Gut Bacteria

For this project I was asked to create an illustration to go alongside an editorial article explaining bacteria living in your gut that can affect your brain and how you think and feel.

In the article, they go into heavy detail about how the gut bacteria can be manipulated to alter a person’s emotional state like, for example, to alleviate anxiety. Adjacently, when going unchecked, the bacteria can also heighten a person’s negative emotions.

So for my thumbnails and sketches I tried to focus on interesting compositions that would go hand in hand with the medical topics of gut bacteria.

To push the idea of this gut-to-brain connection, I created an extreme perspective and portrayed the gut bacteria as both adorable yet potentially dangerous, all literally connected straight to the brain.