Study Task 5: Practical Approaches

What do you intend to investigate and why?

I want to investigate modern cartoon characters with mental illness, how they are created, are they represented well in the media and why they are a necessity.

I want to investigate this because I believe it will help me create better thought-out character designs and to convey a particular feeling with just a visual message. 

There is also a personal aspect to this project, as someone who suffers from mental illness, I want to create characters that help children and young adults understand, identify and seek help with mental illness by making characters based on facts and real situations to help the audience relate to them. 

How can the research help as a starting point?

Having a good understanding of basic character design will help me make compelling characters. Also learning about shape and colour theory will help me establish the right message I want to get across to my audience. Comparing and analysing existing characters with particular designs will help in my investigation and understanding as well.

What do you envisage the end product being?

I want to create at least to well-rounded characters that have meticulously thought out to convey the visual message that they are suffering from a mental illness.

If I have time I would also like to create a looping gif for each of my characters. 

Study Task 4: Introduction

My introduction to my project:

After looking into how mental illness generally affects people, colour and shape theory, I believe I have gathered enough information to make well-rounded and thought out character design that correctly represents their respective illness. Making sure to take information from my fellow classmates and ask them about their own experiences and opinions on mental health I hope to gain a broader understanding and create characters that justifiably represent the mentally ill.



Formal introduction:

Is Mental Illness Portrayed Well in Cartoons?

I have gathered information into how mental illness affects the general populous and how it is portrayed in modern media, as well as looking into how characters are designed with purpose and intent using particular colours and shape theory. I believe this information will help me establish a good groundwork to design and create characters that suffer with mental illness. 

I am using the following texts to help elaborate on my question:


The Psychopathology of Cinema: How Mental Illness and Psychotherapy are Portrayed in Film by Lauren Beachum

"Stereotypes of people with mental illness as dangerous and incompetent reduce these individuals to nothing but the most exaggerated, caricaturized versions of their diagnoses. These caricatures are the products of how mental illness is represented by arguably the most influential institution of our culture: the media."  pg 4


PSYCHOLOGY IN CHARACTER DESIGN Creation of a Character Design Tool by Marika Nieminen

"Colours are very important in projecting a character’s personality; primarily based on the cultural symbolisms associated with them and secondly on aesthetic reasons. By changing the saturation, shade or tint of a hue, the perception of a colour can have drastic changes"

Color Psychology: The Emotional Effects of Colors - arttherapyblog.com

"The psychology of color is based on the mental and emotional effects colors have on sighted people in all facets of life. There are some very subjective pieces to color psychology as well as some more accepted and proven elements. Keep in mind, that there will also be variations in interpretation, meaning, and perception between different cultures."

I have also gathered substantial evidence that many cartoon characters are designed with mental illness in mind;

Blue Diamond from Steven Universe, using shapes such as circles and triangles to convey that she is an unstable character but that she has a softer side to her (ref Nieminen pg 10-11). Using cooler tones she gives off a regal appearance however blue also is represented as a colour of sadness (ref artterapyblog.com), especially in her design which is emphasised by the shapes used in her design.  

Elsa is a prime example of an evolving character, she starts at the start if the film as an anxious, unsure and untrusting individual, shrouded in dark and oppressive tones. However, throughout the course of the film, she learns to accept her insecurities, to not let them control her and that she is allowed to ask for help if needed.

Study Task 3: Images and Theory

I want to explore how modern day characters with mental illnesses are represented in the media and are they being represented well. I will also be looking into how characters are designed and what makes their designs so effective. I want to explore the colour schemes that they choose for certain characters and what emotions those colours evoke in the audience.

In the picture above I had collected data on popular modern day characters and shows that represent mental illness. 

I have used several different sources to help me establish some groundwork for making my own characters. I have used a research paper by Marika Nieminen called Psychology in Character Design to have an understanding of how characters are created for certain roles by using particular colours and shapes.

The Psychopathology of Cinema: How Mental Illness and Psychotherapy are Portrayed in Film - by Lauren Beachum is an informative paper on how the view of mental illness in cinema has changed and why it was seen as such a taboo to have it in plain sight for the audience to see or for them to take it seriously.

Finally "The Book on Human Emotions" by Tiffany W. Smith is a well documented 'dictionary' on a large portion of human emotions, where the meanings of them come from and how they develop over time.

Study Task - Reading and Understanding Texts - Part 2

Summary - What is Madness?

This chapter elaborates on how the human mind deals with traumatic events that we have experienced in our earlier lives, how we have possibly processed them and how this can come out in different ways, such as anxiety and phobias. Darian Leader suggests that we use repression and selective amnesia to process trauma, however, this does mean it can manifest in different forms.   

This is very important to how people with anxiety, especially social anxiety disorder, react to certain situations. Anxiety generally does not appear from thin air, it stems from either one or several traumatic events then the brain tries to analyse this event the best it can, although most of the time the mind contorts the associated memories and creates a defence system formed from fear so that the mind knows to run away from a similarly threatening situation.

As someone who suffers from severe anxiety, it is important to know how it forms and how it affects the human mind in different ways. I will be exploring characters that exhibit the traits and symptoms, as well as creating my own characters suffering from the same mental illnesses. 

Study Task 2 - Reading and Understanding Texts

"What is Madness?" by Darian Leader

What concepts is the author trying to communicate?

Leader is trying to explain the meaning of madness, more in the sense of psychosis; how it affects the mind in different ways and what happens when suffering with it.

What are the KEY QUOTES and/or KEY POINTS?

"[...]we need to introduce some basic psychoanalytic ideas. [...]. The simplest place to start is with the notion of defence. [...] If we have experienced a traumatic situation or had an unpalatable thought, we tend to do something about it. We can't just keep it in consciousness, where it would continue to affect us, so we transform it.[...] We apply an amnesia to what to what is too unbearable for us to remember. [...]"

"[...] To find them, however, there are clues: in place of the forgotten memory, a symptom appears, like a ghost that keeps on coming back. This could be a phobia, a tic, a headache, an obsessive thought, a paralysis or any other form of mental or physical intrusion into our lives. [...]"

page 36

He talks about how psychosis possibly could form over time from childhood trauma and that it can manifest into strong phobias and fears.

What EXAMPLES are used by the author?

"In one of Freud's examples, his patient Emma developed a phobia of going into shops alone. She linked this with a memory from when she was twelve: she had gone into a shop and seen two shop assistants laughing together. She had rushed out in a fright, with the idea that the men had been laughing at her clothes and that one of them had attracted her sexually. A second memory soon inflected the first. Aged eight, she had twice gone into a sweetshop and the shopkeeper [...] Although it had happened on her first visit, she had still returned to the shop the second time. Linking the two scenes together, she realized that the shop assistant's laughter in the most recent memory had evoked for her the shopkeeper's grin in the earlier memory." 

page 37

Can you find real world EXAMPLES that you feel follow this model of thought?

See the answer above.

How can this be related to animation or your theme? 

This chapter talks about how psychosis is shaped through trauma and repressed memory, which can be formed by high functioning anxiety. This is something that I definitely relate to and want to explore and elaborate on in my practical work. 

Context of Practice - Year 2 - Study Task 1

Initial Ideas

I wanted to research and write something that I find interesting and effects me personally; mental illness and how it is represented in cartoons.

I chose the theme 'Society' as I think mental illness has a great effect on people socially (i.e anxiety, depression, etc) and I want to look into how mental disorders are represented in the media towards young minds.

Gathering Contemporary Fashion

I gathered a few images of mannequins from different stores in the center of Leeds and as I did I began to see the different demographics that the stores were trying to appeal to.

The first couple of stores where definitely trying to appeal to an older woman or a mature younger woman. The clothes were very feminine, using pastel tones and flowy materials to give lovely silhouettes that would be perfect for a mature woman looking for a light, springtime look. However, there were certain garments that I would enjoy wearing myself like the denim jumpsuit and the jeans and cold shoulder shirt.

This style reminds me of something that my fifteen-year-old sister would like to wear, millennial pink and black are quite a popular trend at the moment, it gives that edgy, young, sporty vibe that I have seen a lot of young teenage girls wear.

 I believe that these clothes take inspiration from the 60's and 70's (which is fashion that I am greatly a fan off), the floral patterns and bright colours give me a 'Summer of Love' vibe. 

These mannequins are appealing towards the women of the city who are looking to revamp their tired office look with a pop cheerful yellow.

I just liked that these mannequins were 'plus size', they give a look to the clothes that a much slimmer frame couldn't. They look very mature and curvy.

 These looks were taken at Primark, I didn't really think that Primark had a demographic until I really started to look at the way they had dressed these mannequins, they are targetting ages between young teens and possibly early 20 years old. These mannequins definitely had attitude and not just from the clothes they were wearing but also the way that they had been possed, the way a jacket is hanging from some of their forearms, the bright and poppy colours and backwards baseball caps this is all appealing to a young and active audience.