The "Test Expressions from before" are experiments I did before class to see if I liked the facial concept of the design and could emote smoothly with it; these are a small collection of my favorites from that experiment. The "New Turn Around" is, well, new. I hadn't yet decided on a body until now; and though I am still iffy on the hues of the palette, I like the colors that I decided on. I still need to do some clean-up, but overall this was a good first effort, especially on my first turn around ever! I'm very proud of myself :)
As for how this character represents "me", it's an experiment in simplification for me. Similar to Gromit, I don't tend to be especially chatty to a majority of people, especially those that I am not used to being around; though I do apparently have a very, uh, bad poker-face, let's say (I know I have a judgey face, I was trying to fix it before the pandemic made "the ability to express myself with a mask on" appealing). I also get a lot of compliments on how my signature feature/s tend to be my eyes and my eyebrows, so simplifying my face to only be those features felt like a fun exercise; additionally, I didn't like the idea of drawing glasses constantly for myself, nor did the idea of making the term "four-eyes" literal appeal to me. But I like the simple non-grotesque monstrosity that is behind a cyclops design. If I was to expand this persona to be in a monstrous world, I think I'd have a lot of fun translating my loved ones into the creatures they feel best represent them (or that I feel best represent them if there's a lack of opinion).
(If I'm allowed to exercise my English degree for a moment however, to attemptively try to see more potentially within my decision to design a cyclops/monster of all things:) There is plenty I could say about how monsters represent a type of "otherness" often felt by marginalized people in how they are perceived by society. There's many reasons to feel a type of connection to any specific creature interpreted as "monstrous", though that analysis of relatability to the marginalized is most often assigned to humanity's fascination of werewolves; it is I think it's surface-level analysis is a statement that can be generalized for humanity's fascination with monsters and otherness, both internalized and systematic. I think that, similar to how werewolves can be used to express queerness and a desire for community, or how vampires can be used to express the exploration of sexuality or be interpreted as akin to Thomas Chatterton and Werther or the romanticism of tuberculosis; I think what monster you feel the most fascination with and/or the one you feel best represents you says a lot about your desires and/or perception of where you stand in your community. And in that sense, being a cyclops or an "almost perfectly passing human" suits me, a white-passing Native American who is queer in both gender and sexuality while also disabled and mentally ill-- as I am also somebody who looks nothing like these labels. Additionally, I feel a type of kinship in focusing so much on one eye and its singular perception taking up the whole face due a variety of reasons, mostly to do with my specific health problems that I'm in the middle of treatment and diagnosing for, but also because of the morbid comfort of this quote: "Do you ever wonder if it's everyone else who sees the world differently? [And that] maybe you see people the way they're supposed to be seen?" from Holding Up The Universe by Jennifer Niven. Which, though I've never read any of Niven's work, is a line that's given me a lot of comfort in how Niven sees the theme "mental illness changes the way you see things" to be a type of reclamation. Niven is saying "Maybe being neurotypical changes the way you see things, maybe I see the things the way they were meant to be seen" but then applies this sentiment to be specifically about people so as to focalize society to be the central universe witnessing itself, rather than applying non-human things like sunsets or foxes or cold weather into the same interpretation-saddled spectrum. So designing a cyclops is then a type of metaphor about the difference in perception between a cyclops versus human more central, as well as more literal in terms of depth-perception, and at the forefront of this visual confrontation. My health, both mental and physical, is a big part of my identity, are all things I was born with/genetically-predisposed to have, are things I have a lot of internalized ableism over, and are items that I literally could not imagine not having anymore than I can imagine being born with "a monster" instead of a human being. These weren't things I thought of while initially coming up the idea. Nonetheless, this paragraph has put some unspoken things into words, and maybe better explains why I chose a cyclops of all things to represent me when they're admittingly not even my favorite monster.
I like that it's a relatively humanoid design with the outfit being simple and, indeed, a silhouette I often wear. (Though, seeing the design actually put to paper, I now want to jot down far much more of my closet for my little persona to wear) I also like how "animated" it is, in how I got to "Mickey Mouse" the front of my hair, as well as play with potential "mouth" expressions that don't have a lower jaw. It is really nice having these thoughts translated into this turn around to potentially use for reference in the future. I really like it, and I hope you guys do too!
- Kaiden Shenandoah
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