Research
Mental States and Shapes
I began with brainstorming words to describe my mental states.
Mental States:
-Overwhelmed: Distressed, Confused, Clouded, Anxious, Restless, Jittery, Concerned
-controlled: Calm, Focused, Restrained
-scattered: Racing, Sporadic, erratic, Chaotic, Disorganized, Distracted, Turbulent
I choose these mental states based on the strongest emotions that affect my decision making. As I began making prototypes, I chose to create shapes that include all of these feelings but are specifically focused on one. Although I can feel all of these emotions at the same time, one is always more intense than the others and I wanted to reflect this in my shapes.
50 Shapes:
2D to 3D
After creating my shapes, I chose a set of shapes that I believed expressed my mental states the most. I then turned these shapes into 3D figures.
Iterations
For the placement of these shapes I wanted to show controlled at the frontal lobe because this is where decision-making occurs and I consciously try to make controlled/focused decisions. I wanted to show overwhelming looming at the back of my mind because of how this emotion actually feels. I also want to show it taking over part of me as a reflection of how this mental state effects me. Lastly, I wanted to show scattered by taking chunks of me and pulling away, as well as taking chunks of the other emotions and pulling them away as well.
Reference Photo
At first I included my entire head and placed shapes around it, keeping the overwhelmed-focused ones towards the back and the controlled-focused ones towards the front. After review, I decided to not incorporated as many facial features and focused more on the shapes and their placement. For my third iteration I wanted to incorporate a large overwhelming shape so that it would be “take over me” similar to how this energy feels. To do this I drew one of my shapes wrapping around me from the back. I continued to keep the controlled-focused shapes around my forehead and sporadically placed the scattered shapes.
Final Iterations
I continued with my third iteration and added other simple shapes to add cohesiveness.
I started with large morphed-cylinders in the background, however they were incohesive with the rest of my shapes. Therefore I replaced them with more globular shapes. I also revised the bottom of my portrait and reduced the amount of shapes to help it look less confusing but still overwhelming and scattered. I placed my simple shapes with the intent of enhancing the scattered/overwhelmed energies. I also added to the controlled energy by placing cubes and cut-out cubes around the forehead.
Production
I wanted to use darker colors to reflect the clouded and chaotic energy that is within overwhelmed and controlled.
Due to the nature of the energies controlled, overwhelmed, and scattered, I decided to keep the overwhelmed-focused and scattered-focused shapes as hot tones, and the controlled-focused shapes as cold-tones.
After review I decided to change the line shading to airbrush shading and I changed the background to black with white facial-feature lines.
I also tested putting “shadows” behind the shapes, however I decided that I did not want them.
Final Work
After review, I changed my background to a dark grey in order to increase the contrast between the shading of my shapes and the background. This also added to the “turbulent” and “clouded” energy that comes with overwhelmed, controlled, and scattered.
Link
View final project at Inventive Portraiture