A series of trading cards I made referencing some of the things that related to my life as a student at OCAD University. They were inspired by Pokemon and Dungeons and Dragons item cards.

I was exploring how coping mechanisms for anxiety may be similar to methods of character building in role playing games. In these games you must weigh all of the outcomes of a situation and prepare for the most likely of those. Often, things that you think are likely to happen don’t actually happen and you end up over saturating your inventory with a large selection of items.

When choosing items, you must look over the stats and purpose of each thing and choose how that may help you on your endeavour. Like in RPGs, anxiety (or at least my own anxiety) may manifest in a similar manner, as you attempt to prepare for your day in real life.

I made this second piece to be featured alongside the trading cards. This piece references the overwhelming amount of things you may arm yourself with to help you prepare for the upcoming day. It references how inventories in games are able to fit tons of items in an unrealistically small package, while getting ready for the upcoming quest. In real life, anxiety may make us over-prepare for a situation and both the anxiety and this over preparedness can become overwhelming, especially when searching through your many things to find the one you actually need.