World Building
In English, I wrote a research paper called “A Battle for Mental Health Services.” I decided to choose this topic to research because mental health challenges are something that a large percentage of people in our world experience. It is difficult that many insurance companies do not cover the costs to treat such diagnoses, which leads to people becoming sicker and less happy. I researched several sources and practiced citing different pieces of evidence and integrating them into my writing. I focused on how people’s well-being is greatly affected because of this and how it is crucial that people should have more access to aid with mental health challenges and diagnoses.
Surreal Composition Project
For my surreal composition project, we decided to create a 3-act structure for our narrative story called “Circadian.” Our story is about a bright teenage girl that finds herself in a world where sleep is strictly prohibited; she discovers the power of dreams and embarks on a dangerous journey to uncover the truths of her society. It relates to my world-building research assignment because it also grasps some mental health challenges in our story. We wanted to really focus on dreams and how our main protagonist realizes her world is much more dystopian than she previously thought when dreams reveal a new reality. My artist statement for the project is shown below.
Light of Health vs. Shadow of Prosperity
I decided to create this surrealistic image using Photoshop to resemble my topic of insurance companies not covering the cost of mental health-related services. I used two cutouts of heads, one to portray the light at the end of the tunnel for many people enduring mental health-related circumstances and challenges, whereas the other head represents those living in the dark. This head in particular represents how insurance companies are wanting to prosper with money instead of paying for services people desperately need for survival. The other head represents a person in good health who is able to receive the care they need.
I choose to incorporate various images inside each of the “heads” to resemble how people experience various treatments when it comes to mental health. While some are able to get the care they need and can experience more “happiness,” financial circumstances burden others, making it difficult to find joy. I decided to add in a cloudy background, with the darker storm clouds on the side of the person representing the financial aspects of insurance companies.
Overall, I really enjoyed this project. Photoshop in general is one of the Adobe platforms that I struggle with the most, so I feel that this project helped me to enhance my skills and learn more about the various tools to create interesting and creative designs.
Enhanced World-Building Presentation Video
I enjoyed presenting my world-building project with my two partners, Mia Delgo and Lucy Patron. We worked diligently together leading up to the presentation, and we made sure that we had everything memorized and potential questions prepared. We presented about a 10-minute presentation, where we talked about our main characters and our plot and answered questions asked by our audience members. The three of us carefully curated slides for presenting, and each took turns pitching our idea. I overall really enjoyed this project, and I had a lot of fun thinking of ideas with my group!