Catastrophic thinking and different dimensions

While thinking of ways to depict the mental state of anxiety/experiencing intrusive thoughts, Lok Magazine opened for submissions under the theme of 'dimensions'. While roughly sketching out a comic idea for the theme, I realised that it could also apply to my animation. The above images are the first two pages of a comic/storyboard.

Intrusive thoughts and catastrophic thinking are symptomatic with anxiety disorders, as well as many other mental illnesses. I feel that they can be seen as living in different 'dimensions', for example: you're planning out what you're doing for the day when you're hit with the image of jumping in front of a car. I go through periods of intense worrying about events that are far beyond my control, or worrying about losing control over my own actions which could then lead to hurting myself or others. These could be seen as many different possible timelines all playing out in my head parallel to reality, i.e. different dimensions.

Once I connected anxiety to the theme of dimensions, I then tried to think of ways to communicate this visually. Going with the car example above, I quickly drew out a comic or storyboard of the events. The character is not very considered, although I have sketched out different poses and expressions to practice continuancy. It is the concept I'm focusing on for this film, and the character is more of a placeholder for the reader/viewer. I may think about this further in the future once I have got the story more in place.

A first draft of the second page - I felt the style differed too much from the first page and so redid it.

Thinking of ways to draw a parallel version of the character