Dear Insane Children, 

Do you ever feel like everything is upside down and turned around? Like up is down and nothing makes sense anymore? As Cheshire said, 

 Puurrfect. When you’re not on edge, you’re taking up too much space. 

Because the thing about life is that it’s neither safe nor certain. And when we try too hard to organize and control things we only create suffering for ourselves and others. 

So embrace a little Chaos. And climb that mountain… even if you’ve got to get down to go up. Or sideways with some serious twisting!

The latest illustration from Omri renders these notions in a riot of madness and rich details. Wonderful!

I think we might call this print “Escher Alice” … what do you think? 

Live Stream This Week

As many of you are aware, we’re running a joint Art Contest with the team at Mantacore. And this week’s live stream will be a special joint-stream where we’re joined by Jordan Maynard from Mantacore. He’ll walk us through the design/creation process in Core. And we’ll review some of the Asylum entries sent in from the public. We’ll also talk about Alice, Asylum, and my thoughts on game development and design. 

It’s around our usual time – 6PM PDT on Wednesday, May 13th (9AM on Thursday her in Shanghai). 

This will happen via the CoreLive channel on Twitch. You can follow that page on Twitch via THIS LINK. 

We do hope all the Insane Children will join us for the fun! 

Asylum Snow Globe

Now that things in China are relatively normal – meaning we can travel by train to nearby provinces without too much drama – Yan and I are planning a trip to YiWu next week. There we’ll check out factory options for a custom-made Asylum Snow Globe.

I will probably make a travel vlog about that trip so that you can see where we go, what kinds of snow globes are on offer, etc. Is that something everyone would be interested in? 

Tea Sets – on a related note, I know several Insane Children have been lobbying for an Alice Tea Set. We’ll keep our eyes open for something… but I want to warn that a tea set will very likely break several of the rules we have with regards to the stuff we make and ship. The first issue will be weight – anything over 1kg is really expensive to ship these days. And the second issue will be fragility – which is kinda related to weight… to pack a tea set (and all that implies) in such a way as to avoid damage would mean LOTS of extra packing and padding. Anyway… like I said, we’ll keep an eye out. 

Stuff For This Week

I am still trying to get caught up on packing and sending things. Only 50 orders left in the system now. Omri and Dario are starting work on The Moon (character and level design), so expect to see some interesting renders of that soon. And the rest of the team continues to work on characters, weapons, and locations. More art coming soon!

From Shanghai with Chaos,

-American

Dear Insane Children

Font Lord here with the moment you’ve all been waiting for, yes, its this month’s Lucky 5 !
Whooo Hooo !!
This month, we’ll be giving away the Enamel Pin set to 5 lucky people, chosen from our Patrons and those who commented the correct thing on our latest YouTube video.
(Yes, we have to open it up to other places too in order to meet all relevant rules and regulations)

So, here we go.
MAY THE GODS OF RNG SMILE UPON THEE !!
The winners are…

• William Bryant
• Adrian B. Koltun II
• Anissa Ivone Frisoni
• Skye Aguirre
• Semi Kouki

Congrats to all, and look forwards to your pins coming in the not too distant future.

And hey look… a wild Lulu appears!!

Dear Insane Children, 

It kinda snuck up on me and Font Lord so we forgot to mention it but May 1-5 in China was a National Holiday. It’s the celebration of Labor Day… though I believe the Chinese holiday is out of sync with what’s known as “Labor Day” in other countries around the world (or “Labour Day” if you’re into Brit-speak). The origin of the holiday is the same – I think? In any case, the point is… 

We just had a 5-day national holiday during which I did take a few (much needed) days off to spend time with Yan and Lucky. Yay! May Day! 

So that’s “May Day” #1 explained. “May Day” #2 (in the title above) is me calling for HELP from under this pile of neverending things that need to be shipped out. Ahhh! May Day! 

Seriously, I appreciate all the support you send our way in the form of orders and add-ons. So don’t take what comes next as a real complaint (or as a request to reduce your support). But Boy Oh Boy there’s been a LOT of things to pick, sign, pack, label, and ship out of our studio in Shanghai. 

The image posted above shows the interface I stare at while handling our fulfillment duties. This is what drives workflow for items shipped directly from my hands – basically anything I need to sign or things that we only produce/ship in limited quantities. Fortunately, when it comes to things like the Enamel Pins (which number in the thousands) we use a fulfillment center where all the pick-pack-send work is done for us. 

That’s all a long way of explaining why there’ve been no updates since last week. May Day + May Day = no fingers available to write an update! 

The good news is that I am almost finished with all the orders that can be handled these days. Yay! And…

Our Artists are Still Arting

Lots of work getting done on a variety of characters, locations, items, and more… 

Jen’s been turning mushrooms into weapons. 

Let us know what you think of these designs in the comments below!

Joey’s turned in a FINAL version of “Snail Posters” – but there’s one last step… we need a name for this illustration! Ideas? Crowd Design Time!

Brainstorming here… Is she cuddling that snail? Or using it as part of a spell? Is it an ingredient? Or a muse? From those questions I get the following name ideas: 

Creepy Cuddles? Patient Love? The Patient Patients? Cochlea Cuddles? Escargot Cargo?

Helix Hex? Helicaidae Homicide? Murderous Molluscs… 

Ok, I’ll leave the punning and nonsense to the Insane Children. Let me know in the comments below what you come up with. 

One last question… do we want this print offered WITH or WITHOUT the Asylum logo? 

For me… if I am going to hang this in my house – and I am – then I think I’d prefer it without?

Again, let us know in the comments below!

And work continues on mapping out Alice’s movements and animations. More of that coming soon!

No Live Stream Today

We will NOT have a live stream today. I’ve simply not had time to set up anything. And I think we’re mainly on an every-other-week schedule again? 

We WILL have a live stream next week and will go through all the latest design, art, and project updates at that time. 

CORE – “Through the Looking Glass” – Art/Design Contest

Last but not least… we’ve partnered with “CORE” to present a level/art design contest based on locations and illustrations from Alice: Asylum pre-production. 

Check out all the details via THIS LINK. 

The basic idea is that you create game level content inspired by Alice: Asylum concept artwork. “CORE” is a game development engine geared towards non-technical designers. Their goal is to bring game/level design to the masses. And with this contest, they hope to inspire more people to try out their tech. 

My hope in partnering with them is that we will end up with 3D level content in which we can run around. This can be used to illustrate what sections of the Asylum game might look like. Could be a useful sales tool? And the contest could raise awareness of our efforts? So… let’s see! 

Ok, I have to get back to packing. Really want to knock out these final orders today. 

From Shanghai with A Lot’o Escargot,

-American

Dear Insane Children

Font Lord here with an apology.

It has come to my attention that Backerkit has repeatedly been sending reminder emails out about the Enamel Pins.

I actually planned ahead and asked them specifically head off this problem by deactivating the ‘reminder email’ system a few weeks ago.
After all, I didn’t want to keep poking the people who didn’t want the pins.

But it seems that for some reason (technical or otherwise) this deactivation didn’t happen and mails have been sent out several times.

Sorry about that, it was not our intention to annoy you with emails    🙁
I have now contacted Backerkit and told them to sort their nonsense out.
Hopefully they can do this soon even though there’s the Labor Day holidays now.

Please accept this Lulu as an apology.