Hallucinations of an unstable mind

[Diospyros]

Hi all, looking for some advice.

Hope this isn't too confusing. I've got a character (San) in my comic who will regularly be hallucinating. He'll be mistaking one person for a different person, people for animals, and vice versa, seeing faces in trees, etc. I'd like some way to show the reader what he is seeing, while making it clear that these things are hallucinations.

I don't want to have San's visions only occur when he's alone, which makes it more problematic. I was wondering about drawing San's hallucinations in the regular panels, but using some convention to show what part of the panel is hallucinated and what is real. I could draw the hallucinated object in black and white (the comic is normally in color), or with a fuzzy edge, or possibly even putting what he's seeing in some kind of thought bubble...

Sorry I don't have examples of all these different ideas, it hasn't come up in the plot yet. I'm just looking for peoples' thoughts, as I'm totally new at this. I'm coming at this project from the perspective of narrative fiction, where my POV issues are totally different. Should I just give up showing what this character is hallucinating?

If you look at the comic, don't get confused by the April Fool's Day edition, which isn't a hallucination. Thanks for any help!

--Diospyros

[Boozeathon4billion]

I would say to only have the hallucinations happen when the comic is from San's point of view. Otherwise the comic is just going to come across as being really busy and it won't be obvious why other characters aren't seeing these things to new readers who may not understand the whole hallucination thing. And if you do even just one frame in a series from his point of view, then you can skew reality in that frame as much as you want while keeping the rest normal looking... that way you can make San's mannerisms weird/different as the reminder that he still see's the weird stuff you show here and there.

It would also be a lot less work to keep it from San's POV I'm guessing... for those reasons, I'd keep it to a pov issue instead of warping the whole comic into that kind of thing. My general take on mental instabilities is that the more subtle it is throughout the comic, the better it will turn out. If it is just glaringly obvious all the time you and the readers can too easily stereotype that character and just make him the crazy one which depletes him of the depth he could have if constructed well.

[Diospyros]

I would say to only have the hallucinations happen when the comic is from San's point of view.
...
If it is just glaringly obvious all the time you and the readers can too easily stereotype that character and just make him the crazy one which depletes him of the depth he could have if constructed well.

Thanks, booze (now there's a familiar sentiment). Good advice about not over-playing this, I definitely have more in mind for the character than just crazy. But I guess my issue is how to "give" San a particular panel and clue the reader in that that panel is from his POV.

Example (I should probably really have drawn something up, huh?):

San and another character are standing at a fence waiting for a group to come down a road. When the group first appears, the other character sees an ordinary group of people, but San sees a flock of birds. I can contain San's hallucination in one panel and then go back to business as usual (his hallucinations won't last very long even for him, anyway), but when I'm showing the flock of birds I wonder how to indicate that it is from his POV? Since the two characters are standing together and looking in the same direction they'll see the group appear at the same time, but be seeing different things.

Maybe I'm trying too hard to make this work.

Diospyros spp.

[Johndar]

I agree with booze in that it should be subtle. If you just force feed everything to the reader then it would kind of ruin the mind mess qualities of a character like that. I recommend watching/reading other comics or media that involve similar reality-fantasy meshing qualities for inspiration. I just recently watched Paprika and that did a very good job of it.

About your example, you could have the first, non-hallucinating character on panel, far right, looking at the group as normal. next panel adjacent to that, have the hallucinating character far left, seeing the same group as a flock of birds instead. You could maybe even have half of the group on one panel normal, spread to the other as birds. This could make two different panels, two different perspectives, but still make it look like they're standing next to each other.

[Parables]

Been thinking about this for the last couple of days; it's an interesting challenge. I thought I could offer some perspective, because I'm bipolar and have experienced hallucinations. I don't have any specific advice as far as techniques, but I thought if I described what a non-drug-induced hallucination is like it might help. I'm approaching this from the assuption that your character is mentally ill, ie schizophrenic, bipolar etc.

Typically hallucinations start as what's called 'visual illusions,' which pretty much everyone experiences. You see some shape out of the corner of your eye, and your mind misinterprets it briefly as being something of a very similair shape but not identical. The face in the tree is a good example; someone might easily imagine the shape being there, and see how someone could think they saw a face in their peripheral vision. Looking directly at the shape immeadiately resolves the misinterpretation, and looking away again doesn't cause it to re-occur.

Things progress from there, usually over a period of months or years. Looking away starts to cause the illusion to reappear. Shapes closer and closer to the centre of the visual field get misinterpreted, and the misinterpretations get increasingly far-fetched and more detailed. You begin to see things that aren't just misinterpretations, they come out of nowhere. The thing you see is completely made up by your mind.

Even at this point, though, it's often possible to be aware that what you're looking at isn't real. I've never had any doubt that the things I saw weren't really there. Your mind still sees reality, but has difficulty reconciling it with the hallucinated image. It's a lot like looking at a stereogram; one part of your mind sees nothing but random shapes on a flat piece of paper, but another part of your mind sees a three-dimensional image. I think that if you could somehow capture this duality, it would help to clarify what's a hallucination and what's not.

(Hope this isn't TMI or makes anyone uncomfortable. Mental illness has a lot of stigma attached, but really when you get down to it, what's the difference between a psychotic episode, insullin shock, and an asthma attack? I'm so used to it that it's no big deal to me.)

[Lei]

I worked a storyline at one point for TP with a precognitive character, who caught 'flashes' or 'premonitions' sometimes overlaying reality. In these pages, (most of which will never see the internet, for a variety of other reasons) the premonitions were shaded in blue, or had a blueish-ethereal quality. I had also considered haloing objects, at one point, but it got too busy visually.

I guess your main chore here is to know whether you want to fabricate a realistic illustration of mental illness and hallucinations, where delusions are inseparable from reality, or a clear-cut narration, with obvious visual conventions for separating the real and the unreal in the eyes of the viewer.

[Diospyros]

Thanks everyone (especially Parables, not TMI at all). The description of the progressive aspect gave me the idea of perhaps starting my depiction of the hallucinations more subtly and getting more complicated as I go, which could reflect my character's experience as well as give me a chance to figure out what works best and keep me from overdoing things from the get-go.

The issue of showing both what is there and what is hallucinated at the same time to show the character's grasp of what is hallucinated and what isn't is also food for thought. He does have a pretty clear idea of when he's hallucinating, though he likes to confront the people around him by pretending he doesn't.

Of course, all this is way beyond my mediocre-at-best skills, but I've never let that stop me from doing something challenging before. I'll probably bump this question up again when the plot hits the first hallucination, in about a week, to ask whether it makes sense.

--Diospyros

[Diospyros]

Okay, my April 19th update involves one of my character's hallucinations. I'm not particularly satisfied with it. I'd really appreciate any comments about whether it makes sense, and whether it's possible to figure out what's there and what isn't, who's seeing what, etc.
--Diospyros spp.

[Parables]

At first it was difficult to distinguish who saw what, but once I went back and read from the beginning, it made sense. Kudos for managing to capture the surreal sort of duality, I'd say you showed it quite well.

[Boozeathon4billion]

It was difficult seeing what it was that he was hallucinating at first but after a while it clicked. I don't know if there is an easier way to make it apparent that the hallucinations are actually just that or not... maybe a slightly different drawing style or coloring/shading technique... I'm not sure. I'll think about it for a while and let you know if I come up with something. Good job on that first attempt though.

[Diospyros]

Thanks for the feedback Parables, Booze,
I know it's kinda vague. It's definitely something that's going to need tinkering with. I wanted to start subtle so it won't be jarring if I adopt some sort of stylistic convention later.
--Diospyros