Dear Insane Children, 

Here’s “How To Blow Up The Internet In Three Easy Steps” by Joey… 

Step 1: Draw Alice

Step 2: Give Her Blue Eyes

Step 3: <unable to fetch step three – disconnected from network connection>

….. bzzzzzzt

Thanks, Joey! 

The main image (top) is Joey’s original illustration. Below that (above) is an edited version from Omri. This illustration depicts Young Alice in the first scenes of the game and will be one of the first images you see in the Alice: Design Bible. 

That’s a snipped from Monday – where the task was original described and assigned. Alex drew a placeholder sketch to give some sense of what the final image might look like. 

Of her latest illustration (main image, above) Joey says: 

At first I want to show the trees with snow gathered on their branches, then I feel that’s too normal, so I made those snow melt like ice, shall be much prettier.

I didn’t add too many stuff here in this image, but I am wondering, maybe we hang sth. on those icy trees, like christmas tree, some weird stuff? I feel that might be too crowded for a single image, so I kept the trees clean, just put some item on the snow, and blood stains, too. I can take them off if you still feel “too crowded”

And Alex and Omri chimed in with feedback about the feet (blue) and other elements… but no one mentioned anything about the EYES BEING BLUE. Wtf, ya’ll? That’s going to make people go CRaZY!

So I’ve told them to fix that for the final version. But here’s Blue-Eyed Alice to make you all go nuts for a while. Enjoy it (or not) while it lasts. 

Design Bible Update + Live Stream 

Oh, and Alex just sent me a big new update on the Design Bible – here’s a sample page… 

And we’ll go through that on the Live Stream tomorrow. Usual time and place. 

And I’ll upload that new Design Bible PDF here on Patreon in a separate post before the Live Stream. 

Twitch: twitch.tv/americanmcgee 

YouTube: youtube.com/americanmcgeeofficial 

LOTS to cover. See you there! 

From Shanghai with Blue Eyes, 

-American

Dear Insane Children, 

Font Lord here, with a quick update showing off the current prototype of the “Decision Coin” that we have been talking about doing as a Patreon goal in the not too distant future.

I think we can all agree that’s a fairly mighty coin, and exquisitely detailed (awesome job, Alex)

Do you have any questions or comments about the coin and/or the upcoming goal?
Pop them in the comments below and we’ll answer some of them on Thursday’s live-stream.

And that’s about it.
Just a quick post today   🙂

– Cheers

Dear Insane Children, 

We’re making good progress on the Asylum narrative. And there have been a couple of evocative scenes illustrated by our art team I think speak to the beauty and depth of the world we’re building. 

I am loving the images created by Adam for Alice’s exploration of the Memory Mines. Among the scenes she’ll explore, there’s a section dealing with Dr. Bumby, and these have resulted in a couple of the more beautiful and chilling images to come from the project so far… 

It’s the sign of a good antagonist that we can be fascinated and repulsed at the same time. 

“Hush now, Alice. You’ve told your tale. It’s time to listen to something new. I was once like you. Born in chaos – an orphan… of sorts. Mummy was mad, insane really… laudanum, hysteria, and carnal urges. Pa? A taxidermist. Obsessed with restoring life to the dead. His mistake? The dead can only rot. Like mummy rotted. But the living? The living can be made clean. Dolls are clean. That’s the trick, girl. The moonbeam magic. Start from within and make everything clean. Clean and hollow. 

Our minds – that is where the cleansing must occur. You’re an excellent example. Spattered in blood and covered in arcane symbols. Wearing chaos like a badge of honor. But you know nothing of chaos. If you did, you’d do as I’ve done, and dedicate your life to its complete eradication. That blade you ram through your enemies? An instrument of filth and corruption. It does not sterilize. Quite the opposite. It spreads filth and horror from whatever it touches. Just like Pa. That’s your mistake too.

Do you really think you killed me? The taxidermist might agree. But we’re beyond all that. No, Alice, we’re in the realm of Mr. Dream Man. Sing with me, Alice… 

The train is coming with its shiny cars.
With comfy seats and wheels of stars.
So hush my little ones have no fear.
The man in the moon is the engineer.”

He is dead… right?? 

From Shanghai with Shiny Cars, 

-American 

Dear Insane Children, 

Font Lord here to just give you the sad news that there will be no regularly scheduled stream tomorrow.

American has just done a little family travelling these last few days and add this to the insane amount of work that’s going on with Mysterious/Alice/Oz/Redacted stuff, we just need a bit more of a breather and time to catch up.
Sorry about that.

Fret not though, we WILL be back next week where there’ll be even more art, design, discussion, prizes and all the usual shennanigans.

As an apology, please cast your eyeballs all over this new image by Omri called “Expelled”.
Pretty darn incredible, right?   🙂

– Cheers

Dear Insane Children, 

Font Lord here, letting you all know about a live-stream that’s happening at at 7PM PST on Thursday April 2nd for a Crowd Design session where we’ll review and discuss the latest Plushie Dreadful designs and samples.

You can watch the stream on both…
Twitch.tv/americanmcgee
YouTube.com/americanmcgeeofficial

Unfortunately, I won’t be there (although I will be in chat), but there will be American, Yan and @pixelbrandjeans (Jen) and a collection of Plush samples, designs, and ideas, and we want YOU at the design table!

Hope to see you tomorrow, and be sure to bring all your opinions and hottest takes!

– Cheers

Dear Insane Children, 

A few posts back, I shared a snippet from Monday (the online collaboration platform our pre-production uses to organize all their work)*** – where you could see my story text being converted into sketches and illustrations. All that content will eventually make its way into the Design Bible… 

Anyway, that post featured a scene where Alice is banished from the Home For Wayward Children (HFWC) after the killing of Bumby. It’s described as… 

Art Brief: This scene will showcase Alice being removed from Bumby’s Home for Wayward Children by Radcliffe and the Police. Alice will be thrown out onto the street, and expelled. The home’s resources are cut off to her, and she will not be able to protect the other orphans left behind.

The scene is meant to capture the feeling of “a mother separated from her children, and being unable to protect them”.

Click back a few posts if you want to check that out. 

Today, Omri sends along some updates to the content being created under that heading.

The initial concept has split in two. First, there’s the scene as it was requested initially. 

And then there’s … something … dark and sinister … being created alongside the original request. See the latest from Omri (main image above). 

For the original scene… 

It started out as a rough sketch. And then progressed… 

With more of the surrounding details being filled in. 

Omri says he has an actual (living) model coming over these days to act as a stand-in for Alice in this scene. Wow. 

Can’t wait to see the final renders of all this amazing work! 

Let us know in the comments below what you think! And be sure to send Omri some love!

*** A Note Regarding Monday: In a recent live stream, I floated the idea that we might open up public access to Monday. That would allow our Insane Children to browse through (read-only) the work being done by our pre-production team. Upon further research of the topic, we’ve discovered that Monday doesn’t have this sort of feature. The platform costs $$ per “seat” and there’s no such thing as a “view-only” seat. Combine that with concerns raised by the team about making their work too-public, too soon… and we’ve decided to kill this idea. But I will continue to copy/paste interesting sections from Monday and share them here on Patreon. 

From Shanghai with Weirdo Content, 

-American