Hello all, and welcome to my Thought Experiment project that is centred around the brief randomly assigned to me titled Practice Make-Believe Everywhere. In this post, I will be discussing my thought process around deep diving into my own mind and characterising elements of my inner self, exploring the different aspects of what makes me me and how I can portray them for the inevitable conclusion of this project.
Welcome to my Brain
In my undergraduate degree, I was once tasked with an essay on the ways of perceiving. I took this as an opportunity for self-reflection and decided to analyse my brain as if it were a curation space, mapping it out to showcase all the different parts of myself in their respective locations. The figure below showcases an illustrated map of the different segments of my brain and what is housed within each lobe.
Frontal Lobe = Academic Background, Problem Solving, Troubles with Dexterity
Parietal Lobe = Triggering Textures, Frustrating Frequencies, Coordination & Repeating Tasks
Temporal Lobe = Influential Memories, Responses to Music, Characterisation Station
Occipital Lobe = Inspiring Artists, Influential Media, How I perceive
In this project, when it comes to how I practice make-believe, I knew that it would all be based on how I perceive and how the world is viewed through my perception.
Initial Mind Mapping
When I was initially given the brief, I went ahead and mapped out a few keywords and phrases that came to mind when thinking about the process of make-believe. I was originally drawn to concepts like Escapism and Altered Perception as well as looking at the practices commonly used within my projects, such as Livening up the Mundane, Channeling the Inner Monologue and being Trapped within the mind.
Exploration of Ideas
The usual process I tend to start projects with is making two lists of different variables and seeing what concepts can be created when combining two things together. This allows me to perceive all the avenues a project can take while also showing me any cross-sections that can be combined into one centralised project.
Through the use of this technique, I discovered that a lot of the concepts I was coming up with were based around characters and turning aspects of the mind into their own personas. With this in mind, I decided that the next course of action was to create my thought experiment centred around analysing the quirks of my brain and characterising them.
Key Factors
When considering what the key factors would be to build a solid foundation for the project, I knew that narrative and characterisation needed to be prominent throughout as the focus on storytelling is what I wanted to explore with this master’s degree. Following this, deciding on what to create a story about seemed like the next step so I chose to focus on the aspects of the mind, as well as my own inner monologue to allow for an absurdist approach and the implementation of humour.
Drawing Practice – Inktober 2022
Over the past couple of years, I have been using Inktober as a way to rekindle my love for illustration as well as allow myself to practice my drawing technique and develop my art style. I set myself the personal challenge of creating one character a day based on the daily prompt that was provided. However rather than have the characters be humanoid, I found myself drawn to making the characters personified animals or objects which helped develop that sense of fantasy storytelling within my work.
All of the Inktober characters can be found here:
Further Mind Mapping
With all the planning thought out, I decided to do an additional mind map to showcase the main attributes of where the project will be going from this point. I knew that each character would be a personification of something abstract and would each have their own unique story. However as this project was based around stepping outside of my comfort zone, I wanted the majority of the characters to be humanoid, as it would allow me to create stylised characters in my own way and give me more confidence in my drawing technique when it comes to perspectives and proportions.
Character/Creature Artist Research
To help me visualise how a more humanoid character would look in a stylised way, I did some character/creature artist research that spread across a wide range of certain speculative genres such as horror and fantasy fiction. Growing up, I found myself naturally drawn to the weird and obscure style of illustration as it didn’t have to rely on realism to be considered a fantastic piece of artwork. Below is the full list of artists I looked at when conducting this research:
- Chris Riddell – British Illustrator
- Guillermo del Toro – Mexican Filmmaker, Author and Actor
- Tony DiTerlizzi – American Fantasy Artist
- Heinrich Kley – German Painter & Cartoonist
- Chris Dunn – British Watercolour Illustrator
- Redmer Hoekstra – Dutch Illustrator
- Nom Kinnear King – British Painter
- Luke Calder – South African Animator/Illustrator
- Olex Oleole – Victorian-Inspired Illustrator
- David Alvarez – Puerto Rican Illustrator & Storyboard Artist
- Alex G. Griffiths – British Illustrator
- Mateo Dineen – Creature Artist
All of the collated research that I looked at can be found here:
Characters of the Mind – The Cynitches
To start with, the first characters I conceptualised when coming up with this project were The Cynitches. These two witches are the embodiment of my cynicism, always finding an opportunity to make snide comments and remarks whenever a situation causes me to lose focus or become frustrated. Magera (Left) is a stout crumpled mess who croaks with a lilt when she cackles while Salice (Right) is a more sleek tattered hag who with her clouded sight bases her remarks on the sounds and smells of the situation.
Characters of the Mind – Ernie the Earwig
The next character I created was Ernie the Earwig, an enthusiastic creature with a passion for groovy tunes. Rather than picturing an insect nestled in my brain, I think of Ernie and how he likes to repeat the most annoyingly catchy parts of songs until I either relisten to the song or go insane. As music is a great form of escapism for me, I try not to listen to things on repeat too often as it may ruin the song entirely, but if one song is overly catchy then this asshole makes sure that I listen to it over and over and over again.
Characters of the Mind – Urglex the Devourer
I then went on to make this behemoth of a creature known as Urglex the Devourer. This oafish ogre is the personification of my pet peeves, or at the very least my most triggering pet peeve which is when people chew things obnoxiously. As an autistic person, I am hypersensitive to a lot of different sounds and textures but when it comes to eating in this manner, I feel myself enveloped in an overwhelming sense of disgust which can put me out of commission for a few hours. So when somebody is in the corner just chewing like a madman, I envision this lazy creature nestled in the back of my head, amplifying the chewing and belching to a ridiculous degree.
Characters of the Mind – Marco the Collector
As a magpie artist, I have a knack for collecting an assortment of random materials and trinkets in the hopes of using them in future projects. This has caused me to compile a hoard of odd bits and bobs and I knew that this had to be embodied in a character somehow. That led to the creation of Marcus, an undead soul who has an unhinged desire to collect and claim everything as his own. They sit upon their mound of collected “treasures” and gleefully gloat about their hoard, gasping “mine” through their shredded vocal cords.
Characters of the Mind – Angeline the Watcher
The next character originally stems from an overwhelming sense of discomfort I have when I feel like I am the centre of focus. Whenever I am speaking publicly or in a group conversation, I feel like all the eyes in the room are stabbing daggers at me which can cause me to either shut down or speak rapidly so that the focus on me can end. I took this feeling and characterised it as an evil entity that is always directly behind me glaring with big bulging eyes, watching you intently with sinister motives that get even more extreme if you ever catch a glimpse of them.
Characters of the Mind – Spite the Goblin
The way I envisioned spite before this project was a disembodied force that helped push me forward through tough times so that I was able to meet certain things whenever I was shut down in the middle of important tasks. When it came to the embodiment of Spite, I knew that it had to be a chaotic being that would scramble around whenever there was a fuss. I settled upon a goblin-type creature that didn’t care about how it presented itself to others, that would take all the anger and stress from a situation and use it as fuel to cause unbridled chaos when taking the reins.
Characters of the Mind – Evaline the Surveyor
When it comes to the way I perceive the world, I tend to over-analyse a lot and process things differently from others. I absorb a lot of little details but it usually takes a few reruns of information before things start to stick. That is why I envisioned this as a small angelic kind of sprite, taking reference from biblically accurate angels by including an absurd amount of eyes so that they can analyse every little detail they come across.
Characters of the Mind – The Guardians
Where most people have guardian angels that help dictate moral decisions based on good or evil, the guardians that sit on my shoulders do something a little different. When it comes to difficult scenarios/tasks, each guardian is tasked to showcase both the good and bad elements of what I have to face and allow me to perceive the best ways to the challenges ahead of me. Their goals are to make sure I see all potential pathways and choose the lane that will not lead me to shutting down.
Characters of the Mind – Markus the Chaotic
Where there are a lot of creatures in my mind that are the embodiments of negative effects, this thing is a form of catalyst that strengthens those effects and how they impact me. They thrive when I am in my shutdown state, feeding off of all the negative energy created through anxiety and paranoia. Disguised as a sewn-together creature, they split down the middle to show off a large gaping maw to latch on and consume.
Characters of the Mind – Simon the Companion
When I am in a shutdown state, I can find it to be very isolating and hard to climb out of without support. That is why I usually have my coping mechanisms to centre myself and bring myself into a more rational thinking state so I can better pull myself out of stressful situations and calm down. The original concept for this character was a doppelganger version of myself to slap sense into myself, but when considering the best way to personify coping mechanisms I found that I wanted to take things into a more serene approach. With that in mind, I chose to create a character as a fun buoyant form of fluorescent light to create a sense of calmness that envelops the mind to help the brain relax when on the brink of shutting down.
Characters of the Mind – Everett the Narrator
When going about everyday tasks, I tend to deviate off course and find myself procrastinating either creatively or pointlessly. To help aid my concentration in sticking to my train of thought, I like to assign a narrator when looking through notes and research as a way to engage in the text as well as add an extra layer of perception in case I miss any details. This narrator is usually a stoic posh gentleman with a striking voice resembling the likes of David Attenborough or Morgan Freeman, but whenever I tried to visualise the face behind the voice my brain just couldn’t create it in a human form. So rather than randomly sketch a person that I didn’t perceive, I personified this narrator in the way I perceived them to be, which ended up being a half bodied felt muppet with tiny reading glasses and eye placement that was far from anatomically correct.
Characters of the Mind – The Cacophony of Detail Demons
When I find myself in a shutdown state, it can be fairly easy for me to fall into self-destructive tendencies and attack myself from within. This can range from belittling myself and my actions to looking too far ahead into the future and stressing myself out about the unknown. Rather than having one individual character symbolise this darkness, I found myself inspired by creating a dark twist on The Muses from Greek mythology. In this instance instead of a gleeful group of people raising my spirits with their knowledge, this melancholy medley of minions has the sinister task of tearing every aspect of myself to shreds.
Characters of the Mind – The Invisible Entertainer
With a combined love of horror and character creation, I have a strange tendency to create horrific unknown entities that peer through the shadows and can wreak havoc on our reality through the eyes of the perceiver. This one in particular is a sinister jester that likes to entertain in bizarre but twisted ways. Influenced by Lovecraftian horror, their bodies twist and contort into odd formations in the hopes of entertaining an audience. However, if the jester is not desired by the watcher, they will take offence and start to violently shake and deform their body in more gruesome ways all with a disfigured grin on their face.
Characters of the Mind – Flumphel the Helper
When going through everyday life, I tend to forget where items are if I put them in unfamiliar places. Due to this object permanence, I always try to put important items, such as my phone & keys, in the exact same places so I know exactly where to locate them. However, there is the odd occasion where I absentmindedly put something down and forget where I put it. In instances like this, I like to think of a small creature that pops into existence and rather than just tell me where the object is, they just make unhelpful proclamations until I eventually find whatever I am looking for. Since this creature has caused me so much annoyance over the years, I decided to give them a strange assortment of physical attributes to transform them into an amalgam of beasts.
Characters of the Mind – Lekric the Creeper
Much like Angeline the Watcher, I also sometimes feel like something is watching me from the shadows. With this sense of paranoia combined with my overactive imagination, I tend to visualise some form of creeper hiding around corners within my peripheral vision. This probably stems from a childhood worry of getting caught past curfew and not wanting to get caught, using my hypersensitivity to sound to determine footstep proximity and who they belonged to. However now that I have been living on my own for the past few years and have no idea who the footsteps belong to, that worry has changed into something more twisted and has formed into this embodiment that can send ripples of fear throughout you when you catch a glimpse.
Characters of the Mind – Eggrill the Investigator
With my hypersensitivity to sound, I try to block out as much of the world as possible. Whether it is through blasting music in my ears or wearing defenders, I utilise as much sound-dampening as possible whenever I am out and about. However, on the rare occasion when I don’t have anything blocking out the world, my awareness tends to latch onto something general so that I am not overwhelmed by everything going on. This tends to me subconsciously listening to random chunks of different conversations and weirdly combining them within my own mind like a mix-matched jigsaw puzzle. With this in mind, I also imagined a crazed detective on his last leg, trying to join together a variety of leads on a corkboard with yarn but ending up with a bunch of dead ends. I combined this feeling with the practice of being a ‘fly on the wall’ to create this characterised form of this strange after-effect that occurs when I open my senses to my environment.
Now for the Downward Spiral
After all my characters were planned out and drawn, the only thing left standing to complete was the end-of-project presentation known as the Pecha Kucha. To be frank, this part of the project started a cycle of negative effects that was hard to climb out of. As an autistic person, I tend to struggle with presenting due to reasons I have previously mentioned and turned into characters. However, this aspect was also combined with a concept I had never tackled which I like to call “Performative Thinking”. Therefore, combining the thought of presenting as well as creating some form of performance that would showcase my work rather than showcasing my work, caused me to shut down and spiral to the point where every time I even tried to think of concepts for this part of the module, I would be out of commission for a few days due to how severe the shutdowns would get. It got to the point where during one of my brainstorming sessions, I was so shut down that I was pressing my thumbs to the bone around my eye sockets and thinking about tearing my skull in half as that feat sounded more desirable than this.
Therefore, to proceed I knew I had to let chaos take the reins and what better way to do that is to explore one of my characters in more depth.
Exploring Spite – The Fuel/Driving Force
At this point in the project, I was at my lowest but knew that I had to climb my way out somehow. Usually in this situation, spite just drives me in a sort of cruising speed to get the job done as well as I could attempt. However, I wanted spite to be the driving force of what I wanted to create so I made sure to fuel it as much as possible so that the force of creativity would skyrocket. All of the proposed ideas and questionable aids towards my way of thinking fed this force to the point where I had to hold myself back at times cause the concepts I was generating were very extreme and not for the faint of heart. Once I fully learnt, on my own, what I had to do for this presentation, I realised that the only way I would be able to create a final piece was if I made it as absurd and insane as I could so that I in person wouldn’t be the key focus, and that the key attention of the audience would be elsewhere.
Performative Artist Research
To start with, I looked at a wide range of absurd performative artists that ranged from bizarre ends of the spectrum. I knew with my final piece I wanted it to have a strong shock factor that would evoke emotion, but not too strong that it wouldn’t be allowed to present. I always reassured myself at this point that they referenced the lamb butchering presentation in the early stages of the module, but as I don’t really have that sort of background I knew that I couldn’t take it to extreme lengths. Hence why my main focus on artists was finding the weirdest forms of performative art, whether it was absurd destruction, abstract concepts or even disgusting artistic techniques. Below is the full list of artists I looked at when conducting this research:
- Jan Hakon Erichsen – Visual Artist (Breaking Spaghetti)
- Bettina Behjat Banayan – Performance Artist (Frosting a Cake in the Subway)
- Ward Shelley & Alex Schweder – Performance Artists (Lived in a Hamster Ball for 10 Days)
- Victor “Crack” Rodriguez – Performance Artist (Eats his Voting Ballot)
- Gao Qiang & Gao Zhen – Performance Artists (Hugging for 20 Minutes)
- Millie Brown – Vomit Painter (Vomit Painting Lady Gaga)
- Shia LaBeouf – Actor / Performer (#IAMSORRY)
- Abraham Poincheval – French Artist (Living inside a Taxidermy Bear)
- Han Bing – Performance Artist (Walking the Cabbage)
- Marina Abramovic – Performance Artist (512 Hours)
- Marni Kotak – Performance Artist (Mad Meds)
- Victor Ivanov & Lewis G. Burton – Performance Artists (FLESH)
- Zhou Jie – Performance Artist (36 Days)
All of the collated research that I looked at can be found here:
Presentation Concept – The Cynitches
When it came to conceptualising what kind of presentations I could do, the process became more based on which of the characters I had created could I potentially bring to life. I knew that at its core, I wanted this Pecha Kucha to be framed as a “Showcase gone wrong” where in an attempt to show these characters of my mind, the individuals themselves would be present and trying to cause mayhem. The following concept sketches were made before I landed on the decision to make a short film, so all of the discussion about the concepts themselves will be described in how I would bring them to life if I was able to perform them on stage.
The first of which was a concept surrounding The Cynitches, where as I attempt to go through my presentation the witches themselves would be somewhere in the back of the room heckling as many times as possible. As I would attempt to stay on track and finish, the constant berating and cackling would force me to speed through the presentation and rush off in hopes of getting away. This concept was a fun idea in my head, but as I wanted the artwork to be a core focus, I knew that I wouldn’t be able to speed through things as each character should receive equal
Presentation Concept – Urglex the Devourer
The next concept was based around Urglex, where as the showcase would automatically slide through the characters and their respective descriptions, I would be centre stage enjoying a meal of my own but in a globally viewed incorrect manner. This would involve me eating various foods in incorrect ways that would evoke a sense of disgust amongst the audience, such as eating a sub sandwich like corn on the cob and eating a KitKat in whole pieces without snapping it. This feast would also be accompanied by loud chewing and belches, showcasing a true personification of the character it would be resembling. This concept would later be what I settled upon using for my presentation, but obviously after a few tweaks to best suit a film format.
Presentation Concept – Marco the Collector
Attempting to conceptualise this character in a presentation format was by far one of the easiest and the first I came up with when considering my avenues. As an avid hoarder…I mean magpie artist, I tend to collect change and never bring it into the bank to be sorted and put into my account. This process has led me to use a medium-sized Tupperware container as a form of piggy bank, but in my eyes, it seems more like a miniature pool of coins the like of which you could envision Scrooge McDuck diving into. The plan for this concept was to portray me as a silent performer, letting the showcase play behind me as I ominously sorted through a large pile of coins, assembling them into scattered towers before ending the charade by sliding the coins back into the container and leaving without a sound. This concept stuck with me to the very end and I would love to attempt something like this in a future project, maybe as a strange animation or some form of piggy bank designed as a decrepit fortune teller who pushes coins about.
Presentation Concept – Angeline the Watcher
The most horrific concept I came up with aligned a lot with my motives behind how I wanted the presentations to go. Since openly presenting to a crowd would have brought Angeline into full effect for me, I would have loved to have made it a shared experience and had her present with me on stage. However I wouldn’t pay any attention to her as I already know what she is capable of, but since the audience doesn’t they would have to endure the same feeling of having daggers stared back at them. I think that to pull this concept off, I would have had to make a mask of Angeline for someone to wear as well as have the person wearing the mask begin with staring holes in the back of my head but become more infatuated with the audience as the presentation progressed, with even more radical version of this concept including Angeline herself leaving the stage and sitting behind someone random.
Presentation Concept – Spite the Goblin
(Warning: Aggressive Explicit Language)
Now this concept was a beloved favourite of mine and would have probably ended up being my final presentation, but as much as I love Spite’s chaotic nature I knew deep down that I would never be able to pull this off. Since I consider myself to be a kind soul who wouldn’t do any harm, this concept still had a lot of pros rather than cons for me as it was a concept that involved the least amount of time for me to be the focus as well as being a concept that had the most shock factor. Essentially, this concept begins with me presenting the audience with a scrawled-out sign reading “Fuck You!” followed by me exclaiming “STARE AT THAT FOR 4 MINUTES, YOU CUNTS” before walking out of the room and never returning. The audience would then be forced to watch my characters automatically scroll through with an empty stage as I believed that due to how tightly scheduled the event would be, all participants’ times had to be followed through before continuing with the next presentation. This concept was the perfect embodiment of the rage I had been building up through this module, and if I had chosen it as my final piece I genuinely believe that it would have been such a stress release.
Presentation Concept – Everett the Narrator
The final concept I had imagined when thinking about the presentation is a concept I would never want to actually do in reality. Since being the focal point is already a stressful experience, having to perform as a puppeteer and project my words through it is by far a more distressing thought. As much as I would have loved to have made a puppet and used it for a final presentation like this. If I ever wanted it to become a reality I would have had to have someone else portray the puppet in this scenario. Basically, this concept is centred around the use of the puppet and having them carry out the presentation rather than myself, using their stoic soothing voice to explain each character in extenuated detail to the point where hopefully someone falls asleep.
Narrowing down Concepts
After creating all my concepts and figuring out that making a short film was the way to go, I narrowed down my choices to 3. Rather than record myself on a stage and make my concepts as literal as possible, I made the decision to tweak them in a way that best suited a presentation in the digital age. Due to the increased usage of Zoom and Microsoft Teams meetings since the pandemic, I thought it would be fun for the film to have the perspective of someone giving a presentation through that format, where the slideshow takes up the majority of the space except from a little corner where a person on a webcam would be. In the diagram below, I planned out the 3 concepts and made sure each idea had a distinct style and format so that each one would be unique and easier to narrow down further into one final concept. I knew beforehand that the catalyst of change would come from the character in mind taking control and doing their own thing upon getting the hold of the reins of my body, but found ways to make that change different for each individual idea. The concepts are as follows (as I know my handwriting can be shocking and difficult to read):
Messy Glutton – Face Forward Camera Setup
Array of food to be eaten incorrectly.
Audio filled with obnoxiously loud chewing and slurping.
Ends in an absolute mess.
Greedy Hoarder – Top Down / Toppled Over Camera Setup.
Starts with ominous tones followed by the scattering of coins.
Begins to sort them into strange piles, continuing to gasp and screech in ghoulish tones.
Ends with a harsh cut
Spiteful Goblin – Obstructed Camera View
Starts with a strongly explicit exclamation after covering the camera with a crude post-it note.
Can either continue with chaos happening in the background or In complete silence after an explosive door slam.
Final Outcome – The Putrid Presentation
After analysing my final three choices, I decided to go ahead with the messy glutton concept. I chose this idea because I found myself loving the idea of evoking the same sense of disgust I personally feel when Urglex is active inside my head, but also showcased the appropriate levels of both spite and creativity that help bring my project full circle. I decided that for this to be done properly, I had to make things as disgusting as I possibly could both visually and audibly to be able to create the maximum amount of shock factor as well as ensure that the audience would express disgust while watching.
I began this process with a test recording to see how quickly I could carelessly eat a sandwich, as I needed to determine how much time it would take to consume all the foods I had planned. Funnily enough, I discovered that even when I’m not eating the usual way I am still an exceptionally fast eater which resulted in an approximate time of 2:30 to eat a sandwich like a glutton. This allowed me more time to extenuate my chews and noises when it came to recording the final take as well as giving me the full confidence to include all the foods I had hoped to show.
When it came to recording the final take, I wanted to make sure that the oafish appearance came through even if it might lead to not getting noticed. This included growing my hair out as long as I could as well as leaving my beard untamed and frizzly in hopes of getting crumbs and other food debris stuck on my face. This practice came out in full effect whilst filming, as I found myself having to pull hair out of my mouth constantly along with various frames throughout where I look like a complete animal. There were also a couple of happy accidents when filming the final take that I am glad happened as they didn’t really show up in previous takes, such as loud and queasy sounding belches after chugging down Pepsi as well as having to spit out my final bite of sandwich after realising I only had 30 seconds left before I went over the requested 4:33.
After fully filming everything, all that was left to do was compile my character sketches into a presentation format and overlay everything together to make it look like an online presentation. Since I wanted to maximise the levels of disgust that could come out of this film, I experimented with angles within the presentation to try and see if I could make the slideshow itself uneasy to watch. Through this experimentation, I found that slightly adjusting the angles of the text and webcam footage to oppose each other allowed for a strange sense of unease, especially since it’s not entirely visible unless you’re nitpicky and pick up on it right away. However, I firmly chose to not tilt the artwork in any way shape or form as I wanted my characters to be the most visually appealing thing to look at in contrast to the askew text and gluttonous devouring.
In conclusion, I am insanely proud of the steps I have taken to complete this module as well as the new skills and techniques I have taught myself along the way. It has awoken the illustrator inside me that has been buried beneath design and craft for the past 5 years and I am glad to finally have it back in focus. Even though this project has had a lot more downs than ups, it has been a challenge I wholeheartedly and bravely ventured through and if I am to take anything away from this module, I know to never give up even when the going gets tough and life keeps beating the shit out of you while you’re down. In the future, I hope to use these characters in a more narrative-based format, showcasing their attributes and flaws in some form of storybook that will allow others to personify their unique quirks and what makes them the person they are. Many thanks and hope you’ve enjoyed a look through my journey from point A to B with this project.
In regards to the presentation itself, I believe that enough torment has been brought upon the viewers who have already seen it so I will spare you the disgusting visuals and traumatic ASMR by only including a glimpse into it rather than showcasing the whole thing.
Samuel Mathias 