Dear Insane Children,
It’s been a long, cold week heading into the start of February. Here in Shanghai we’re seeing the first signs of the coming Chinese New Year holiday season: Internet slowdowns, factory closings, and people abandoning the big cities for their distant hometowns. This time of year brings the single largest annual human migration on earth – where 2.9 billion people make journeys for the holiday over a period of 2~3 weeks.
What’s all this mean for us and progress on our various projects? Well, if you order anything from Mysterious in the month of February you can expect fulfillment and delivery delays of 1~3 weeks (depending on item). We’ll also see art output from our China-based artists (Joey and Sonny) slowing while they spend time with their families. And I’ll be out sailing for a few weeks this month – but will continue to post updates and vlogs here and over on YouTube, Facebook, and Instagram.
We’re not doing a live stream this week – and might not do another until March 2nd – but I will record and upload videos (at least once per week) in which I share new art, answer your questions/comments, and take you along on a sailing adventure where I head to the northernmost border of Thailand – eventually arriving at Ko Phayam near Burma.
Martin is staying in Shanghai and taking care of Lulu. Thank you, Uncle Martin!
(Don’t ask how Lulu got a pancake on her face. We live in a strange home).
Two new images from Joey this morning. Color version of the sketches she previously shared. I’m really loving these pieces and anxious to see more environment pieces like this done. Sending out instructions to her this morning for next steps.
Alex continues his work on layout and design for Out of the Woods. Once he’s finished with that (next week?) he’ll start on layout and design for the Asylum license presentation (and the inmate certificates – more on that below). Bringing Alex onto the Asylum project full-time means we’ll see more focus on production design, UI, icons, and other graphic-arty type elements to the project and presentation. Exciting stuff!
Here’s an almost-final instruction sheet from the OOTW card game…
Avast mateys!
This week has been especially busy with planning and prep for Pirate Jam 2018. Who knew it would take so much effort to organize transportation, legal docs, and finances for 30 developers, 6 boats, 12 crew, and 6 shore-side event locations? On the bright side… everything is coming together really nicely – our sponsors are great, attendees look fantastic, and all the event stuff is lining up nicely. We’re even doing event recruiting in China!
—
In terms of Patreon housekeeping items… now that we’ve made it to month’s end I’ll start work with Alex and Martin on prep for the Inmate Certificates.
A GIANT THANK YOU to everyone who helped us reach our goal. Looks like there were 621 Patrons at the end of January and 583 of those which have successfully processed payments.
If your pledge isn’t going through for some reason you’ll want to resolve that issue ASAP so you get processed and can receive a certificate. For the 11 of you at the $1 level we’ll send out a request for mailing address via Survey Monkey – keep an eye out for that.
We are looking at next goals – bringing on another illustrator and improving our live-stream setup. Expect details on those items in the coming weeks.
OH! One last thing… Ella Purnell as Alice!
Another fantastic photo manipulation from Omri. There are three other fan-requested actresses in the illustration pipeline. I’ll share those as soon as they come through.
Questions? Comments? Feedback? Excited for The Year of the Dog!?
Woof!
Share your thoughts in the comments below. I’ll go through everything in the next video update and try to have that uploaded by end of next week.
Now… I have a ton of packing and prep to do! Thailand here we come!
From Shanghai with Love,
-American