General direction...so far...

As mentioned a few days ago my research thus far has lead me towards Robert-Houdin, a clock maker turned magician turned illusionist that had an interest in automata which lead him to preform his famous illusions through the use of his hand crafted automatons.

I'm going to try and explain my logic here for a second (mostly because I need to write it down somewhere other than my sketchbook for a change...I apologize if this doesn't make complete sense in the end...it will by Friday!).

Basically while looking at the world of automatons I stumbled across Houdini's name, among many others, as a builder of automata. Something seemed strange however because when I searched for his name to gather further information another name kept popping up...it turns out that Houdini wasn't always his real name *gasp*! Basically the famous magician that we all know and love actually changed his name to Houdini after being inspired (obsessed?) with his predecessor Robert-Houdin. From this I was lead on another tangent.

Robert-Houdin ---INCREDIBLE! A man of many talents, what I find most fascinating about him is his ability to combine automata, illusion, magic and simply pleasure & enjoyment - from this I am hoping to gather my precedence. Maybe a little vague right now but hopefully the more information I gather the clearer it will become. Unfortunately all of his writings are out of print which is making my life difficult but I have managed to find quite a bit of online info so my search will continue.

So the monster...hmmm...this is the tough part...as of right now the plan is to create something that satisfies human pleasure through enjoyment, fulfills the inner child through play (related to magic), appears as something which it isn't - therefore an illusion(mimicking real life as a machine), and is an automaton - which was the beginning of my research process - this will hopefully bring me full circle!

...so that's where I am at! Hopefully not too confusing :)