Project 02 - Initial research

When I read the theme my initial thoughts went to the series of emails between Greg Wohlwend and Asher Vollmer documenting the development of the iOS game 'Threes'. I read through the whole thing over Christmas break and one of the things which stuck out to me was the 'Argoyles' idea; monsters/gargoyles with argyle patterns (which they didn't use in the end).

A mockup of the old art-style in-game.

Reading about their design process was incredibly interesting. The huge number of re-iterations really shows how much work goes into this level of quality. 

If you'd like to read the documentation you can do HERE

Argyle is such an attractive pattern it makes me want to use something similar in my own design.

I was thinking I might juxtapose a cute wooly jumper and hat on the traditional hideous monster/gargoyle or something of the sort.
Can you make gargoyles from fabric or do they have to be stone?
     - Something to research


I've been researching into traditional gargoyles and I found THIS website. Here are a few quotes:

"Gargoyles were placed on the roofs of Egyptian temples where their mouths served as a spout for water."

"...saved his country from a monster by the name of Goji, sometimes called Gargouille. Supposedly the monster was so scary looking that it frightened off evil spirits. This led to some calling the monster a protector and placing similar carved pieces on churches and other important buildings."

"Starting in the 19^th century, gargoyles became more of a decoration than anything else."

"...gargoyles were used on more modern buildings as a form of decoration"

Summary:
Gargoyles have been around for thousands of years and serve as a spout for water. They supposedly look scary because of a monster from an old folk tale and they were made because of their association with protection. Since the 19th century their use has been mostly decorative.

We haven't been given a time period for this project so I feel like I could go old school and create something really scary looking or I could go modern and create something with novelty value. Perhaps I could even look at futurism in which case I should probably look into some of H.R.Giger's stuff.

A lot of monsters are based off of real life animals or combinations of them so I might use that as a starting point. Most gargoyles I've seen seem to be animal-like in some way or another although it would be really cool to experiment with the abstract too.

I also found THIS WEBSITE

The first section about etymology:

The first paragraph says that gargoyles can often be in the form of just faces, which is something I might look into further.

The second paragraph backs up my finding about the animal-like features most gargoyles seem to have. It also talks about how they're "often very imaginative and/or grotesque".

The third paragraph talks about how in recent years, the word 'gargoyle' has changed/widened to include "cartoon characters" and "any ugly or grotesque creature particularly if it lives on buildings or rocks." which might allow me to experiment with cuter, more cartoon-like designs too. Perhaps I could then juxtapose that with something scary and more traditionally gargoyle-like such as this:

http://www.odditycentral.com/tag/creepy