Workshop

Our first workshop was built around finding potential themes to research in depth.

My first task was to think about certain points in order to generate ideas: what makes me cry/laugh, what gets me excited/angry, what stimulates me intellectually and what interests me. I worked with Phil during the workshop, but I found it hard to find ideas on the spot.

I redid the exercise at home and had a more fruitfull outcome:

For this topic I couldn't think of specific examples. What came to mind were different feelings that lead to crying. This made it clear to me that I have an interest in the topic of mental health, introspection and understanding my own emotions. I also like to think of the cause and effect of feelings and try to look at the source, not just the simptom.

What stimulates me intellectually:

· Climate change

· Pollution

· Renewable energy/ sustainable living

· Digital privacy

· Mental Health

· Sci fi novels (Arthur C Clarke)

· Movies (Stanley Kubrik,

· Leaving planet earth (will never happen)

· Art

As an example, we were given this blog with 10 exercises to fuel creative thinking and a blog on 8 creative thinking techinques and tool to use. The last blog caught my attention, especially exercide number 2, "Why? Where? When? Who? What? How?". This especially links to my way of analising mental health issues and going to the source that caused a certain reaction.

8 Awesome Creative Thinking Techniques - Koozai

What I learned:

8 creative problem-solving techniques:

1.Brainstorming/Mindmapping

A classic solution. The key is to not restrict yourself-write down on paper even those seemingly unrelated ideas, until you find “the golden ticket”;

When in groups, follow the Charette Procedure-works by breaking down a large group of people into smaller ones and assigning each team 1 topic;

2.The checklist

· Ask yourself “Why?Where?When?Who?What?How?”. Use this when you get stuck.

3. Six Thinking Hats Technique

Developed by Edward de Bono in the early 80s, this popular technique is now used by businesses all over the world. They involve putting on a selection of metaphorical hats when it comes to making a decision. Each hat represents a different direction of thinking. The 6 hats are: white, red, black, yellow, green, blue. Each hat represents a way of thinking.

4. Lateral Thinking

Example of lateral thinking: “Tractors are a key component of farming, farming produces food and resources. Farms also house animals. A popular children’s rhyme about farm animals is Old McDonald, you may wonder how that rhyme came to be. Why not create creative content around the origin of that rhyme? “

5. Random word Generator

Pick 2 random words and try to find an interesting connection between them. You can use an online word gernerator or other techniques to pick them.

6. Word association

Get started by choosing a word that’s associated with your business. Next, think of as many words associated with the initial word and see if you can make a connection between them that fits in with what your business offers.

7. Picture Association

If you’re truly stuck for ideas, perform an image search on your topic of choice, pick a random photo. Work backwards from the picture, developing a story around how the photo was taken.

8. Change perspective

Sometimes you can get too attached to your own work, I know I always do it. You may be too close to notice that there are faults visible from afar. Try to ask for a fresh perspective on your work-ask for constructive critiscism.

Extra tips

· Get up and go out

· Reframing

· Key Dates, Events and Seasonality

· Creative Content Problems and Solutions

· 6-5-3 Method

Homework for myself-do 3-5 exercises and put the pictures in the document. Use collages not just digital work.

10 Exercises To Fuel Creative Thinking (fastcompany.com)

ASK “WHAT ELSE CAN I DO WITH THIS?”

2. TAKE NOTICE

3. KEEP IT SIMPLE

4. EMBRACE ABSURDITY

5. TRY SWAPPING SYSTEMS

6. REPOSITION

7. TRY TRANSLATING

8. JUST IMPROVISE

9. UNDERSTAND YOUR PROCESS

10. MAKE IT PERSONAL

Workshop

Pin up ideas

45mins Ok start to pick apart Pick 4 /5 too interrogate from the pin ups New sheets in pairs idea at top / questions to as

The 4 topics I chose were

4 topics:

· Does aspect represent us?-Do facial features say anything about our personality? Look into the study of physiognomy and how it’s used in daily life and character art. What does fashion say about us regarding taste, mental health and personality? Look into fashion and mental disorders

· Internalised Anger-How does anger affect our body? How do we release anger? What causes this.

· Gossip-Why do people gossip? Is gossip used for character assasination? How is gossip used when we need to set a boundary? How gossip affects the victim and what can be done about it.

· Fairytales-narrative motifs and characters/ Mithology, Folklore. So many areas to research for this topic. Moral of the stories, interesting fantastic elements, representation of female characters in fairytales. How fairytales inspired movies and pop culture.

Photography sheet

I created a moodboard for each topic

15mins Create an Action PLAN For example; List 5 things to look at. 2 Case Studies 20 photocopies Visual Research / Search 20 Bookmarks 3 Artists 2 Books 2 Journals Create 2 things to pin up each day. Sparks Brain storm and discuss. Create Weekly deadline

My plans:

Create a weekly progress timetable
Document my process in video format
Work on something that is exciting to me
Keep up with all the assignments
Start building a brand for my game early on
Start social media accounts and networking
Find the balance between passion and following the criteria

Narrative Workshop

For our workshop with Emma, we had to imagine a narrative universe and complete a topsheet of characteristics. We would all pass our sheet to the person on our right, and end up with very interesting game worlds by the end.

After this we had the task to create a Metroidvania using PowerPoint.

And a mistery game(for the mistery game we had to chose from 3 themes-I picked “Your boss is doing something suspicious and you try to find out what it is”)