Learning Agreement for my final module XB4406

  

NAME - John Michael Padden

MA COURSE - MA Game Design

DATE - 04/01/2025

VERSION NUMBER 4

Brief Explanation / Outline of Project / What?                                                                                  

Producing and developing concept art of monstrous creatures that are representative of the symptoms of cognitive disorders, showcasing the creative process and the decisions made during the journey to craft the most successful result without displaying unnecessary traits that may be interpreted as stigmatic perceptions of those who suffer with the conditions. Leading to a collation of the research and finalised designs into a book format with some form of narrative design utilised with an adventurer owning the book as some form of an illustrative diary with their own observations of said creatures within.

Also continuing with environmental concept art for my previous space-based linear 2D platformer with levels based aesthetically on the 5 stages of grief.

Context / Rationale / Why?                                                                                                              

Depression and anxiety are the most common cognitive disorders that society can be afflicted with, currently an estimated 264 million people have depression and an estimated 284 million have anxiety, though we can still be affected by having someone close to us suffering from these disorders. However, within society, there is still a stigma surrounding people with these disorders based on perceptions created from a lack of knowledge that can be harmful to the sufferers, a game that tackles this issue by representing how monstrous the symptoms can be and allowing players to tackle them as the heroic protagonist could hopefully alleviate these perceptions, especially with some of the lesser known cognitive disorders such as dermatillomania, kleptomania, or Kleine-Levin syndrome. Allowing players to formulate new more accurate perceptions and becoming an ally to those who suffer, with a secondary potential outcome being for those who are afflicted to overcome the symptoms in a visual format to give them hope that they can also separate themselves from their symptoms and find a way forward in life, we have seen how playing video games such as 'Dark Souls' that has incredibly difficult antagonistic 'boss' creatures has had success in alleviating depression in players through its purposeful method of inviting the player to repeatedly attempt to overcome the problem in front of them finding elation and other positive feelings when the 'boss' is defeated.

Grief is an emotion that touches upon everybody at one stage in their lives, gaming and other such activities are often seen as a distraction from facing these emotions, frequently viewed negatively in terms of actions that can heal or benefit those suffering from grief. I wish to turn this convention on its head and offer an alternative through the use of knowledge gained from researching pro-social games to provide a game that develops personal tools to assist those going through grief from both viewpoints (whether you are/will lose someone/something or are suffering with a terminal illness and wish to leave behind lasting memories with a loved one through the act of a shared experience in this game).

Key Areas of Research / How?                                                                                                        

Since these projects are a continuation from the last module a lot of the preliminary research has been documented in the last learning agreement and undertaken with the evidence presented within this blog, moving forward the key areas of research will now be in how best to present my work as a finished deliverable for the degree show as well as a unique and interesting format from the standard portfolio. The main form of this will be concept art books that already exist and what I feel their individual pros and cons may be. 

There will still be continued research into cognitive disorders with every new creature I design, even more, important as I delve into some of the rarer and less understood disorders and how that can be reflected in the design or mechanics of the creatures. Discussions with therapists and seeking semi-structured interviews with individuals who have the disorders could help with more authentic representation as well as accurate information to avoid the previously mentioned stigmatic perceptions.

Intended Outcome of Project / Results.                                                                                           

To have a published concept art book full of the different stages of the creative design process for the creatures as well as the research and how it informed my decisions, alongside this will be a digital portfolio of my concept art for the space game project.

STUDENT SIGNATURE - J.M.Padden

Continued development of Dermatillomania creature design

 Continuing on from my last blog post going through the design process for the cognitive disorder creature representing Dermatillomania with more observational drawings of the creatures linked to my design through my research.

Moving forward from observational drawings once I've exhausted that method as a resource. It increases your understanding of the anatomy of these creatures offering a concept artist the skills to modify and utilise certain features from a multitude of creatures into one cohesive design whilst retaining a sense of realism but also of fantasy since the beast is non-existing in our world. I started to create pages of really rough silhouettes and almost stick figures to figure out good poses or movement styles for the creatures, able to add and take away anatomical features much quicker due to fewer details being drawn unlike the observational drawings beforehand. Every now and then return to more detailed imagery when trying to work out how certain features may work such as additional limbs, wings, shed skin placement, etc. 

Many other concept artists such as Trent Kaniuga or Bobby Rebholz would indicate this stage as silhouetting or use other similar terminology, the method for quickly communicating ideas and establishing the overall form of a design.

Testing designs: Artists use silhouettes to see if the basic design of a character or other subject is recognizable and communicates the intended meaning.

Generating variations: Silhouette thumbnails are a quick way to generate many design variations.

Communicating ideas: Silhouettes are simple and can convey the essence of a subject without the need for details.

This process enabled me to answer questions about what I wanted from the design quickly in a way that research on real-life animals and other artists' work couldn't provide. For example, In the initial stages of the design process, I suggested ways in which the creature could emulate a sufferer's desire to hide their scars from skin picking by either having wings to fly high above prying eyes or be a creature that dwells within deep caverns. These quick thumbnails allowed me to experiment with the placement of the wings as well as different types of wings that could work on the design starting with leathery bat-like ones then when I began looking into the limbs of insects such as the praying mantis to allow the creature more dextrous movements to peel skin from hard to reach places I experimented with wings similar to that of an insect. Eventually conceding that cave dwelling would be more in line with the symptoms than a flying creature, but that the flaps of shredded skin may be mistaken as wings by hunters and adventurers alike.

Moving onto further cognitive disorder creature designs

 Now that I am content with the design of generalized anxiety disorder in both its wild and domesticated variants and with my goal of a minimum of three creatures produced by my January module deadline, I am beginning to move the established process onto the next set of creatures to form an efficient and repeatable process as possible so that in the next module creatures will be crafted as quickly and correctly as possible. 

Giving myself the January deadline a chance to showcase my specialties in concept art for a pro-social game I believe it best to allow for some clear range between the cognitive disorder creatures that I produce to give the most broad a vision to the project, by this I mean both the current social awareness of the disorders and the uniqueness of the designs. For example, due to its prevalence in society, generalized anxiety disorder is of well-known awareness in society and has a basic design that is not too distinct from realistic creatures sharing a lot of similarities to the reference points used whilst also not having symptoms as subjectively harmful as other disorders - which led to a less monstrous design in comparison to what could occur. Future creations would need to have a disorder that is less well-known or understood and another with more harmful symptoms or perceptions with more negative stigma attached to them. This would hopefully help me achieve the broad range to showcase my specialties more successfully. 

With this in mind, the disorders I am currently looking at to produce for this module delivery are; Excoriation disorder/ Dermatillomania, Kleptomania, and Schizophrenia. Other possibilities are Postnatal Depression, Body Dysmorphia, Autism, and one of the Bipolar variants if I struggle to come to a successful conclusion with my primary list. Though I feel my proposed list of disorders fits my planned differential range with Dermatillomania being very unknown socially, Kleptomania having a lot of stigma and misunderstandings surrounding it to the point of many not realising it as a cognitive disorder, and finally Schizophrenia being fairly acknowledged yet having some of the most subjectively harmful or 'monstrous' symptoms.

Utilising my progress on the dermatillomania cognitive disorder creature to display my current process for crafting these designs based on some of the mistakes of my previous creature combined with some methods found during the current research accumulated. Understanding that this particular disorder is categorised in the Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD) field of disorders, I am aware that there will need to be some observable aesthetic choice to the design that is repeatable to all other disorders in this field, a choice I can make during the iterations produced during the design process once a theme is found that fits the field by representing a common theme within the field. I began the process by noting the symptoms of the disorder and the stigmatized perceptions of the sufferers in two separate columns.

This separation was used to craft a more successful creature for the generalized anxiety disorder previously by offering wild and domesticated variants, in this creature that won't be the case but observing the separation will allow me to stick to one set of guidelines and not covering both which led me to some of the issues and mistakes during the previous process. In this case, I will be using the symptoms as they offer more in the way of design aspects and choices. After creating this table I moved on to speculative design possibilities and questions that could be answered during my iterative image-making process, many of which would be answered through research and idea development in the next stages.

This initial collation of ideas and questions is a great base for the process to develop forward, I have some points to begin collecting reference imagery as well as some questions to both sketch ideas of to help decide on the more successful solution as well as further research to find the direction the creature design should go in. 

Initially collecting reference images of both reptiles shedding skin as well as close-up photos of chameleon heads for observational drawings to be made - the first step in the previously mentioned David Colman method for creature design encompassing separate real-world animals. 

When sourcing images of reptiles shedding their skin, I opted more for the above sort of images where the head was poking out of the shedded skin as I felt it offered a design that was more hideous, as if the creature was being swallowed by its own skin, or wearing it still as an outfit to hide its scars - this way of thinking is what led me to question how deep the shedding occurs on the body, imagining a gross muscular head protruding from the jaws or a skull stretched out from the mouth. There was also a range of different reptiles with a variety of scale textures available upon searching, a more spikey skin would represent the sufferer's need to shed with it being seen as an imperfection or irregularity to the desired smooth skin.

Upon discovery during the research process, there are more than one species of chameleon. Despite not necessarily aiming for a chameleon head as the end design, the eye with its unique range of vision was the initial starting point, it does offer more options during the design process with the mane at the rear of the head varying in size as well as some chameleons having horns around the nostrils - though they may also be seen as irregularities or be shedded through some other means akin to antlers on some bovines.

Some initial observational drawings of chameleons and beaks etc.

Offering myself the option of having a beak on the creature during the idea conceptualisation process earlier, something that offer an otherworldly appearance to the creature as well as further representation toward the symptoms, the question of what sort of beak would suit the creature occurred. Further research led to the discovery that the shape, form, and size of a beak were predetermined by the function and purpose it served for each bird. 

From this, I also began looking into the different types of scalpels and surgical blades for their own purpose/function. Hoping to understand a design that would suit the needs of the creature and its surgical removal of imperfections and irregularities on its skin.

Whilst these designs of surgical scalpels may not inform my design decisions for the beak so as to not ignore the research into bird beaks and their habit of self-pruning, the talons and bladed tail can incorporate these scalpel designs based on their function.

Continuing to develop wild and domesticated variants

 After establishing a workaround for the need to separate the perceptions of cognitive disorder sufferers from the actual symptoms of the disorder as having domesticated and wild variants of some of the creatures, noting that with the prevalence of generalized anxiety disorder it would be one of the creatures to have these variants in the project I wanted to work through the process of pushing the earlier designs into the two separate types.

ΩBeginning to look at the Skaven range of models in the Warhammer: Age of Sigmar tabletop game to see a more vicious looking rodent design and how to use observed features of these to adapt my own annotations on my designs from research into homologous structures when comparing real world animals that came from the same species like wolves and dogs, such as extending the snout and sharpening fangs that protude from the mouth.

Starting with looking at the details of the claws and extended snout with quick sketchwork as well as looking at the size disparity between the wild and domestic variants, the domesticated variant would be much smaller and now have floppy ears due to the lack of needing them to be alert to danger with the pairing with human figures reducing this.

Continuing with sketchworks to understand how the wild variant of the creature would move and pose, such as it's necessity to be in close proximity or holding its own tail as a comfort blanket. Also observing the impact of different types of extended spine structures that would be able to be flushed with blood to warn off potential predators similar to a Stegosaurus. The more spiked the plates are the more predatory an appearance is produced which I hope to avoid so larger more flatter plates are more ideal with them being scraped upon rocky surfaces and other such textures akin to nail biting in anxiety sufferers the edges would be chipped and uneven.

Knowing I would be combining features from multiple creatures to create my own distinct design watching creature design videos from YouTube such as those delivered by the channel Proko was essential especially ones that delved into the topic deeper such as the above one from David Colman who adapts the features of bats and apes into a singular creature. Making observational drawings of both creatures to get a feel of how their anatomy works when drawing them and how they can seamlessly be blended together in later experimental sketches. This process was key along my design process of developing my own creature since I wanted it to retain elements that made it feel like it belonged in the real world due to earlier decisions of ensuring a representative feel of how real the symptoms and astigmatic perceptions of cognitive disorders are to sufferers. Simply adjusting certain features to best represent the individuality of each disorder that could both highlight to uninformed audiences and give a sense of fair representation to those who are afflicted with such disorders.

Finalising some of the designs with more finished sketches to show the impact of the changes between the wild and domesticated variants, even looking at how the eyeball may change to a more reptilian one to match some other features like a forked tongue to highlight the wild creatures need to have adaptions to enhance every possible sense to be fully aware of dangers or potential threats around them.

I am content with where this process is leading my designs at this stage, the wild variant retains a look of bats, rabbits and other rodents. Especially with the face, the full body with it's plated spine will push it into a realm of a non existant animal but still fairly believable due to are knowledge of the components with which it is made up of already having existed - similar to unicorns and how they are basically a horse with the horn from a Narwale attached to its snout like a rhino or other such horned bovine-like creatures. Striped colouration and patterns will separate it from common rabbit and hare creatures as well as tie back to my design research.

The domesticated variant has been pushed more into the cute harmless territory, something that my previous design shared a little too much of if it was going to be a creature that was hunted thus the need for separation, sitting in a space of similarity between rabbit and mouse and could easily be envisioned as some sort of pet-like companion to an in-game hunter. This is where the subtlety of how the creatures act in the game biologically can come into play. Noting how anxiety and it's symptoms can often snowball in an individual through psychological effects such as catastrophising situations I decided on having the creature reproduce at a fast rate rather than grow faster and have a wide size difference between young and mature creatures to showcase this growth in an individuals worries and concerns with anxiety. I personally felt that a heavy and larger creature would be more valid a representation of depression - like a heavy weight you just cannot lift, where as an infestation of large quantities of the creature was a much better representation of how with anxiety every little problem starts adding up, even ones that are completely out of the persons control or have very little realistic effect on their day-to-day life. Keeping a domesticated creature as a pet would not change this biological adaption and so the player would still encounter this problem of being overrun with the creature at their homestead - like an unneutered pet rabbit or hamster can lead to issues, but also when hunting the wild variant, despite being larger than its domesticated counterpart would still be fairly small compared to other disorders and so having the player never come across just one of them in the wild but a multitude of the creatures would cause the same level of threat as one large cognitive disorder creature but also offer the need for a change in playstyle to overcome this combat, sharing your focus upon multiple targets rather than just one.

When it comes to crafting a set of rules for the design process to separate perceptions from symptoms, I think its important to understand some of the changes I make and how they can be applied or ignored in further creature designs wherever necessary. One such rule is when a creature should have wild/domestic variants or not since this would affect the world in which the game takes place in as well as how best to represent the cognitive disorder - some disorders have stronger symptoms than others and it would be easier to fall in the trap of using perceptions instead that would give off the feel of the player attacking sufferers rather than disorders. Just like this mistake needing a separation of the perceptions from symptoms, knowing that some perceptions should not be observed as a domestic variant since they are too antagonistic to represent something that would be domesticated and could possibly give a message of the perceptions being something that should be looked after rather than opening peoples understanding of how negative and stigmatic they can be. Anxiety fits with this since such a large majority of individuals have some awareness of both the perceptions and symptoms of this particular disorder whether they have themselves or known someone close to have suffered from the disorder. It is something that is prevalent among humans and so having them domesticated and part of the everyday life of players in the game makes sense. What other disorders could potentially fit this is something to be explored to ensure a more concrete rule.

Also further research is required to understand a common design theme for each field of cognitive disorders similarto how different types of pokemon have design features to illustrate what type they belong to.

Electric pokemon often have the colour yellow and sharp lightning bolt shapes used in their designs as well as some battery/magnet elements due to our convention of their alignment with electrical devices.

Water pokemon opt for the use of blue and cyan colours in most of their designs. A lot of the designs are also based on sea creatures due to their affinity with water such as, crabs, jellyfish, turtles, frogs, shellfish etc. Sometimes juxtaposition of reference creature and type are used to offer interesting designs that may cause them to stand out to players more. One example is Keldeo that represents a horse - a typical land animal, however the mythical creature called a Kelpie is a demon that resides in water and swamps and visually is based on a horse design, this knowledge may have led toward the naming convention for this pokemon too.

This convention continues into the fire type pokemon as well, with many of them opting for a red/orange colour in their design. Some of the more modern designs do utilise some blue colours due to the knowledge of blue flames on certain gas heaters but also fits with the dark or ghostly secondary type that the pokemon may have. A lot of them also have curved flame patters within their design as well.

This rule set in the design process will allow me to develop designs for disorders in the same theme in a way that they are relatable as sharing similarities whilst also having separation through unique and niche symptoms (or perceptions of the sufferers depending on if they have a domesticated variant) that helps them stand out and be representative of that particular disorder. These shared design features should be simple and easily observable like colors and certain shapes or patterns used which would allow for anatomical adaptions, biological changes, and other features discovered in an earlier post about designing fictional creatures to showcase the unique qualities of the disorder.

One example of this would be to have all depression disorders (itself in a category of mood disorders with bipolar disorders) to be water based creatures due to the often used convention of water representing a theme of depression, 'feeling blue' is a phrase for depression, rain is often conveyed as a depressive environment etc. Sleep-wake disorders could be nocturnal animals though that is not as simple as required as a number of very different species of animals fit into this, so perhaps black colouration could be used with either sleep/dream like iconography used as a common pattern. Psychotic disorders could all have some affinity for expelling toxic fumes or some other sort of poison, due to the hallucinogenic shared qualities between some of the disorders and poisonous fumes in most media - think Scarecrows fear toxin in the batman franchise or hallucinogenic drugs often ingested in gaseous forms. This type of differentiation of the types allows them to appear in very different environments akin to the different places monsters appear in the monster hunter game franchise to offer different places for hunts to take place giving a logivity to the game, without having the creatures design be based on their environment alone but keeping a representation to the fields and understanding of all cognitive disorders. Some of the lesser creatures, or less life altering afflictions and more prevalent disorders would be present in multiple environments offering the need for slight alterations to the designs to fit in with these environments in some cases i.e my earlier experimentation with colouration for the anxiety disorder in different environments or how pokemon have more recently redesigned older pokemon (especially favourites of the older audience who played earlier versions of the games to keep them connected to newer releases) to fit in with the biomes and ecological differences in the landscapes and settings of newer games.

Water-based monsters in the monster hunter series share a lot of anatomical adaptions that real-life sea creatures have to make them better equipped for their environment, particularly predatory creatures to highlight the beastly nature of these creatures and the need to hunt them for the preservation of human life.

Creatures such as the Basarios and Black Gravios have adapted to deep volcanic environments and this is illustrated in their design as well as their anatomy, having a rocky exterior akin to basalt and other volcanic substances created when in contact with high pressure and increased temperatures found within the core of volcanoes.

A range of pokemon from the 1st generation (the original 151 pokemon) alongside their Alolan variants. These changes are due to environmental changes from where the original pokemon were found in Kanto. A lot of the game takes place in Hawaiian like islands, hence the surfing Raichu and surfer haired dugtrio, as well as icy mountainous regions which has led to arctic variants of sandshrew and vulpix as well as their evolved forms. Other variants appeared in subsequent games due to their settings such as Pokemon Sword/Shield having a London-esque/British setting leading to pokemon such as wheezing having a tophat like structure added to its design as well as Ponyta and Rapidash turning into unicorn-like creatures (the unicorn is the national animal of Scotland.)

Pokemon go one step further with the development of this feature in the most recent releases of their franchise with convergent variants of pokemon, unlike the previous set of variants that had the same name/type as before and only have the design changed to represent the new environment, these new ones have different names and types and share a similarity in appearance by coincidence and are actually completely different species.

I do not need to go this far in the development of my creatures as it will dilute the importance of their design being representative of the disorders, but this design process does offer ways to craft creatures based on real-life creatures but adapt them to different environments or themes that best offer representative features for the particular disorders i.e the chameleons colour changing skin and scales within a creature that spews out a substance like a suid or octopus with ink to represent the poisonous qualities that borderline personality can have over a person with them not knowing who they really are with the changing skin of the sufferers personality changing, almost like a chimeric creature design.