Dear Insane Children, 

We have the First Draft sample layout of the Asylum Art Calendar from Alex. It’s looking good!  

A couple of questions for YOU to answer in Crowd Design: 

1. Do you want us to include highlights on dates related to holidays, etc? This is a bit of a problem question for us since not all of our Insane Children share the same holidays. It’s true that the majority (70%) of our Insane Children are in the USA but we don’t want to force “Freedom Ain’t Free Day” on everyone else, so…

1(a)… an idea I had just now… maybe we include highlights on dates that are important to our Alice? Birthday, The Fire, Asylum Day, 1st Game Start, 2nd Game Start, and some other important dates from the Case Book? 

2. What do you think about Moon Phases being included? This is pretty universal and it links to our passion for alchemy. So I think this one is interesting and relevant. What do you think? 

3. Your reactions and suggestions for improvements to the general layout and other information currently contained on the page? 

4. In case you need a Little Light in your day today, here’s a picture of Lucky Nom-Noming some dumplings Yan made for him. Nom nom. Yum. 

Hope everyone is having a wonderful Friday (or weekend depending on where you are). 

Love from Shanghai, 

-American (and Yan, Lucky, Lulu)

Dear Insane Children, 

We hosted a livestream over on my Twitch Channel yesterday… which, after a bit of a bumpy start, turned out to be quite a lot of fun. We covered a ton of topics including updates on Alice: Asylum (Design Bible stuff, Live Action Pitch stuff, and Spoiler/Narrative stuff); talked about design and narrative goals for a new Oz story; looked at some updates on Plushie Dreadfuls; and gave away some rare Vorpal Umbrellas. Oh, and I continue to suck at playing my own games. Woo. 

If you missed it live you can still watch the recording over on my YouTube Channel via THIS LINK. 

Among the things we revealed and discussed was everyone’s favorite new animal companion (sorry, Cheshire Cat, get out of the way)… 

If social media excitement was money, we could fund Alice: Asylum on this design alone! People over on my Instagram were going NUTS about this Toto design!

And it helped push my thinking about another narrative variation in a different direction… so, hang on a bit while I work through that with Alex. We’ll be back with a world and narrative where creatures like this make sense. 

Meanwhile… I think we need to make a Plushie Dreadful of this design. What do you think? 

Speaking of… 

Plushie Dreadfuls

We received some prototype photos from the workshop last night. First, I want to point out that they are really improving the quality of their Potato Prototype Photos. There was something charming about how terrible these pictures used to be… But I’m not going to complain too much about the new presentation style. 

These pictures of the Wearwolf Pig (Hammibal Lector?) had me literally laughing out loud in bed last night. And I said to Yan that if we keep up with these kinds of designs, we could really build the brand into something people recognize and crave. And how fun would that be for Lucky? A kid with his own toy brand! 

Let us know in the comments below what you think of the Wearwolf Pig. Anything you’d like to see improved or made different? We still have a round of feedback to do with the workshop. For my part, I want to see the eyes of the Wolf made into X shapes – to indicate that he’s dead. A bit more dark humor in that! 

We also expect to receive a prototype of the Bearfisted Bear in the next few days. Rawr! Can’t wait!

All of these Plushie Dreadfuls will be added to the Mysterious Shop soon. We expect the Angry Rabbit and Love Rabbit will arrive first – sometime mid-September. Then we should see the Wearwolf Pig, Pandapede, and Bearfisted Bear arriving every few weeks after that. 

Crowd Design Time! 

I do have a question for the Insane Children to ponder as a Crowd Design challenge… 

What sort of things would you add to the Plushie Dreadful packages to make them collector items, more interesting, more entertaining, and/or more unique? 

Right now, we plan on shipping A Plush + A Bag… 

But should we include something else? 

One idea I had… create custom coins (like the Chaos Coin or Pirate Jam Coins) and make a unique Coin for each Plushie Dreadful design. One side could be the Plushie Dreadful logo. The other side could be a design based on that particular Plushie (Angry Rabbit, Love Rabbit, etc). 

What do you think of that idea? Does it add value? 

What other ideas can you suggest? I’d love to hear your creative feedback in the comments below. 

One more question: Do you think we should add a brand tag/label to these Plushies? Right now, they are “clean” – meaning there’s no tags or labels attached to them. I prefer my toys like that but I don’t know what collectors or typical consumers think about this. Does a tag add value? 

We’d love to hear your feedback on all of this! 

From Shanghai with 99% Humidity,

-American 

Dear Insane Children, 

Every morning this week, I sit down meaning to write a Patreon post and end up getting sucked into a billion tasks … the next thing you know, it’s dinner time and the day is finished. But I always figure it’s a good sign when the days fly by like that – means you’re staying busy in a healthy way. And, boy are we staying busy these days! 

Ok, where to start? 

Double Prints

Font Lord tells me to remind you that this is the final week to adjust your pledge to take advantage of the current Double Print Offer. Need more info on the Double Print Offer? He says, “Click THIS LINK to find out more.” Basically, this month’s print is “Escher Alice” and you’ll get another (random) print thrown in the tube for free but you’ve got to be at the $75 Tier. 

Live Stream

We’ll have a live stream over on Twitch this week. Usual time… 

That’s 7PM on Wednesday for those of you on the West Coast of the USA (and not on fire, under a car, breathing tear gas, without electricity, etc). 

We have a ton of stuff to cover. Make sure you get your questions and feedback into the comments below. We’ll do our best to go through that stuff. 

I know I still owe feedback on that Plot Twist idea and on our Oz Story stuff. I know! Working on it!

Dorothy Not Dorothy

Look, I am going to call her “Dorothy” because it’s a convenient shorthand. But she’s not “the” Dorothy from the books. 

I say this partly because I received more than a few (private) comments from people who said they aren’t fans of changing the skin color of original characters (be it from black to white or white to black or whatever). Which… I don’t really care one way or another except when it looks like pandering for Political Correctness Points. Recent example: I saw the new trailer for The Batman, and I couldn’t be happier they selected Jeffrey Wright to play Commissioner Gordon. The guy is an absolutely brilliant actor – and I doubt the selection was made as a trojan horse to inject racial messaging into the narrative. 

This “Dorothy” is a character who inhabits a story taking place hundreds of years in the future from the world in which we met Dorothy Gale (of the books). 

As for “why” this new Dorothy looks the way she does… that’s something Omri will have to explain. He says of this revised Dorothy: 

the earlier Dorothy was of MIXED RACE. i thought about it

and if i was Emerald corp i’d might want to create a beautiful black woman dorothy just because it’s more “American girl” type. with no relation of racism what so ever. more of a marketable concept.

i did 2 outfits. If dorothy is a performer she actually might wear something like the green dress, very pretty, a bit too much then something that’s like on the right, more modern and with some resemblance of farmer clothes in the depression of 1900. both can work but if we are going towards something more Corporate we need to think what THEY want to market in their own world. she’s not a person, she’s a product.

whatever direction we will decide on dorothy i feel making her a dark skinned beauty is correct to the character.

So there you have it. 

Now… I have been thinking of themes and maybe there’s a way skin color plays into the narrative. Maybe not. I’m thinking more about “magic and technology” than social issues right now… I’m guessing that by the time of our story (or in the universe in which its set) the questions will be less about skin color and more about the implications of allowing technology to become like magic… and who/what is in control of that magic. Dunno… still brainstorming. 

Meanwhile In Wonderland

We’re working through The Chess Realm (Depression), continuing our efforts on an Animated Alice (2D sketches), and we’re putting finishing touches on an updated Live-Action Series Pitch Document. 

Omri says he wanted to finalize these character designs. So there you have some nice (finished) Chess Piece characters. Lovely. 

Lots of new action sketches from Norm – featuring Alice jumping, swinging, hopping, climbing, and otherwise action-ing her way around Wonderland. 

Note that there is an ATTACHMENT to this Patreon Post. Contained there you’ll find the latest variation on our TV Pitch Document for “Alice: Asylum.” We’re putting this together ahead of the September film/tv pitch season in Hollywood. And it will be handed over to the group that own/control the Alice Film/TV Rights (Priority Pictures). The hope is that they will secure a deal with someone like Netflix, HBO, Hulu, Amazon, etc. 

Let’s please not get into “Oh, god I hate Netflix, please don’t work with them!” right now… As they say, “Beggars can’t be choosers.” If we even manage to get this project set up with one of these companies… we’ll worry about whether we like that company or not… later. 

One of the main reasons for pushing this pitch is that if it does get picked up, that will inspire the money/publishing people to get a Game Deal done that much faster. So maybe the TV stuff isn’t 100% what we want… but if it means we get our game deal in place – and we control the game production – then we maybe can live with that?

So… feel free to provide feedback on the content of the pitch. If you were a TV Exec reading this for the first time – and hearing of Alice for the first time – would it capture your imagination? 

Things are progressing on the production of our new Plushie Dreadfuls. And many of you asked for a Patreon Special Offer on the Angry Rabbit… so we’ll figure that out next month. 

An Art Print Calendar is also still being made. More news on that soon. 

Oh, and Lucky got a gig as a diaper model for a Japanese diaper brand. So Kawaii! 

Only one week until Lucky’s 1st Birthday. Wee!

For those keeping track, he’s up and walking (and running) around on his own now. And he’s got a solid vocabulary of ma, ba, da, thtptpptptpt, and other noises. Plus, he’s got more than a few signs he’s using pretty effectively (more, milk, eat, and ‘get bent’). Smart kid. 

That’s it for now. We’ll catch up more on the Live Stream tomorrow. Hope to see you there!

From Shanghai in Another Typhoon, 

-American

Hi everyone

Font Lord here with a little FAQ type post for you all based on some questions you had in the previous post about the upcoming super awesome bunny+print promotion month.

So, without further ado, here we go…

1) You need to be at the $75 tier BEFORE October 1st, otherwise you’ll miss out on the promotion.  So please change your pledge during September to get that deal if you need to.

2) No, there will be no way to choose the angry or love bunny.
Simply giving everyone at that tier the same bunny cuts down on a lot of behind the scenes management.
Like having to set up extra projects on Backerkit or Survey Monkey and then doing extra data collection on those places and then you have the potential that people won’t get their surveys due to spam filters and people might hold off on filling in their surveys for months so we need to keep track of those guys.  
It just adds much much more randomness and chaos to the situation we’d rather avoid.

3) The same goes for mixing and matching different prints and multiple bunnies.
There’s going to be no way to alter these things.
The promotion is 1xAngry Bunny+Bag and 1xWatcher print. Full stop!

4) Although offering a random bunny would be less troublesome than point 2 and 3, we still think that people would prefer to know what’s coming rather than wait a few weeks for delivery and then not get the thing they’d hoped for   🙁

5) If that is going to be your first ever month at the $75 level, then yes, you will still also get the Chaos necklace as well as the print and bunny.
Such deal, very bargain. Wow!

So there we go.
I think that’s covered everything from the previous post’s comments   🙂

– Cheers

Dear Insane Children, 

As I’ve outlined previously… we have a dedicated Business Development person on the team now. He’s tasked with helping us take the Alice: Asylum pitch to a variety of investors and publishers. He’s asked that we also provide one or two more pitches for the discussions as this helps to increase the chances that something gets funded. It gives our team and studio a bit of depth. So we’re working on a couple of small pitch documents – starting with a few ideas based on The Wizard of Oz (book series by Baum). 

Here’s an Oz pitch outline drafted by Alex based on a couple of brainstorming sessions. This is our “Jurassic Park meets Westworld meets Oz” variation. We’re working on a “Lost” variation as well. 

Have a read and let us know your thoughts in the comments below. 

OzLand Lost
Working Title • Elevator Pitch / Synopsis

V2 – 20.08.20
Written by American McGee and Alex Crowley

Core Plot:
Machine vs. Magic / With Man in the Middle. We can do this. But should you?

Events:
• In future, people can experience life either in person, or as VR avatars.
• Oz is found, then bought / owned by a global megacorp.
• Through a series of events, Oz is marketed and launched as a theme park.

• Magic of Oz, controlled through the machines of global megacorp.

• Magic cannot be controlled, causes destruction and death in theme park.

• Player is initiated by global megacorp to investigate the cause of destruction, but is reluctant due to past experience with Oz, or knowing the danger of what is involved.
• Girl who used to work at park > Forgets > But you have to help us! > Reluctant savior

• Player arrives in Oz, veil is quickly lifted, accompanying team is killed, mystery needs to be resolved. This is the hero’s journey.

• Who, what, where, why,  when.

Who:
D0rothy (player?)
Global Megacorp (Emerald)
Emerald Employees (Who?)
Oz Characters / Wizard? – (Head of Emerald)
Tin Man? Lion? Scarecrow?
Patrons of Park?
ToTo? 

What:
Blood drenched mystery ruckus in the magical Theme Park of Oz, OzLand, owned and operated by evil global megacorp, Emerald.

Where: (locations?)

Hidden Island “OzLand”, Themepark, Earth, Emerald HQ Complex / Beyond?

Why: Player will discover the cause of destruction, and prevent / cause more of it.

When: Future Based – Sci Fi / Tech mixed with Arcane Magic of Oz.

Alex’s second attempt at knitting pieces together.
Less chaff. Feeling like a better fit now.

BACKGROUND:
Our World & The Land of Oz:

The story begins in the future, our Earth.

Social media and human interaction has progressed (devolved) to the point where the norm is for people to pilot humanoid robots / androids, like a VR experience, rather than visit places in person.

Human to human interaction still occurs, but it is of high society to protect oneself and live your best life within an android avatar.

Earth is blessed with advanced technology. On the surface, it is prosperous and autonomous, thanks largely to the monopolous influence of “Emerald”.

Emerald is a global conglomerate that controls health services, infrastructure, military technology, entertainment, social security, law enforcement, tourism and living arrangements. Basically your life.

In Emerald Corp we trust.

The magical Land of Oz is in our world, but cannot be reached with ordinary means.

The magical gateway to Oz is located off the Southern West Coast of the Americas, close to the equator.

It can only be accessed via a magical gateway, opened by freak tornadoes / hurricanes.

The Oz “rumour” is investigated by a team of scientists / researchers working for Emerald.

The gateway is opened by an artificial tornado, manipulated and controlled by Emerald technology. A mysterious Emerald scouting team passes through the Gateway to Oz.

The team explores the world of Oz, finding only ruins.
A beautiful mysterious graveyard, a world lost and destroyed by an unknown catalyst.

Returning after a triumphant expedition, Emerald announces to the world it’s groundbreaking discovery. A lost world of magic, wonder and a fresh new place to explore for the world.

Claiming the land of Oz as Emerald property, (trademarked and secured) the company announces opening Oz to the world!

Witness the glory and beauty of a lost civilisation. See it from the safety of your own Android. Come and explore the wonderful world of Oz. A never before seen NEW location on Earth.

For a price.

OzLand Open for Business:

The OzLand theme park is hastily constructed to maximize on the “buzz” generated by the discovery.  Emerald constructs a sprawling theme park overlay, strewn amongst the ruins and existing structures of Oz.

It is a beautiful harmony of cutting edge technology and immaculately crafted customer experiences, all dotted amongst the infinite Oz oddities, dormant and lost to time.

The Emerald owned and operated theme park, restaurants and accommodation facilities are monolithic in size. They are gleaming towers of pristine construction, littering the horizon. The park is tied into the lore we automatically associate with Oz.
(Yellow brick roads, witches, colourful cities, magic, adventure).

A fun, elaborate, well crafted park, suited for all ages, there’s something for everyone!

The park is built over and carved into the ruins. Modern technology and architecture bleeds in and out of ancient and organic citadels, castles and mysterious structures.

The park itself is populated of a mix of real-life performers and android / piloted patrons, all carefully curated and scripted to enhance a customer’s experience in the Land of Oz.

Photo opportunities cost extra.

As the park opens to thunderous applause and a rampage of customers, something else stirs from below the carefully constructed Oz Theme Park facade. Something secret, something sinister.

OzLand Truth:

Emerald has always known there is more to Oz than meets the eye.

Their initial scouting team consisted of representatives from Military, Health and Infrastructure. Why the haste to capitalize on the Oz discovery?

The faint signals of unknown energy sources were also discovered.
Magic. A new and possibly limitless energy supply.

Content to pass on the tourism duties, theme park operation and monetary generation to Emerald’s relevant division, the construction of the theme park also houses gigantic, underground secret Military spec research divisions.

These hidden laboratories and expedition crews have been created with the sole intent of unlocking and exploiting the secrets of the newly discovered Oz magic.

Emerald’s tourism and lifestyle division is an unknowing front.

They are purposely occupied with generating money and allowing the public to explore the selected areas of Oz on the surface. They assume all is safe. They are wrong.

Patrons and most Emerald Theme Park Employees are oblivious to Emerald’s underground research efforts.

The secretive research attempts to manipulate, and control the dangerous magic of Oz, culminate in radical experiments, designed to control the Oz magic.

While small successes and advances are made, the core of Oz magic remains a mystery. Emerald fails time and time again, until one day, calamity.

A mysterious large scale explosion destroys the research centres, and decimates Oz, the Theme Park and a large portion of the Emerald research facilities.

Unstable magic rips across the land. Androids, human lives and Oz inhabitants are killed, or changed by the magic in droves.

Affected inhabitants exhibit changes in three distinct ways:

1. Unstable Psychosis / Telekinesis (Brains).
2. Untamed Bloodlust, Ferocity (Courage).

3. Insatiable Desire to consume specific flesh of humans and wildlife, namely (hearts).

Or a dangerous mix of the above.

The smouldering island remains, wrought with ruin, broken cities and death.
Oz Magic is out of control, and Emerald needs to clean up this mess before the whole world is made aware of it.

Stock prices could drop.

Enter <The Player> Dorothy 2.0?:

Dorothy  (player) appears to be a blank slate.

Re-awakened, deep within the Emerald research facility, Dorothy is coerced to investigate the park, and sort this mess out. Her memory wiped, she is unsure of who she is, or what she is? Only that she must help Emerald.

Is she a hosted Android shell, piloted by the brain in a jar of the real “Dorothy”?
Is she someone who has prior experience with the park? An employee, a part of the park, stored away and protected for a mysterious reason.
Is she a defective Android shell from the Theme Park?
De-commissioned and awakened by the Oz Magic now surging through the park?

Or, is she someone with prior experience of being in the park, (a researcher, or tied closely to Emerald) and with her knowledge is coerced into getting to the bottom of it all. Despite her reluctance, through a series of events, D0rothy is deep in the thick of this mess.

She does not want to return. She does not want to be in Oz.
But does so, against her will to investigate on behalf of Emerald.

Once active in OzLand, her accompanying team is swiftly killed off, leaving her to unravel the mysteries of Oz on her own.

What is her connection to this world? Is she the catalyst? Is she the reason?
Is she subconsciously piloted by the original Dorothy? What caused all this bloodshed? Who’s to blame?

This is her journey.
Dorothy is no longer in Kansas anymore.

She is in hell.

—-

That’s it for the online of that variation of the story. 

A few things to keep in mind: 

Of all the pitch meetings I’ve been in where we’ve sold an idea “on spec” there’s always the assumption that what’s pitched is probably only slightly similar to the thing that ultimately gets made. In other words, this is a first draft. It’ll give people a sense of the team’s style and creativity but it’s not a set-in-stone template for the game or story we’ll ultimately end up delivering. So… we don’t need to tear this apart too much. The main thing is that we have a decent foundation, a beginning-middle-end, and some great artwork. 

Omri provided the rough sketch (main image, above) attached here. We’ll include some location, character, and “hero” images in the pitch document. 

There’s room for a few little tweaks if you happen to throw out some interesting ideas in the Crowd Design. 

Next up, we’ll look at the “Lost” variation of the story. 

From Shanghai with Toto (Lulu), 

-American

Dear Insane Children, 

Another busy week full of progress on many fronts. These non-livestream weeks are nice for me because it’s a chance to keep my head down and focus on everything we have going on. It’s easier to talk through all this stuff on a livestream though… so I’ll post a bit of stuff here … and then we can go through all the comments when we’re live next week. 

First… lots of progress on Plushie Dreadfuls. And we should have the Angry (above) and Love Plush Bunnies ready to ship mid-September. They’ll come with tote bags an be available for sale at Mysterious BUT… 

Lots of people on Instagram and Twitter asking me if these can be Patreon Rewards. And I talked to Font Lord and we came up with this idea… let me know what you think: 

Everyone at $75 in September (charged on/around October 5th) will get 1x Angry Rabbit Set (rabbit + tote bag) AND the Art Print for that month… “The Watcher”

So let me know in the comments below what you think of an Angry Rabbit + Art Print combo. 

And keep in mind that if you aren’t interested in the combo you can still purchase the Angry Rabbit (and all the other Plushie Dreadfuls) at Mysterious when they are offered for regular sale. 

Lots of progress continues to be made on the Chess Realm by Joey, Dario (images above), and the rest of the team. Let them know in the comments below what you think of these illustrations and sketches!

We’ll talk more about narrative and mission/adventure for this realm in the next stream. 

And your feedback (and feedback from our team internally) has been collected and is being sent to Roman for adjustments on the Alice 3D Model. I’m hoping we’ll see some updates to that soon and will share them with you when they arrive. 

Same goes for the 3D Environment being put together by Tao. And good timing – as that environment is inspired by “The Watcher” illustration. 

And I wanted everyone to know that I am working on a proper response to the story discussion regarding the opening for Asylum… and all the thoughts you’ve shared. Lots of ideas floating around in my head… so give me a bit more time to put together all your feedback and turn it into the next revision on that topic. 

Plus I am working with Alex on the story for “Lost Ozland” or “Ozland Lost” (working titles) or whatever we’re going to end up calling this thing. We had a very fruitful conversation this morning – and hit upon a lot of themes that work neatly within the context of “theme park built atop the ruins of Oz where magic and technology meet and cause problems for mankind.” 

Grrrr. Rabbits. 

So much creativity flowing these days! We’ll have LOTS to talk about on the next Live Stream. Woo. 

I hope that wherever you are, you’re staying cool and calm. 

As always, much love and appreciation for your support and trust. You’re making the magic possible.

From The Shanghai Oven, 

-American