medical advice about the daily pain she experienced. Aurora is determined to stop others going through the same experience - starting with composing an original TEM-PLE Christmas charity single, as part of a broader awareness campaign.

We caught up with POP Creative Studio’s ECD and co-founder, Brendan Haley, about how the vision came together and a behind-the-scenes look at the process of how the project was produced.

Q: The campaign highlights “invisible suffering.” How did you translate something unseen into a visual story?

A: That was really the creative challenge. EDS is largely invisible to the outside world, so WMH&I’s concept was about making that hidden pain visible in a way people couldn’t ignore. Our job was to take Kristina Varaksina’s intimate portraits and build on them with CGI so the symptoms such as dislocations, fragility, and pain became tangible. We deliberately dramatised and exaggerated the distortions so people could feel the suffering.

Q: What was POP Creative Studio’s role in bringing WMH&I’s concept and Kristina’s portraits to life?

A: Our CGI craft is built on analysing the real world, understanding the rules of realism, and achieving photographic integrity. Kristina is a purist portrait photographer, known for capturing raw emotion and the vulnerabilities of her subjects. Marrying that kind of emotionally charged photography with heavy CGI is like forcing two magnets together at the wrong ends, they naturally resist. The challenge for us was to elevate our CGI to a level where it could sit seamlessly within Kristina’s portraits, making each person’s story more powerful and visceral, without breaking the emotional authenticity. That balance was the heart of our role.

Q: The portraits feel both fragile and powerful. What CGI details helped achieve that balance?

A: Having an idea of what the final image should feel like is only half the solution. The other half is knowing the right technical path to take: the workflows, the problem-solving, the details that live “under the hood” but never get seen in the final image. That’s where our expertise comes in. By building solid technical foundations, capturing additional skin textures, replicating lighting setups, matching camera specs and lensing in CGI, we could accurately reconstruct key parts of each person’s body, right down to the pores on their skin. These 3D digital skins gave us the freedom to push the creative distortions further, while keeping them photoreal at a macro level. Without that level of detail and realism, the emotional impact of these images would have been lost.

Q: You’ve mentioned the importance of texture and lighting in this project. can you talk us through that process?

A: Texture and lighting are what make or break realism. While on set, Kristina photographed additional flat-lit setups of each subject so we could recreate every pore and micro surface detail in CGI, ensuring it matched the real-world skin type. We also captured HDRIs on set, which allowed us to replicate the lighting in 3D and pay close attention to how skin reacts to light, such as the softness, the micro variations, the way highlights roll across ribs, cheeks, and jawlines. It’s quite a technical and disciplined process, but it’s essential for seamless integration of CGI and underpins the final quality of the images.

Q: Collaboration was clearly central. How did working with WMH&I, Kristina Varaksina, and TEM-PLE shape the final result?

A: At the core of this project was always Aurora from TEM-PLE. Her lived experience and personal struggles with EDS gave the campaign its authenticity and drive. WMH&I led the creative vision and ambition, rallying an incredible amount of support around a single event deadline. Kristina captured the raw emotion in the portraits, while our role was to integrate CGI in a way that respected and amplified those stories. There was constant dialogue throughout and a huge amount of trust in each partner’s craft, which meant everything came together seamlessly. In the end, it was a true collaboration and one none of us could have achieved alone.

Q: What made this project stand out from other POP work, and how does it reflect your wider approach to storytelling?

A: Much of our work involves building large, complex worlds in CGI, physics simulations, animals and creatures, animation projects where scale and technical VFX take centre stage. TEM-PLE was the opposite: stripped back, intimate, and designed to sit alongside emotionally authentic photography. That contrast, and the real human side at the core of the project, brought a different focus to the team. Although the images have visual impact, we approached the CGI in a more restrained way, just enough to convey the pain and amplify empathy. As a pro bono awareness campaign, the focus was always firmly on Aurora and the people living with EDS. For us, CGI is never the story on its own; it’s only ever a tool to serve the story.

Q: Looking back, what’s the moment or detail from TEM-PLE that you’re most proud of?

A: Without question, it was seeing everything come to life at London’s Piccadilly Lights. The portraits projection-mapped onto the buildings, the live choir singing TEM-PLE’s Christmas charity single, and Aurora’s reaction on the night, taking in the reality of what she and everyone had achieved. For us, that moment summed up the whole spirit of the project, the creativity, the collaboration, and passion all converging in one powerful experience. (If you haven’t yet, go watch the behind-the-scenes to see this amazing moment for yourself!)

How Tone Def Helps Stories Like This Thrive

At Tone Def, we believe healthcare stories deserve creative bravery. Our model brings together independent studios, illustrators, filmmakers, and strategists to match the right voice to the right story. Projects like POP Cretaive Studio’s TEM-PLE remind us that when healthcare communication moves beyond the safe and clinical, it can become something memorable, moving, and deeply human. You can see the full case study and go behind-the-scenes on their website at this link.

By nurturing collaborations like this, Tone Def helps transform healthcare storytelling into work that people don’t just see - they feel.

If you’re looking to tell your next healthcare story in a brave way, get in touch!

TEM-PLE: A Poetic Pause for Ehlers-Danlos Awareness