Dear Insane Children,
Our team of 7 artists continues to crank through a pile of tasks related to defining all the major scenes, characters, and elements that define the journey Alice takes through Alice: Asylum. If you’ve watched the live streams, you’ve seen me scrolling through all the tasks and discussions contained inside the management software we use (called Monday). As I go scrolling through Monday this morning (on a Sunday) I’m finding a ton of great updates…
Let’s start with the Rutledge Asylum concept image from Joey (main image above). Of this Joey says:
There are high bars around the asylum for sure, this image is inside the bars, where the building and the trees can be seen clearly.
And I replied with a bit of feedback:
I don’t know if we need to deal with this next comment right now… but do we know where Rutledge Asylum is located? I kinda thought it was actually in the city of London… in which case, it would not look like this sort of “out in the country” massive building.
This image can still be marked as finished and we can use this for now… but we might need to revisit this later depending on the answer to the question above.
Let me know in the comments below your thoughts on the location of Rutledge Asylum. Does this new image do the old story justice? Are we retconning the location? Or does this image need to be updated so it’s more in line with what was previously established?
Next up, Adam shares some concept sketches for The Lullaby Machine. This is the device used by The Moon to put Alice (and others) to sleep…
These designs were inspired by a description I wrote:
The Dream Machine should feature some sort of “mining” or “milking” section where we see Cute Little Creatures (chicks – cheeping; kittens – purring) behind vacuum chamber glass, creating some aspect of the sound that the device makes. It needs to be a giant Rube Goldberg type contraption where there’s a clear formula for “sugar and spice and everything nice” being funneled into a speaker and directed towards a target (Alice).
And of Adam’s concepts he wrote:
Here are my sketches for the Lullaby Machine, the last, biggest one is the most recent evolution with the everything-nice-containers located around the machine, which Alice might need to break open in order to defeat the machine. Another weak-point would be it’s glowing eye with an iris in the shape of the moon, I’ve also given it eye-lids so maybe most of the time it’s closed and it only “wakes up” after a cage has been broken?
What do you think of the Lullaby Machine?
Omri also shares a final render on the Scene in London where we see Alice handing her Rabbit Plush to a street urchin girl…
This is a critical scene in the narrative that we’ll see at a point around 65% through the narrative – at or near the start of the 3rd act of the story. Still think we might find a way to weave this scene together with the Londerland variation…
Though in terms of the way this fits into the narrative flow… I’ve not yet figured it out yet. Still thinking…
Omri also did a quick update on the Pieces of The Champion… to have the Eye parts look more like what we know the Jabberwock Eyes to look like in the first two games (which we see clearly when looking at the Jabberwock Eye Staff).
And Omri finalized the look and feel of the area we run through in The Circus…
And some quick sketches of the fight sequence we’ll engage with as we play through this area…
Adam also turned in some more final sketches from The Courthouse…
In other words… There is a LOT of Collective Insanity going on inside The Asylum these days.
And as many of you are aware, I am working through writing on several major deliverables… The Alice: Asylum overall narrative outline, The Oz: Adventures game synopsis (for REDACTED), and documents related to Oz: Adventures TV Series pitch (for REDACTED 2).
For those of you interested in Narrative and Story… I’ve been thinking about opening up the mid-section of the story outline for Alice: Asylum to Crowd Design. I’ve got the Beginning and End basically finished. And I know roughly what needs to go in the middle – but I think there’s room there for YOU to get involved with filling in the blanks on the places Alice goes and the characters she meets.
So… my hope is that in the coming week (23-27th of November), I’ll share the Alice: Asylum Story Outline (full of spoilers!) for everyone to read. And then invite the Insane Children to help fill in the details of the middle part of the adventure. I know there are a few of you who would really enjoy something like that, right?
A BIG THANK YOU to our Insane Children for making all of this work possible. You’re directly supporting a team of Seven Whole Artists – and giving them to time and space necessary to create all of this amazing content. Woo!
Hope everyone is having a Wonderful Weekend.
From Shanghai with Love,
-American