Anxiety Disorders

Anxiety disorders are a group of mental disorders characterised by significant and uncontrollable feelings of anxiety and fear such that a person's social, occupational, and personal functions are significantly impaired. Anxiety may cause physical and cognitive symptoms, such as restlessness, irritability, easy fatigue, difficulty concentrating, increased heart rate, chest pain, abdominal pain, and a variety of other symptoms that may vary based on the individual.

In casual discourse, the words anxiety and fear are often used interchangeably. In clinical usage, they have distinct meanings; anxiety is clinically defined as an unpleasant emotional state for which the cause is either not readily identified or perceived to be uncontrollable or unavoidable, whereas fear is clinically defined as an emotional and physiological response to a recognised external threat. The umbrella term 'anxiety disorder' refers to a number of specific disorders that include fears (phobias) and/or anxiety symptoms.

There are several types of anxiety disorders, including generalised anxiety disorder, hypochondriasis, specific phobia, social anxiety disorder, separation anxiety disorder, agoraphobia, panic disorder, and selective mutism. Individual disorders can be diagnosed using the specific and unique symptoms, triggering events, and timing. A medical professional must evaluate a person before diagnosing them with an anxiety disorder to ensure that their anxiety cannot be attributed to another medical illness or mental disorder. It is possible for an individual to have more than one anxiety disorder during their life or to have more than one anxiety disorder at the same time. Comorbid mental disorders or substance use disorders are common in those with anxiety. Comorbid depression (lifetime prevalence) is seen in 20-70% of those with social anxiety disorder, 50% of those with panic disorder and 43% of those with general anxiety disorder. The 12-month prevalence of alcohol or substance use disorders in those with anxiety disorders is 16.5%.

Worldwide, anxiety disorders are the second most common type of mental disorders after depressive disorders. Anxiety disorders affect nearly 30% of adults at some point in their lives, with an estimated 4% of the global population currently experiencing an anxiety disorder. However, anxiety disorders are treatable, and a number of effective treatments are available. Most people are able to lead normal, productive lives with some form of treatment.

If we look at the base-level common symptoms or emotions present within all of the anxiety disorders that can make way for an artistic decision on a form that they can all share like I mentioned in a previous post about designating each type of cognitive disorder with a type or evolutionary species of monster like pokemon types or how each monster in monster hunter has evolutionary advantages in their appearance based on the land type they come from. The more unique symptoms can then be used to push the design in its own unique direction to promote the idea of how unique each cognitive disorder can be and why its so important to understand the differences when diagnosing.

For instance, general symptoms of anxiety disorders may include: feeling nervous, anxious, or on edge; worrying excessively; difficulty concentrating; restlessness; and irritability.

With selective mutism having further unique symptoms a person who is normally capable of speech does not speak in specific situations or to specific people. Selective mutism usually co-exists with shyness or social anxiety. People with selective mutism stay silent even when the consequences of their silence include shame, social ostracism, or even punishment. 

Looking at the general symptoms and the commonality of these types of cognitive disorders I think of smaller creatures often seen as prey, constantly scurrying around avoiding predators, by small I don't wish to condescend sufferers into believing their disorder is less significant than others but if the conditions were monsters/creatures and highly common they would take up more space in the world, perhaps their abundance would lead to them creating colonies or like the goldfish theory of fish growing to the size of their environment - if there is a singular fish in a large aquarium it gets all of the available resources and can grow to a larger maximum size compared to if it shared the environment with others or was placed in a smaller tank. Noting that these creatures would most likely be prey rather than predators through the symptoms of nervousness and worrying excessively, I can infer certain design choices such as the anatomy of the creature.

And this is just the eyes, we can think about the size and placement of the ears, what teeth they may have depending on diet, skin patterns for camouflage, how their limbs may look depending on how they may have to react to predators and environment and speed and reaction times they have evolved to encompass into their anatomy.

This can be evidenced in design choices with something as simple as Pokemon.

Even after changing from a prey-like form to a more predatory one, some design choices are kept to retain a sense of evolution with one form coming from the other. Same lip style and three-pronged fins as well as two elongated whiskers.

Mental health monsters - whats come before

I'm not going to pretend that the idea of using mental health conditions as a theme for creative practice is revolutionary and new, often being used by artists to promote awareness of the symptoms that those diagnosed as such suffer from. However, it is more common to be illustrative rather than conceptual for games or film design - and after looking at some of the following artists and ideas to get me thinking of what could be done differently to show off my own specialist skills it got me thinking back to how to tie it into a possible game if at all. Eventually, I came to think of hunting these mental health monsters, since nobody wants anyone to be suffering in this way - leading to the sort of work from the Monster Hunter franchise and how the designs of the monsters in those games are pushed forward into the designs of the armor and weapons that can be crafted from components looted from the bodies of the monsters slain. This direction would allow me to demonstrate my skills as a concept artist and illustrator with not only creature design but also attire, weapons, and props and allow observers to see how my skills can be adapted for any project in developing a game's concept art.

Here are some of the contextual research I have come across so far and my thoughts on them and how it has influenced my own processes with this project.

Shawn Coss

Shawn Coss has done multiple series' of these designs illustrating how he believes a person suffering from a particular cognitive disorder may feel in a bold black-and-white style. However this choice of style and aesthetic ties them all together a little too closely for my particular needs of representation not allowing for the uniqueness of each condition to stand out on its own, plus with being overtly human-esque in shape and form it doesn't fit with my idea of cognitive disorders being monsters we must battle - wouldn't resonate well with sufferers if I were to suggest that they were the monster all along. Incorporating more animalistic qualities and features of monsters from both myths and legends as well as fantasy would separate the cognitive disorder from humanity giving audiences a better view of the antagonistic characters these conditions should be depicted as.

Toby Allen

Toby Allen's work is definitely more in line with some of my ideas after having looked at Shawn Coss' work having the disorders illustrated as creatures, with a more fantasy element attached to them - even the choice of font used in the descriptors lends to this theme. The aesthetic of these illustrations in comparison to the previous ones does seem to be aimed at a younger audience through its use of curved forms and saturated colours, even going as far as making some of these conditions look like cute pets one would keep - this may be perfect for the audience Allen had in mind similar to Pokemon however if I am using games like the monster hunter franchise as a format for where my project could sit then having a cute monster that you intend to hunt and defeat for parts to build weapons and armour cuteness should be replaced with a more beastly aesthetic. This isn't to say there aren't components of these designs that can't be utilised, I'm unsure whether it was intentional or not but a lot of the conditions present that fit in the category of anxiety seem to have skull-like masks and I feel it would be good to have the beasts have elements like this shared across the categories, just how pokemon have fire type and water types with design elements to show this in the forms of colour, anatomy, and texture, etc. It would show the categories as a sort of evolutionary family which represents how they all affect a particular part of the brain. 

Sillvi

Including Silvi's work here even though a criticism of Coss' work was the humanisation of these disorders - it's simply the theme and audience they were going for, I believe in the hope of creating empathy for sufferers by showing what the human body is subjected to through the symptoms. The use of desaturated colours in Silvi's work adds a new dimension to the work not present in Coss' making them feel almost like curses or hexes placed upon the person. There certainly seems to be a lot more energy in these illustrations through the combined usage of the desaturated colours, linework and effects from digital editing especially in the ADHD creation. Linework will be a key artistic choice to think about when illustrating my own creatures as it clearly is one of the things that links the art to its intended target audience, with the contrast from Allen's work aimed at a younger audience with curved softer lines and Silvi's sharper more erratic linework adding a more antagonistic and crueler feel to the pieces.

Xallwinz

Diseases as Demons series

Mental Illness as Demons series

Xallwinz is a YouTuber who creates shorts using AI with prompts to make a series of images around one theme illustrated as another, in this case, both diseases and mental illnesses are depicted as demons. These came up during research simply from a Google search of mental illnesses as monsters and I thought it would be interesting to see the contrast between AI art and illustrated pieces. I disagree with AI art being art but more of a tool for collating ideas such as images for a mood board and so looking at these subjectively there are ideas and aesthetics that look interesting such as the jigsaw skin for Autism and how horrifying some of them appear to be through artistic choices that come straight from horror movies like glowing eyes, exaggerated human features like extended limbs and jaws, however with it being computer generated a lot of them are too on the nose with the depictions such as a skeletal figure for anorexia which lacks empathy for sufferers whilst in contrast, Silvi depicts how a sufferer may view themselves when they have the condition. The realism of the pieces is quite effective and the tones of colour definitely help sell these as real creatures that would be haunting to come across I feel this would be effective when depicting tangible beasts that you could hunt allowing audiences to fight back against something they are often judged for it all being in their head.

Below is some Monster Hunter World concept art just so I can have a feel of what I would like to produce.