Dear Insane Children, 

Wanted to say THANK YOU for all the support and kindness in your reactions to the “OZ: Adventures” announcement we shared yesterday. It’s great to be partnered with such a respected and successful film production company as Radar Pictures… but even greater to have such a creative and engaged group of Insane Children here on Patreon. 

I kinda think we might make history with this if Oz finds a home somewhere like Apple, Netflix, or HBO… the first-ever Crowd Design -> TV Series production in the world? 

You should all be very proud of yourselves! 

What of Wonderland? 

I’ve seen a few comments from people online that Asylum will now be lost and forgotten. And if that were true, it would be sad news. But… That’s NOT TRUE! 

Our team is still working hard (and exclusively) on Alice: Asylum. And if Oz does get picked up by someone for TV production, I and the team will play a “creative advisor” role in the show. There are writers, showrunners, producers, and lots of other Hollywood People who will be in charge of the day-to-day work of bringing that show to life so… don’t worry! 

Positive Influence

It’s also important to remember the success of an Oz project helps to raise awareness about our efforts on Alice: Asylum. And I can tell you that in the last couple of days we’ve already seen that dynamic at work! There’s a NEW team of people (REDACTED 2.1?!) now working on legal/rights/biz dev stuff related to the Alice IP. 

The effort from that team is directed at getting the IP back in our hands so that work can begin on a new game, a movie/TV series, and more. 

But Wait! There’s MORE!

And as you know (if you watched the live stream yesterday), we showed off a sneak peek of the Alice: Asylum Design Bible. 

Check out the Attachment to this post. That’s the Design Bible Sample. 

18 Pages of Beautiful Art, Story, and Design!!!

Created by our pre-production team and put together by Alex Crowley… 

This gives you a sneak peek of the complete Design Overview we’re putting together for Asylum. This PDF/Book will be used to “WOW!” potential publishers and investors into jumping in to support this project. We hope to give the suits over at EA an “eyegasm” so big they sign all the agreements and send all the checks in a fit of ecstasy and awe!

Download and enjoy!

And if you hear anyone say, “Asylum won’t happen now,” you shove that PDF so far in their eyeballs that they poop art and design for a week. Thanks. 

Expect many more updates on this topic throughout 2021 with a final document being delivered around the end of the year. 

See? No reason to cry, Alice fans…

And don’t forget to leave your feedback and suggestions about the DB in the comments below. Like everything else we do here, this is a Crowd Design effort. So make your voice heard! Even if we don’t directly respond to your comments here, we do take everything you’re saying into account when making design/art decisions. 

PS: I usually mark these sorts of high-value-content posts as Patrons Only but with this post, I’d like to get it out to the public while people are still talking about our team and projects. Hope you don’t mind. The goal here it to raise awareness and share the fruits of our labor to help the project. Woo!

From Shanghai with Excitement, 

-American 

Dear Insane Children, 

In case you missed the Live Stream earlier today, you can watch the recording over on Twitch or YouTube… Twitch Recording is here: https://www.twitch.tv/videos/927367450 

Here’s what we announced regarding “Oz: Adventures” and the reveal of “REDACTED 2” 

“Very happy to announce: “OZ: Adventures” has been picked up for development by Radar Pictures.

Radar’s founder, Ted Field, is a prolific producer of films and music with classics like “What Dreams May Come” “Bill & Teds Excellent Adventure” (film series) “Jumanji” (film series) “Pitch Black” (film series) “The Last Samurai” and many more to his credit.

This deal means we’ll be working to develop the “OZ: Adventures” concept for production as a TV series and video game. With luck, you’ll soon turn on one of your content providers (HBO? NetFlix? Amazon?) and find “OZ: Adventures” (Game and TV show) among your entertainment options.

I’ve written this version of Oz as a sort of Running Man vs. Witches, Quadlings, and Munchkins. Characters are involuntarily pulled into Oz from all over the world and all through time. Oz is a gauntlet where survival reveals the true character of those who endure it.

Lots more info about OZ: Adventures can be found over on my Patreon. That’s where along with our Insane Children (Patrons) we originally shaped the Oz narrative and prepared the materials that led to the deal with Radar. On Patreon, you can also follow along with development updates and get involved in the creative process. Join us!

BIG THANKS to the Mysterious creative team and our Insane Children!”

Woo! Fingers crossed we can make this thing fly. We might be the first Patreon-created project to find its way to a becoming major TV series. How cool would that be? 

Oh, and REDACTED (1) asked us to meet them face-to-face mid-March to talk about the Mysterious Studios / OZ game project. And I kinda think you don’t travel 1000s of miles just to tell someone “no” … so. Cross more fingers!

Asylum Too!

We also covered the development of the Alice: Asylum Design Bible during today’s stream. And we had none other than Alex Crowley join us (via ZOOM) to discuss the work he’s doing on bringing together all the elements we’ve created for Asylum into one glorious book where you can “play” through Asylum in print. 

The Design Bible sample will be posted here on Patreon. Probably (my) tomorrow morning. 

Check out the stream… and I’ll be back tomorrow with more updates. 

Oh, and wish me luck… tomorrow morning I am jumping on our first OZ call with a major studio. Am I nervous… no. But maybe a little insane? 

With Nerves from Shanghai,

-American 

Dear Insane Children, 

Tomorrow is a HUGE DAY with our first Livestream from the New Studio. 

And Alex Crowley will join the stream to talk about writing, planning, and managing on Alice: Asylum – with tons of new art and design to discuss. 

Plus, THE BIG ANNOUNCEMENT: 

Who is REDACTED 2?!?!?!? And what do they have planned for OZ: Adventures? 

For those not in the loop – Oz: Adventures is the game pitch we came up with for a Chinese Game Publisher… which was seen by a Hollywood Film/TV Production Company (Redacted 2)… which they then picked up to develop and produce as a TV Series.  

After this stream, they will be REDACTED 2 NO MORE! 

Time per usual. Consult the handy chart, above. 

As for place… We might be back on YouTube? We’ll see… but Twitch for sure: 

www.twitch.tv/americanmcgee 

And if you don’t Twitch you can try: 

www.youtube.com/americanmcgeeofficial 

Spread the Word!

From Shanghai with Deafness, 

-American

Dear Insane Children,

Font Lord here with a quick question for you about next month’s print.

The image above was selected in a previous poll as a popular choice.
However we have a modified contender to think about too…

What do you think about this big faced edit?

In your humble opinion, which moon image should we use for March’s print?

Please cast your vote in the poll below   🙂

– Cheers

Dear Insane Children, 

Joey’s delivered an excellent illustration depicting Alice engaged in a battle-for-life game of Croquet Forever. As described in the scene text for this game, it doesn’t really matter if you win or lose, live or die, because this game just goes on forever and ever. 

Forever and ever… kinda what it feels like with all the organizing and unpacking we’re doing here after the move. But we’re down to the last pile of boxes… and I built a temporary storage place for them so I could clear out the Live Stream Room for its next stream. 

Did someone say LIVE STREAM?!?!?! Why, YES! Now that I can actually see the walls of the new Live Stream Room, I will start the process of getting everything ready for our next Live Stream. Martin says he’s OK to make the perilous journey to the far edge of Shanghai on Thursday, February 25th. That’s Wednesday for those of you in the US. 

We’ll have tons of new art, design, and BD updates at that time. Be sure to mark your calendar! 

In the meantime, be sure to let us know in the comments what you think of Joey’s latest!

For my part… I was expecting something a little more… Dante’s Inferno as a setting. Maybe just a bit more “battlefield” in tone and setting. But maybe this more colorful setting can work? What do you think? 

Speaking of battlefields… 

Don’t recall if I previously shared any of the new variations on this scene in which Alice runs and fights her way to the Queen’s Castle through an ongoing battle between Card Guards and Chess Pieces. There are about 1000 different renderings and alterations on this image… but I think (?) this was the latest variation from Adam. Norm and Omri are also working on it… to bring more “fight” to the scene. 

All of these are illustrations of the Asylum narrative – the story guiding the art and design going into the Design Bible. 

And regarding the Design Bible… Alex recently gave me a sneak peek at the work he’s doing on that… and, WOW. It’s looking really amazing. Part graphic novel, part art book, and part design document… If it finishes like it’s started… I think even non-fans of the Alice universe will be engaged and entertained by it. We’ll be sharing that with the Insane Children soon (within a month or so). 

Exciting times! 

From Shanghai with a Live Stream Room to Set Up, 

-American

Dear Insane Children,

I’ve just finished a review and feedback session on all the art and design content that was delivered during “The Time of The Move” and… Wow! 

Of this illustration by Norm, Omri says… 

i think we ought to add some weapons and i’m thinking like babies holding weapons, perhaps crawling or on all fours. Like toddlers and perhaps pepper mills or something that fits the concept

To which I replied… 

AMAZING, @normanfelchle

@Omri a milk bottle, rattle (sonic weapon), a dirty diaper, a sonic weapon cry/scream (baby screaming mixed with pig screaming), toxic farts, … just a few of the things I could imagine as weapons for this little guy. On a more surreal side – might be fun to let him fly?

Let us know in the comments below what ideas you have about the sorts of Weapons and Actions this little monster might employ. 

Remember, this enemy is a companion-creature of The Duchess. And we’ll find them sprinkled around The Vale of Tears and protecting The Duchess’ Manor. 

Move Update

Still unpacking and organizing things around the new house. Our warehouse area has expanded by more than double. That’s nice because it means we’re no longer packing art prints and stuff in our living room! But it’s un-nice because it means lots (and lots) of warehouse-related stuff we have to unpack, organize, and build new infrastructure around. And if we continue at this rate… by the end of 2021 we’ll be looking to move all this stuff into a proper warehouse. Yikes! 

But I am also checking tasks off the Alice3/Mysterious Studios list as we go… hopefully things will be back to normal soon. 

Chinese New Year

We’re a day away from the official start of Chinese New Year. 95% of the country is already shut down and enjoying this, the largest annual celebration in the world. So we will have a few days of rest here. And if you ordered anything from Mysterious – or are waiting on posters/stuff from our Patreon rewards, expect a bit of a delay. 

Back with more art and design updates soon. 

From Shanghai with A Pig, 

-American 

(Lucky was born in The Year of the Pig – and he shoots deadly farts).