Dear Insane Children, 

I thought he was dead! You did too! We all saw Alice push him under that train… 

But don’t worry! We will NOT be bringing Bumby back to life in Alice: Asylum. I promise he’s dead and will remain so. Except… The Dollmaker. He’s going to make an appearance. Yikes.

This will happen when Alice explores the memories stored in the Memory Mines (temporary name for this location). She will discover a number of critical memory/scenes including… 

A) Scene: Early Life. Home, family, and fire-related. The Fire. Alice’s family. Burning toys and beds. Children playing and laughing. Memorable moments from early childhood. Scenes with characters who once visited and left an impression – Bumby and Radcliffe take center stage. Alice overhears conversation critical to her quest.

B) Scene: The hospital. Flashes of the night Alice was taken to the hospital. Scale is distorted to create a sense of disorientation, smallness, and distance. Giant beds, warped hospital rooms, giant scalpels, her family (relatives) tiny and far away (in the sky looking down on her among lots of other giant faces), massive pill bottles. Gauze for clouds. Trolleys. Dead bodies under covers. What did Alice fear most about this period, these scenes? The lack of family? Not knowing where she was? Feeling lost and alone? Feeling small. Again, Bumby and Radcliffe take center stage, saying, “insanity is the best option.” Alice overhears conversation critical to her quest.

C) Scene: The Asylum. Long, dark corridors of prison-like doors. Straight jackets. Screaming. Padded rooms. Strange “mental health” contraptions. More assortments of “tools” and nurses, doctors, inmates, etc. Bumby and Radcliffe take center stage. Alice overhears conversation critical to her quest.

D) Scene: London/HFMC related. Insane Children, broken children, broken toys, therapy (infernal train, forgetting, seeing something strange happening with other children in the home).

E) Scene: Bumby related. Dollmaker stuff, scissors, thread, needles, tools of his trade. Combined with brains, open skulls, other concepts related to brainwashing and prepping these children for his plans. All of this takes place inside an environment of dark woods, open black spaces, and conveyor belts of children’s dolls. (See the dark dollmaker illustrations from AMR).

F) Scene: London and the Train Station. Elements from the London street; butchers, police, thieves, filth, and depravity in the East End. Alice pushing Bumby under the train.

The images in this post are focused entirely on the recollection of The Dollmaker encounters. 

The idea being that these powerful negative memories have been saved from recycling by Shadow Alice. 

She visits these painful scenes over and over – feeding off the negative emotions they generate. 

Another amazing batch of illustrations from Adam! 

Since these are “just” memories… should Alice be able to destroy them? That might be a bit of fun – we could construct these out of some flimsy-magical material and allow Alice to bash her way through these areas… ensuring that the dark energy they contain can never be used again. Hmmm.

Let us know in the comments below what you think of Alice revisiting these dark scenes.

From The Shadows, 

-American

Dear Insane Children, 

Font Lord here to tell you 2 things.

1) There’s only 2 days to go before April hits and it’ll be too late to change your tier to $75 if you’re currently thinking about taking part in the super ‘Double Print Month‘.
DON’T MISS OUT on these 2 fantastic prints !!
(And you’ll also get a Hysteria Rabbit if you’ve not had one before at that tier)

2) Last week we had lots of fun doing our livestream over on Twitch/Youtube.
As usual, Madness Returns was played, art was discussed, prizes were given, plushies were fawned over, but also, what happened exactly to make us do that in the top image of this post? 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=060cpm8kXt0

– Cheers

Dear Insane Children, 

A big THANK YOU to everyone who participated in our Narrative Crowd Design discussion last week. And to all of you who sent follow-up comments and feedback. Lots of thinking is being inspired by your input. And we’ll have a follow-up on all of that soon. 

In the meantime, the art team continues to produce and refine images taken from the early sections of the Narrative Outline. Like the image above from Norm – a tighter version of the “Alice vs. Judgement Boss” illustration. This is now ready for Omri to color. The final product… it’s going to be amazing, isn’t it? 

We’re also seeing some early sketches from Adam for the opening page of Chapter 1 in the Design Bible. This is an image inspired by a sketch from Alex. And is meant to represent Alice’s descent into the first section of the story – the start of her journey. 

We were discussing which of the four images best represents the fall into darkness. 

What do you think? A, B, C, D? Which is your favorite? 

Live Stream This Week

Want to join in the conversation and review art in real-time with me and Martin? 

Don’t miss this week’s live stream over on Twitch and YouTube. 

It takes place at the usual time and place. 10AM here in Shanghai on Thursday morning. And 7PM PST if you are on the West Coast of the USA. 

https://www.twitch.tv/americanmcgee 

https://www.youtube.com/americanmcgeeofficial 

Those are the places you can join us. And there will be prizes! Woo.

From Shanghai with a Toothy Maw,

-American

Dear Insane Children, 

We hosted a Crowd Design session on Discord the other day where the topic was Narrative Mechanics for Alice: Asylum. This gave me a chance to listen to story ideas from our Insane Children. And I was able to pose some questions about perspective and rules in the Asylum narrative. 

You can check out a recording of this event over on my YouTube Channel… 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xb44wQWLYwI 

If you have feedback on this discussion, please leave them in the comments below.

From Shanghai with Multiple Perspectives,

-American 

Dear Insane Children, 

As you all know, we use a website called Monday to keep track of all our tasks, communications, and creations for Alice: Asylum pre-production. There’s a ton that goes on there as our team explores ideas for art, design, and narrative. Perhaps we should figure out a way to open up a public “viewing” account for this so you can peek at what we’re up to? Anyway, I thought I would share a thread that does a good job illustrating how we come up with our illustrations.

This all falls under the heading of “RWSS-4 / 1. Narrative Scene – Alice is Expelled By Radcliffe (Art Task)” in Monday… An entry created by Alex (he creates all of the task entries)… based on the narrative or design of the game. 

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”.

We want this scene to focus on the plight and danger the Orphans are in at the HFWC.

We want to show Radcliffe as a threat.
And show the power he commands (by the Police to do his bidding).

Radcliffe will be pointing a finger at Alice from the top of the staircase, bellowing and berating her. 

Radcliffe will be positioned higher up in the scene than Alice, showing a position of power. She will be looking up at him.

The children of the Orphanage will be in danger, positioned behind Radcliffe.
They will be terrified of what is happening to them, and unable to help Alice. 
Alice is desperate to save the children of the orphanage.

Police officers will be preventing the children from getting out, or assisting Alice. The police will physically or cruelly restraining the orphans. 

Imagine a daylight brawl scene. Onlookers in the London streets will do nothing to help Alice or the other Orphans.

Narrative Backstory: Leading up to this scene, Alice will confront Radcliffe, and as a result will be forcibly removed from the Home For Wayward Children at his order.

Alice will be muscled aside and thrown out violently by a group of threatening, and physically large Police Officers / Bobbys. They will be brutish, and thuggish in appearance.

Alice is attempting to claim her family’s estate. Radcliffe is blocking her way, and always has been. Alice wants to assume control over Bumby’s HFWC after his death, so that no other child will come to harm from Bumby’s previous influence. Radcliffe will stop at nothing to ensure she doesn’t. He is still after her inheritance and blocks it greedily.

I added a bit more reference… 

Thinking about the framing of this scene… I think we might want to explore a setup similar to this…

Where she’s pleading (begging) to see the children again. It’s a question mark. 
But I think without some sort of strongly illustrated emotion reaction… it will be difficult to read the illustration for what it is… Alice desperate to get into the Home and to rescue/take care of The Orphans. 
If we only show her at the bottom of the stairs… how do we know what is going on in the scene. It will help if we include Radcliffe pointing “away”… and the Police are there glaring to reinforce the point. 
But Alice’s reaction to this also needs to be made clear. And the children standing (being kept) Radcliffe and crying will make it even more clear what’s going on. 
PS: In the AMR the kids were kinda dicks to Alice… so we didn’t give Alice much reason to return to them… but she does. Going to need some dialog or backstory to explain that.

Omri digested all that and responded with his own thoughts and an initial sketch of the scene: 

i thought about how we present the police here, i thought about it and i don’t want to make them look “evil” in my mind they are only doing their jobs so less manhandling more seemingly trying to remove Alice from the premises. it also looks more elegant.
i imagine it like they are taking to her, please don’t make a fuss out of this miss style.

the kids- i changed their silhouettes slightly and i’ll work on the faces as i go along.
i’ll keep some of the twistiness but i’ll use it to make us LIKE them instead of detest them. like you said American, if she sees through the illusion she’ll still see them twisted but differently because she’ll understand they are just kids.
i want it to seem that they surround her, kinda not wanting her to leave, like the oldest daughter of the place.

Radcliff really stoic and beyond that in the darkness hints of jabber and bumbi and queeny. i’ll figure that out. i want it sinister.

Generally i want it to look like a Rembrandt painting, i’m attaching my “reference”
i want it to look very dramatic.

I think the initial sketch does a great job of capturing what’s contained in the brief. The framing isn’t exactly as I’d imagined it but it still communicates the critical elements. 

Let us know in the comments below what YOU think. 

And a quick reminder there’s a Discord Chat this morning at 10AM HK Time (about 30 minutes from when I am writing this post) where we’ll hear our Insane Children share ideas about the Asylum Narrative. 

From Shanghai with Illumination,

-American

Dear Insane Children, 

A quick post this morning with the final epic version of Omri’s latest illustration… Alice running through a battle between Card Guards, Chess Pieces, and Chaos Monsters. Set in Queensland, this scene is taken from the Asylum Narrative document we’re working on. And it’ll be featured in the Design Bible. Woo! 

There’s a crazy amount of detail in the full image. Omri’s split it into some smaller images for your viewing pleasure… 

And you can grab the full-scale image here: 

Makes for an excellent desktop wallpaper. 

Amazing work, Omri! 

And all thanks to our Insane Children here on Patreon for supporting our team of artists.

From Shanghai with Awe,

-American