First session back!

Today we had our first taught session, and it was a go around the room style session where everyone opened up and discussed what we were planning to do for both our CS and our studio work, mainly the studio work was mentioned though.

It was really good to hear what everyone was planning to do, I've really missed these kind of open sessions as you hear everyone's unique ideas and everyone gives ideas to people that you wouldn't normally have thought of yourself!

When it came to my turn I kind of got a bit nervous, even though I knew most of the people there, there were a few people (thanks to group reshuffles) that I had never seen before. So talking about my weird ideas, I worry that I am too weird. Thanks social anxiety! Two ideas that have been floating around in my head are ...

• The Death Knell (the tolling of a bell to mark someone's death.)
• Ancient World Torture Devices (turning these items into humanised game bosses)

I talked about my plans to do my work based on the Death Knell and about humanising torture devises.

As expected there were a few concerns that my work would end up being not suitable for the final end show as it would be open to members of the public and this means children and teenagers. This kind of puts a halt to a few of the ideas I had featuring certain torture object such as Impaling. This means I just have to get creative with what I am doing.

I was advised by our tutor Mark to keep everything PG and to stay away from styles like Hellraiser and possibly Silent Hill as these have been done numerous times, I am a bit disappointed by the Silent Hill mention because I really wanted to make it in a similar style as it's a style I am massively in to. At this point I am a little flustered, but I will just have to add everything I am currently inspired by and go from that point, such as looking at the inspirations that went into creating these already done styles. I will probably end up looking at more psychological torture or something .... These are the notes I made during the session, excuse the randomness of the writing.

Key sentences I noted during this session where

• Look outside the obvious!
• Tasteful Torture!
• Look at making it subtle!
• BE INNOVATIVE.

Mark liked the idea of the Death Knell and said I could probably get more out of it so I'll have a little more of a look at it alongside the torture research. I was advised by a fellow classmate Joe to look up an artist called Mark Ryden that another classmate Jenny had studied. He does art that is both cute, but has a darker side to it. I really like this style, it reminds me of an artist I used to be obsessed with called Chiho Aoshima.

(insert research slides here)

So ... .first session back has given me a lot to think about!