Hello again everyone, Alex here with some updates from the shadows.
(And a word from Font Lord at the end)

It’s crowd design time. We’re opening up some old wounds here with a new weapon concept.

1. Umbral Scythe – Initial Weapon Concept

I won’t go into too much detail here regarding the weapon lore to avoid serious spoilers.

However, if you do want to travel down to Spoiler Town read the Narrative Outline here. (Pages 128-133 specifically).

There comes a point in Asylum where this new weapon, the Umbral Scythe makes its horrible debut. Forged of darkness, this is a weapon wielded by Alice’s Shadow Half.

American had requested the Scythe feature some form of “tentacle” motif, and I’ve tried to work this in visually so that it doesn’t override the main function of being a Scythe-based melee weapon. It can also be thrown as a spinning death wheel, boomerang style.

The narrative outline details a few other nasty tricks up its sleeve, but for now, we’re asking the question of aesthetic.

Currently, Umbral Scythes come in four tasty flavors.

A) Chaos
B) Dark Vorpal
C) Embering Ruin
D) Ruin

The choice is; which is the right design in your opinion?

Which version best suits the character of Shadow Alice as the default weapon skin?
Where do we take the design from here?

Or does a concept here nail it?

Sound off in the comments below.   

When I designed this weapon concept, I felt it depends really on what we want to primarily communicate visually in Shadow Alice through her weapon choice.

I’ve got my favorite, but I’m interested to see yours.

For easy reference, here is the current collection of concept art from the character development of Shadow Alice. Created by Omri, Joey and Myself.  

2. Carpenter and Walrus // Chaos Consumed

Next up, the original designer of Alice’s iconic look from over 20 years ago, Norman Felchle has been working on concept art for the boss encounters for the Carpenter and the Walrus in Asylum. They’re crazy good and we feel they hit that right balance of macabre and fantastical.

Appearing at the end of the “Cataclysm” level, Omri and I are playing around with showing destructible environments in this particular boss combat arena.

The current idea of this particular boss fight is to have both Carpenter and Walrus become GIGANTIC, and not to have Alice face these foes directly in combat.

Rather, Alice uses their own attacks to destroy the floating islands in the level, and against one another, thus sending both the chaos-infected Carpenter and Walrus tumbling into the abyss. Expect some cool concept artwork from Omri soon.

—-

Lots more artwork coming in hot from the team. Expect some big narrative updates, business dev stuff and Mysterious news shortly!
Stay tuned, plenty more madness to come.

Take care of yourselves and each other out there. <3

– Alex

—————————-

And now a word from your friendly neighborhood Font Lord.

October is almost upon us, so that means here is your (slightly late) warning about what the next art print is.
For September Patrons. charged in October.

The super creepy BIRTH OF JABBERWOCK

Apologies for the late alert, but you still have about a day to change your tier if you really really want this print    🙂

– Cheers

Hi everyone, Alex here with a break from our regular programming in American’s stead.
For those new here, I’m the Project Manager, Narrative Co-Writer, and Design Bible Lead Designer for Alice: Asylum.  LIVE STREAM UPDATES

Firstly, there will be NO LIVE STREAM this week. The next Livestream will most likely be the 7th of October 10:00am (GMT+8). We’ll keep you posted as the confirmed date rolls closer.

The reason being, things are chaotic in the Mysterious camp this week. Between American taking care of Lucky, Yan’s pregnancy, juggling back-to-back negotiations with more than one of the world’s largest video game publishers, all during tax-time, and simultaneously preparing for the leadup to one of the busiest national holidays in China, our captain’s plate is understandably full.

When chaos rains on our little madhouse, it pours.

Please join me in wishing American and his family all the best as they take care of business and then some.

Speaking of chaos, here’s some new artwork from the team.

1. The Jabberwock Boss Fight
The incredible image in the title section of this post comes from our concept artist Adam Narozanski. For those who have read the Alice: Asylum script, you’ll know the Jabberwock isn’t here to play around in Asylum.

From the choices previously presented in his initial sketches, Adam has also flexed on his speed-painting skills at the request of our lead artist Omri Koresh.

The sketchier, looser styling is great for capturing motion and action, so we’ll most likely be seeing more like this as we go. It’s a cool showcase of Alice using the scenery to hide here too.

2. Chaos Infected Enemies // Update
Joey Zeng has been working on an updated pass on each of the Chaos Infected enemy concepts. These are twisted manifestations of Alice’s time in London, roaming around Alice’s memories of a fractured “Flooding and Burning London”.

This broken level we’ve since come to call “The Cataclysm”.

All enemy designs are looking wild here. We might dedicate time to exploring further depths of varying Chaos consumption on these enemies, but at this stage, we feel this captures the themes of the enemies sufficiently. Moving on.

(!) SPOILER WARNING!

The following concept art shows scenes we would consider major spoilers in the Asylum Narrative. Don’t want to see it? Don’t scroll.  This is the last artwork sample in this Patreon post. Some project management stuff, (also full of spoilers) follows afterwards.

Still here? Let’s go.

3. The Demise of the Scientist – Hatter’s Fate
Adam has once again submitted some concept artwork for key scenes leading up to Alice’s encounter with the Jabberwock.

Pictured here, is the moment Hatter buys Alice more time to escape. He initiates a rising platform moments before the Chaos unleashed by the Shadow consumes them all in his laboratory.

Alice and her rabbit escape.
Hatter does not. Adam’s early concept work is phenomenal in capturing these dynamic scenes as always.

Our Creative Process and Your Feedback:

To me, it’s always fascinating seeing the creative process come to life for these scenes.
The process that allows us to make these decisions as a team, also allows us to utilize your feedback actively while we work via the Patreon.

American and I first wrote this scene with Hatter’s demise in the Narrative Outline.   Once the narrative ideas we write are locked and approved by American, I’ll then brief a specific request to illustrate key scenes for usage in the Design Bible.

Initial art direction and art-task briefings are created by me, then once greenlit by American, Omri will allocate any available artist to create the artwork, and provide additional art direction and notes before the work is undertaken.  This happens all within our project management software. Each art task follows the same process and conversation.

When the first sketches rolls back around from the artist (in this case Adam), we all review the sketches, float the ideas and choices with the team and with the Patreon, (like we’ve done here) and proceed accordingly based on feedback.

The final say always rests with American, (we’ve built the process that way) but in his stead this week, Omri and I have agreed that (C.) best captures Hatter’s demise, frames the characters well, and represents the narrative best.
Here’s a sample of an art brief, team conversation, and process direct from our project management software.

Do you agree with our choices? If yes or no, why?  Let us know.
Adam will be proceeding on this again shortly, so let us know your thoughts if you want to lend your voice to the design discussion.

—–

TONS more artwork and updates are incoming.
We’ll chat again soon!

Cheers,

Alex

Dear Insane Children, 

Been a bit quiet around here, huh? A full week since the last post! Well, there’s been quite a bit going on. 

First, yes, still lots of great art being produced by our Alice: Asylum pre-production team. 

Omri sent over a really cool (and massively tall) image of the Memory Mines. It’s a sort of Rorschach test… do you see the bound-up lady in there? ?Or a statue on a pedestal? ?

Omri also turned in a colored version of the Carpenter update… 

And the team is just starting to sink their teeth (pens) into all those new art tasks we shared a couple of posts back. Expect a lot of great new art to start flowing soon. 

But beyond all the great art… 

This week will mark the starting point of a series of high-level pitch meetings involving our Hollywood partners (Radar) and our Financial Advisor (Marc) with some very big investment banks and funds. We’ve put together a great-looking pitch – one that includes plans for TV, Film, Games, and Merch. Landing a deal here could accelerate the work we’re doing on projects like Alice, Oz, and more. CROSS YOUR FINGERS!

And as previously mentioned, we signed a lease on an official warehouse space for Mysterious… Here’s Lucky overseeing an inspection of the freshly painted floors… 

This expansion means our merch team (Yan, Jennifer, and two new employees) can shift their focus more towards design. Since starting Mysterious in 2015, we’ve handled a large amount of the packing/shipping from within our own home. This new space means we can move that work outside (5 minutes away by car). And it means less time spent by myself, Grandma, and Yan on the actual packing/shipping stuff. That makes more room for design work but also… 

We have another Insane Child on the way! Due date is sometime in May/June of 2022. We’d love it if Lucky got a little sister… but I’m actually OK if we get another boy… hehe. 

Until further notice, this child is codename “Lili” – which is what we called Lucky until he popped out into the world. Let’s see if it sticks this time! 

Beyond that… taxes, visa renewals, the usual shipping (and then some – super busy these days!), Grandma’s brother is ill (leaving just me and Yan to watch the boy), oh, and… I am scheduled to go camping in … 2 hours! 

LOTS GOING ON! 

As always, it’s great having you along for the ride. I’m expecting a lot more great news and growth in the coming months. And I really appreciate your support and encouragement. 

Can’t wait to see what tomorrow brings! 

From Shanghai with Excitement, 

-American 

Dear Insane Children, 

We’re going LIVE over on Twitch soon… 

twitch.tv/americanmcgee 

We’ll review Alice: Asylum artwork, give away prizes, and … watch American suffer and die of a miserable cold. Woo! 

This might be a short one. But we’ll try to pack it with as much info as we can. 

From Shanghai with Cough, Cough, 

-American 

Dear Insane Children, 

Just a quick note to let everyone know that I appreciate your well wishes. Seems your prayers worked or something – because the typhoon came and went. It veered off sharply as it approached Shanghai. And is now out swirling around over by Japan. Yay. (I mean, not “yay” for people in Japan, but “yay” for me and my family). 

Now… there WILL BE a LIVE STREAM this week. 

twitch.tv/americanmcgee is the place to be 

(it will also simulcast on YouTube but you can’t win prizes there, so, … why?)

Plenty to review and discuss. 

Check out these Jabberwock fight scene close-ups from Adam… 

And let us know in the comments below… which version you prefer – A, B, C, D. 

And we’ll see you on the live stream later this week!

From Shanghai with Rawr!

-American

Dear Insane Children, 

Adam sent over the final version of Alice’s boss battle fight with the Jabberwock. Turned out AMAZING. Of course it did. I like all the little details contained in this image. The platform is suspended by the chain/tongues of Alice’s Wonderland co-inhabitants. The confrontation taking place surrounded by clocks (time). And the looming Chaos taking over the world in the background. There’s so much THEME contained in this image – so much that links back to the journey Young Alice has endured and the overarching narrative of the series. Anyway… I love this image! 

You know what I don’t love? 

There’s another huge typhoon heading towards Shanghai. And if you look at the storm track you’ll see it basically lands in my back yard. Again. So… 

Last time this happened it was a bit scary. The water level in the flood control channel behind our house got pretty high… but the local authorities kept everything under control. Hoping the same will be true this time. Fingers crossed. 

Now… we’re supposed to have a Live Stream this week but I want to wait until after this storm has passed to decide whether or not that’s going to happen. Expect an update in 48~72 hours on that topic. 

If things don’t go well I might end up underwater. And Joey provided a concept sketch of what I’ll look like if that happens.

Actually, these are sketches of London Citizens from the Underwater London section of Asylum. 

Maybe that one is more like me? 

I think there are some dudes in Japan who are turned on by this. 

We’ll have a look at all of this – AND MORE – if there is a live stream this week. Woo. 

Meanwhile, Jen and Yan continue their awesome work on more Plushie Dreadfuls. We’ve been putting some new designs through Crowd Design over on my Instagram and the Mysterious Facebook Page. (I try not tot post too much of this stuff on Patreon because people get confused/upset – “That’s not Alice!”). 

This is version 2 of a design related to PTSD… a topic at the center of the Alice: Asylum narrative. So let us know in the comments here – or over on the Facebook/Insta posts what you think of this (and the other recent Plushie Dreadful designs). 

Finally… 

How many of you have seen the trailer for the new Matrix movie? 

You can check out The Matrix Resurrections over on YouTube via THIS LINK. 

I posted a screen-grab above from the opening frames of that trailer. Do you see what I see? Blue butterfly. Phrenology. Black cat on a desk… remind you of anything? Yeah… kinda crazy.

Feels like someone has been playing the Alice games. And of course, the entire trailer is one giant Alice in Wonderland homage. 

What did you think? See any other interesting parallels to our Alice? Let us know in the comments below. We’ll watch the trailer and discuss some of this stuff on the next stream (assuming I’m not underwater). 

From Shanghai with an Umbrella, 

-American