I considered calling my game this week “Depression Naps,” maybe for a pretty clear reason. (Maybe not! I like to leave my work up to interpretation.) It felt a little too much like making a joke of my own experiences, though, which I’m trying not to do so much, so I decided to stick with “Home Alone” (which, to me, is a reference to how much harder it is [for me] to do things when depressed and alone, as opposed to depressed and with other people).
The photographs I based my hand and figure illustrations on for this game were taken last winter. The hand photos were from a project in which I examined my own hands as objects – dried, cracked, and bloody as they often are during the winter, given the dry air in combination with the obsessive hand washing that is one manifestation of my OCD. The figure was based on a self-portrait taken for the final project. That project had a promising start, which was quickly snuffed out as the depression that had been getting worse throughout the quarter took a couple major steps towards “bad.” Instead of taking the pictures I’d planned on setting up (which, admittedly, were also about mental illness), I ended up spending a weekend taking two or three photos, and then just lying vacantly in bed for an hour or two before I felt able to try again. It was exhausting and, honestly, pretty awful, but I ended up with a really interesting collection of self-portraits. The photo used for the illustration didn’t wind up being a part of the final form of the project, which ended up focusing on mental illness, publicity, and vulnerability in a slightly different way. Also, I do think the inability to do the project I’d wanted to do ended up being in itself an interesting statement about mental illness within the context of academic life.
Something about using these photos, taken during a very vulnerable time, for a very vulnerable and exposing and intimate project, for this game made me feel a bit uncomfortable, but you’re the one model you always have access to, and these were photos I already had at the ready to illustrate. It also wouldn’t have felt fair to project my own feelings or experiences or concepts onto a figure belonging to another person. Writing this down also maybe feels too personal, but I’m gonna make myself post it anyway, because the kind of work I want to do is personal and intimate and “maybe too personal,” so this is probably good practice.
The art style I used for this project was heavily influenced by Nina Freeman’s “Freshman Year.” Or, maybe more accurately, the idea to use an art style I already like working with was influenced by that game game. Something about the cursor I ended up with especially felt like “Freshman Year.”
