Weird Hope Engines - The Bonington Gallery

On the second to last toolkit session of this year, we took a trip to the Bonington gallery to look at their Weird Hope Engines exhibit. Me and Francis went to the exhibit a few weeks ago but didn't get a full look at everything as the Zine fair was on. It was really inspiring to see the different displays relating to TTRPGs, i especially enjoyed the slide projector with images from Gackling Moon  which left me feeling really inspired to draw things for my own project in a similar style. I think it was really interesting to see a more artistic approach to TTRPGs, stepping away from traditional D&D, I also saw some work from the creator of Mouth Brood, a zine I bought from the Zine fair a few months ago that explores a lot of body horror and biological themes. 

Photograph from the Bonington Gallery website

One of the tables in the exhibit was a table with a bunch of prompts on it which you roll to determine what your environment would be like, from there you could use the hex map grids on the table to construct your own map. I really loved this part of the exhibit and i spent a long time just sketching up my little world based on the prompts. I thought this was a really fun exercise to get into worldbuilding and I definitely would like to do this more sketchy map making more in my personal work.

My prompts were:
- deep jungle
- ramshackle housing built around ruins
- The people here must look for food



I really enjoyed this exhibit and came away feeling really inspired, I also had no idea we were allowed to go in the Bonington Gallery so I think I will visit much more next year. It was also cool to know there was an art store there, which I will certainly be visiting to buy more sketchbooks :).

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