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