In terms of style when it comes to creating this project's concept art, the more realistic looking the better in my opinion, to present the creatures as a very real being thus representing how real these cognitive disorders are and how powerful the symptoms can be when affecting the sufferers. I feel that a more cartoony or stylised form of the creatures would be duplicitous in relating to none sufferers how severe and life-altering some of the symptoms can be. It also allows me to look more into the sort of ecological and evolutionary traits that have come to form different species of existing creatures and how that could be implemented into my designs such as the predator/prey adaptations I have already looked at.
Topics to be looking at when differentiating between different categories of cognitive disorder creatures are as follows; Features, Coloration and patterns, Height and Weight, Natural variations - this ties more into the different categories of cognitive disorders having separate designs whilst disorders in the same category appear as natural variations, environmental influences, diet, reproduction, advantages, weaknesses, communication, and culture.
FEATURES
I have to be mindful when deciding what features to include within the creature designs. Real creatures do not evolve randomly, and each feature they have evolved to serve a purpose. Every feature I add should fall into one of three categories: an evolutionary benefit, a vestigial remnant from the species' ancestors, or the result of a weakness we see in those who suffer from the disorder.
1. An evolutionary benefit is something that is important for a creature's survival. It can be a large feature like the wings that allow birds to fly, or it can be a smaller feature like the shape of a dog's ears. Tails on a monkey allow them to climb more easily and keep their balance while in a tree. The long tongue of an anteater allows it to get food that doesn't have much competition - these are the traits that allow an animal to survive within a niche.
2. A vestigial remnant is an evolutionary leftover that is no longer useful. For example, humans have vestigial teeth as a result of our diet changing over time. Depending on how the understanding of the cognitive disorder has evolved, they could have many features that used to serve a purpose, but now no longer do.
3. Although less applicable in some of the disorders a species or set of features could be representative of the weaknesses a person sees in themselves when understanding the cognitive disorder they have, such as a deformation of the mouth in a creature representing selective mutism, it would not make sense to remove the mouth completely as they wouldn't be able to intake nutrients or communicate effectively enough to be a surviving species but some form of deformation would imply the mutism and it's selectiveness almost similar to how some existing creatures have abilities that only reveal themselves in certain situations that initiate a fight/flight response e.g rattlesnakes tail or skunks scent expulsion.
some examples of features are; Wings, Gills, Fins, Hooved feet, Horns, Tails, Extra limbs, Strange eyes, Extra eyes, Claws, Large ears, Antennae, Feathers, Scales, Fur, Exoskeletons, Additional or backwards joints, Long tongues.
COLOURATION AND PATTERNS
Colouration and pattern can be seen as features but can also play a huge part of the identity of the creature with the most obvious being camouflage as an advantage to either hunt for prey or hide from those who would prey on them but not all designs make that much sense. For example, many birds have evolved to be brightly coloured as a result of natural selection - the brightest males were able to mate and pass on their genes. This does not give birds a distinct advantage, and in fact, can make them more visible to things that would want to eat them. However, creatures like sea slugs use bright colours to communicate that they are poisonous and therefore inedible. A creature may also get. different colour depending on their diet. Flamingos are not naturally pink, and get their colour as a result of the pink shrimp they eat.
HEIGHT AND WEIGHT
Another important facto I should consider are the proportions and overall size of the creatures. How tall are they? How wide are they? How is their weight distributed through their bodies leading to decisions of whether they are bipedal or quadrupedal? importantly what would they look like beside a human since they are representative of disorders within humans - for instance, the weight on their shoulders people talk about when experiencing depression should be indicated by the enormous size in the creature displaying how cumbersome and difficult removing the creature/disorder can be to an individual. What is the reasonable margin of size variation for the creatures since not all humans are the same size, if the margin is exceptionally large what reason present within the disorder has produced this design choice. If the creature is gigantic how do they get the sustenance to justify this size and weight? Large herbivores would require enormous plants to eat, while huge omnivores or carnivores would suggest the presence of gigantic prey though this can be worked around if there is an abundance of smaller creatures, like how whales eat plankton.
NATURAL VARIATIONS
In the natural world different species have different variations due to the impacts of many other topics within this list and how they vary can be small or large depending on how impactful the cause of the variation is, there are many different subspecies of tigers but all look very similar however mantises look extremely different between species, for this project variation allows me to keep some similarities between types of cognitive disorders that all fit under one type and so share basic symptoms whilst have variations due to the more unique and niche symptoms the disorder may have. Some fields of cognitive disorders have a vast array of sub-types with very different symptoms whereas others hold very similar symptoms so would display mild variation across the designs for example sleep/wake disorders could be interpreted as nocturnal creatures so would all share dark colouration and large eyes and very little variation from each other, opposed to this is the field of depression that I have already suggested would have a large size and weight however every other design feature would be unique due to how different each cognitive disorder in this field can be.
ENVIRONMENTAL INFLUENCES
A creature's design can tell you a lot about where they live, and the type of environment that they will thrive in. In fact, because the features of their design exist to serve a purpose they will reflect the environment I envision when imagining the cognitive disorder due to societal conventions - depression/water-based environment, etc.
Understanding how these environments lead to creature design will impact the choices I make when designing the creatures. Cold environments lead to fur-coated creatures for example.
DIET, REPRODUCTION, ADVANTAGES, AND WEAKNESSES
These four topics all relate to the biology of a creature and whilst not the first thing to think about when depicting cognitive disorders as creatures since disorders cannot reproduce it is worth understanding if any of the known forms of reproduction can be representative of any disorders etc. I have already discussed the features that differ between creatures of prey or predator which would be impacted by diet and how the characteristics of anxiety don't fit with a creature that would be predatory and therefore they should display more features in line with herbivores and prey-like creatures but asking questions of whether they give birth to live fetuses or lay eggs and what changes in the design process the answers to these questions can deliver. As well as understanding possible advantages and weaknesses of cognitive disorders and how they could be represented in the design such as anxiety can be a way of uncovering foresight since you can often overthink a scenario and understand the outcome before it occurs whilst also offering a lot of fear and trepidation if the most likely outcome to occur is one you do not wish to happen. Could this be represented by extra eyes - certainly a possibility with paranoia disorder.
I have already started to produce sketches and observational drawings of features that already exist to get used to reproducing the sort of features that may be present in the creatures in a realistic form to allow myself to understand how to develop these into concept art pieces I wish to produce.
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