"Depression is a Beast"
Concept:
I thought for a really long time on what I wanted my final piece to be, I thought about various animals that I related to, various mythical creatures that I am fascinated by...but none of them spoke to me...My mental health has been such a mess this last year, and with added exterior pressures I felt truly hopeless, like a beast was trying to swallow me up and I couldn't escape no matter what I tried to do. And then I realized...I wanted to express this in my final piece for this course. I wasn't sure how it would be interpreted, which is why I wanted to discuss it further, but I decided to continue with this concept because I felt it not only was expressive of my own frustration and agony, but I also wanted to share with others that mental health is something that everyone struggles with and it truly does feel ghastly and beastly at times.
While thinking about my 'beast' I decided that I wanted to refrain from too much abstraction, I wanted it to be clear that this was an internal 'beast' and so I decided to maintain a humanoid form. Furthermore, I realized I wanted something that would represent the 'two sides of the coin'; meaning I wanted one side to look more human-esque that would be representative of how I was perceived on the outside, and on the other side an abstraction of the physiological and mental chaos that I was feeling inside myself.
Technique:
It took me an unseemly amount of time to try and figure out how I wanted to portray this in my flatfab. I began in flat fab, utilizing the mirroring tool primarily to keep it relatively consistent, but also wanted the piece to have a feeling of 'uneasiness' or 'odd' in which I chose to keep some components uneven (primarily in the chest area of the piece where I, myself, hold a lot of tension and discomfort).
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| "The beautified version of the layout" |
On the human-esque side, I knew I didn't want to portray the usual 'happy' mask that often frequents depression ads and campaigns, but rather wanted to highlight one of the key aspects that I struggle with when I'm depressed or going through mental stress: fatique. The rings under my eye suggest I haven't slept, and unfortunately ring true, but oftentimes people attribute this simply to the fact that I am a college student. But in fact all of my life one of the first things that I can no longer maintain when I'm in a distressed state is my sleep.
On the abstracted side, I wanted to highlight some of the pressure points where I feel tension, where the 'beast' puts pressure. I created these abstract, organic forms to be representative of the chaotic and clouded feelings I have in my mind. There are three eyes, the 'minds eye' is completely black, indicating there is a severed connection; the other eyes are tilted, angled downward to suggest that my vision has become cloudy, that I can't face what's truly ahead. My mouth is constricted with an usual abstraction meant to indicate that I'm unable to express myself. Originally, I wanted this constriction to be around the throat, but I couldn't find a way to indicate that without compromising the integrity of the other side, so I chose to indicate this with the abstraction around my mouth instead. Lastly, I chose to highlight the 'ribs'/'hands' around the chest area using a golden color that would show it was a prominent area of distress. I wanted the 'ribs' to look similar to hands gripping to indicate this is another area of pressure and pain.
After I finalized my design, I exported the piece as a .svg to pass it through illustrator so I could make it into a .dxf file to be transported into Rhino. Once I added it into Rhino, I assembled a prototype by duplicating the pieces to indicate what the final piece would look like if I had printed it.
Materials:
The materials I chose were to indicate either a plywood or cardboard base. The areas are painted solid colors that are in various grey tones for two reasons: grey tones are indicative of a depressive mental state, and because inside a home, this piece I would want to be an accent rather than a primary object of attention which means I needed to choose tones that were relatively neutral, but would still highlight various areas of intrigue. I chose gold as an accent color to the piece because I wanted to break up the monotony of the grey tones, but didn't want to make it stand out too much.
I knew that it would be a risk creating this design, but how I've felt the last few weeks, it felt like the best representation of a 'animal' or 'creature' (in a less literal sense), while also speaking about something that is near and dear to my heart. I really wanted this to be a project that spoke not only to the assignment, but to other students who may be struggling right now as well.
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