Working through the process (generalised anxiety disorder example)

 Alongside my research for this project I'm also crafting iterations of cognitive disorder creatures, this process allows for me to ask questions of the work that I'm making and feed that into the research for a more cohesive development of concept art. This blog post will walk through this process during the creation of concept art for the cognitive disorder creature of generalised anxiety disorder.

The starting point was looking at the questions to answer from the last blogpost in terms of this disorder and starting to put together the pieces for what sort of animal this would be, noting the sort of behaviours that small rodents and other similar mammals exhibit that have similarities to the conventions surrounding the symptoms of anxiety such as nervousness especially in movements, the need to be aware of the surroundings as an exhibition of paranoia, easily frightened and often opting for evasion in a flight or fight response situation. This would lead me to observational drawings of such rodent creatures like mice, raccoons, rabbits, etc. Asking questions of what features could be altered and adapted or fully removed or added to further represent the disorder.

Wanting to exaggerate all the features of the head that took in the senses such as ears, eyes and nose to represent the need to be aware of any danger around through paranoia, exaggerating these features could also allude to the idea that a perception of danger could be false due to overstimulation of the senses which can often cause panic attacks in sufferers. Adding a larger more fluffy tail as a safety blanket of sorts that the creature could wrap itself in to feel safer as well as maintain a sense of balance due to the now larger features upon the head of the creature.  Oversized rear feet to propel the creature away from danger more easily in a flight or fight response situation. Also understanding that a lot of the fears within anxiety are apprehension towards future events that may or may not happen so looking into fortune teller stereotypes and fashion to conjure possible ideas for the design led to the implementation of cartridge growths upon the ears that hung like earrings to represent this whilst also serving the purpose of creating a rattle-like sound as the creature moves to indicate the subconscious alarm bells within an individual when entering an anxiety inducing scenario.

Constructing further iterations of the creature in different positions to further illustrate how they interact and what additions I could make led to images of how they would utilise the blanket tail as well as grouping together, I theorised how representation of anxiety snowballing within a sufferer of generalised anxiety disorder through catastrophising a situation could either be illustrated through either a wider size difference from birth to adulthood or a fast reproductive cycle to produce a rapid increase in the number of creatures within an environment to form a sort of infestation, opting for the latter as a more realistic interpretation of the aforementioned symptom. Adding an external spine to push the design further away from being interpreted as an already existing creature whilst also being a visual representation of people viewing the sufferers of the condition as being spineless due to their reluctance of entering certain situation due to their anxiety, however this reasoning fits into the category of perceptions of a sufferer rather than an actual symptom and having discussed with tutors how to build a set of rules during the conception of artworks a creature should be exclusively made up of representative features from either perceived notions of a sufferer or actual symptoms but not both at the same time, mainly due to the idea of the game being the hunt for these creatures to understand the disorders I don't want to craft creatures that are based on the perceptions of the sufferers and have players attack them as this would allude to the theme of beating on sufferers of the disorder as opposed to fitting with a pro-social theme of informing players and being representative for sufferers. If a creature is made up of the perceptions it can be a creature the player doesn't attack but cannot exhibit both design features without a valid reason i.e having variations of the creature based on whether they can be attacked or not to showcase if the creature has been domesticated or not similar to the ecological differences between wolves and dogs. This would lead me to theorise another reason for the design choice of an external spine or the removal of it from the concept art. I also started to look at designs of tarot cards as a possibility for the colouration an patterns for the creatures fur to further illustrate the earlier idea of future based apprhensiveness as a symptom for sufferers of this disorder.

Crafting a quick side profile of the current idea of what the creature would look like, I knew I wanted the creature to be coloured with earhtly tones to show the grounded nature needed to overcome the condition whilst also relating it to the creatures it was based upon with the need to blend into it's environment to evade predators/dangers etc. Preferring the earth tones with less saturation to show a negative theme to the creature that wouldn't come across with brighter more saturated colours.

The first sheet of colouration and pattern iterations

The first couple of ideas utilised the crescent moon symbol on tarot cards as well as the thin strands often illustrated on the cards as well as the more saturated earth tones to give evidence to my theory that a they would come across more positive than necessary.

Moving to a much less saturated pairing of colours I illustrated the crescent moon pattern again as well as a spotted pattern similar to how fungi may display this pattern to warn against creatures that they are poisonous or similar to archaic plagues that would present themselves on victims as spots or similar markings.

On the next couple of ideas I extended the crescent moon into a striped pattern as well as adapting a skull like marking on the face that can be present upon some tarot cards to symbolise the nature of looking into life/death dichotomy as a theme within occult crafts like tarot readings and ouija boards. Finding an inversion of the stirpes to be paler as well as the mask pattern to help it stand out more.

Attempting two more colourways with a variation on the crescent moon strip pattern to observe the limits of where the pattern can still be representative of both it's tarot card origins as well as being perceived as a natural pattern. There needs to be a maintenance of the shape without forking or smaller less moon shaped variants as it diverges too much from its origin to relay the representation to an audience.

The reason for finding multiple variations of colouration is due to the understanding of how globally afflicted society is with this particular field of disorders, thus creating a necessity to illustrate colourways that fit the need with camouflaging into different environments whilst maintaining the earth tone pallette e.g. arctic tundra, spruce taiga biomes, space desert environments, heavy human density cities, volcanic ashen landscapes etc. Also experimenting with the use of lighter or darker tones for the stripe pattern depending on the environment. Also adapted the eye to a more reptilian variant to push the design further away from a cute pet aesthetic to show a more sinister undertone to it being a creature representative of a malignant cognitive disorder. Alongside this eye I ended up adding a forked tongue, an anatomical adaption for snakes to help them sense more in their environment due to limited eye capabilities, on a creature with a higher sense of vision this would only create a larger intake of sensory information which lends to the earlier understanding of the need to have a higher amount of sensory intake for this creature due to it's paranoia induced sensibilities as well as the possibility of an overload of the senses to cause panic attacks, it may align with the design benefits of the new eye design as well.

As mentioned previously after having discussions with my tutors about the need for a base set of rules during the design process when it comes to aligning the design with either the perception of those with the cognitive disorder or the symptoms I needed to start understanding which disorders may fit in more successfully with which camp. I can extrapolate that with a more common disorder such as generalised anxiety disorder that the representative creature may be more likely to be domesticated or unlikely to be hunted in this project since a majority of society has either suffered or come into close contact with an individual afflicted with the disorder whereas something more niche such as Munchausen by proxy syndrome would better fit into the hunted disorder creature to allow for players to have a better understanding of the symptoms and in itself the disorder as well as representing the rarity of the disorder in comparison to disorders in the field of anxiety or mood disorders. I can also reduce the size of the external spine and include more anatomical adaptions to the design that represent more symptoms to indicate a variation of generalised anxiety disorder that is not domesticated and thus could possibly be hunted, remembering an earlier idea of borrowing the mechanic of obtaining items from the hunting of these monsters to craft equipment and apparel that would offer benefits to the player in certain environments or when facing more of the creatures/ more sinister disorders within the same field i.e agrophobia. The tail for example being fluffy and a comforting piece of environment could be incorporated into an oversized collar or fur lining to a piece of apparel to provide comfort to a player during a hunt. There is also the option of having cognitive disorders that are more prevalent to be present within the game as almost background creatures to fill up the environment with more life and nature that players don't necessarily have any interactive qualities in the game but can observe and be informed of what they represent to fit in with the wider theme of the game, such as some of the prey-like creatures in games like monster hunter that illustrate a food pyramid in the world, items can still be obtained from the creatures without hunting them such as fur and feathers from natural shedding or ear cartridge growths from farming and community efforts of preservation of the species like real world tagging of endangered species to track their movements and reducing human impact on them to gain a further understanding on the species. This idea could fit well with the end goal of how I am hoping to present this project as a sort of almanac of concept art to help it stand out from the common concept art book model of just displaying the works in separate chapters based on what theme they fit into i.e player character/ antagonistic factions/ environments/ interactable objects/ set dressing etc. Using the Elder Scrolls Online concept art book as an example where the manufacturers turned it into a sort of diary or an exbedition for a fictional character as they travel through the lands and the art being observational illustrations they made along the journey with comments made along the way both showcasing the artists own developmental journey as well as inspirations for the pieces.

This is how researching in tandem to the design process now begins to work, as starting to find a list of new questions during the design processes that were originally conceived of from initial research requires new directional research to answer said questions that further design experiments alone cannot answer. Here I begin to further my understanding of the ecologcal differences between creatures within the same family but formed different sub-species due to certain impacts to their evolutions such as the aforementioned dogs/wolves as well as cats/tigers or further separation like whales/hippos etc. understanding of 'Homologous structures' allowed researchers to understand the relationships between vastly different modern animal species having a shared ancestry.

When animals are domesticated, their bodies change. Many species become smaller than their wild ancestors. Some, including dogs and pigs, tend to have shorter snouts, floppier ears, and curlier tails. White markings may show up on the face, chest or legs.

Questions can now be answered during further design choices in further iterations such as; how does the creature differ between wild and domesticated, these features need to fit into representation of either perception of sufferers or symptoms and if possible showcase a change in appearance that displays how human interaction has removed the wild animal attributes and also replaced them with more domesticated features. Size is an obvious one but is only observable with a human model alongside the concept art for a comparison to be made. When it comes to the external spine, in a wild variant they could be much larger like the plates of a stegosaurus, that become flushed with clood like the hot flushes experienced by sufferers of anxiety and the creature may grind them against objects like trees and rocks to represent the grinding of teeth that anxious people do. After constant human interaction such as stroking and petting these plates reduce in size and become softer to the touch if visible at all and the grinding is no longer necessary due to the placating effect of human touch. The cartridge growths on the ears allow for an audible jingle that allows players to locate the wild variants, similar to how anxiety sufferers will tremble and have involuntary muscular shaking, a domesticated variant would have these 'earrings' removed or no longer grow them as they are no longer a required anatomical adaption as they don't need to warn nearby creatures of their presence like a rattlesnake. The colouration of the creature would change to fit with human aesthetical choices through decisive breeding as opposed to camouflage requirements of the wild breeds. the crescent moon shapes with desaturated colours could change to brightest colours with sun like patterns and shapes to show a more positive variation to the creature. Observing the 'purebreed' cat patterns that are forced through human manipulation to the tiger stripes of ancestoral variants can allow for this design choice to be implemented.

Starting to look at alternative colouration and patternwork on the creature to illustrate the transition from crescent moon patterns of wild variants to more solar and circular patterns of tamed and domesticated versions of the species. Warmer and slightly more saturated tones used as well as more brighter cat-like eye colours used. The designs can be further pushed with more concept sketches where the snout is extended, the spine is increased in size to plate structures, claws are added with fangs protruding from the extended snout that can deliver venom as a defensive action to illustrate the poisonous qualities of anxiety symptoms such as increased heart rate and sweating like a fever has taken place.

The television show 'The future is wild' is an interesting research point as it looked at how life might evolve over several points in the future spread over thousands of years and educates on how ecological impacts could change the biology and anatomy of current day animals that could allow for more realistic adaptions of real animals when looking for realistic creature design to represent cognitive disorders.