Dear Insane Children,
Lots of new concepts to share with you today!
First off, two lovely pieces from Sonny – a baby Jabberwocky and our old friend Mock Turtle. I’ve asked Sonny to pull the style in closer to our expectations from Madness Returns. While I think it’s interesting to see a lot of these characters in their pre-fire state, it’s clear we all agree that we shouldn’t sacrifice our “look” for the sake of that concept.
During the last live stream I probably mentioned my “concept art as tattoo” theory – basically that we want to see characters rendered in such a way as to make them “tattoo ready” – it’s an easy question, “Would I have this inked on my body?” With these two new images I for one can answer that with a solid, “Yes.”
Speaking of tattoos… the 13th is my birthday and I’m leaning heavily towards getting a Chaos symbol done on my back. I like the idea of being reminded of chaos always lurking behind us.
Up next we have a bunch of new images from Joey. I’ve been talking with her about Alice’s abilities and how that impacts game play. She’s taken some of our chats and riffed on a couple of concept images…
We’re working towards listing Alice skills and abilities. These will help define the sorts of puzzles and obstacles we encounter in Wonderland. We’ve got things like slowing time, dress gliding/floating, climbing, pushing/pulling (perhaps with little magical helpers), and more…
Joey is also taking a stab at defining our primary enemies. She’s focused in on a horrific combo of fire and dolls. Since the doll enemies in A:MR were some of my favorites (at least in terms of art direction), I am a big fan of this idea. What do you think?
Tonight, I’m off to the premier of Tsui Hark’s latest film here in Shanghai. As many of you know he’s keen to direct an Alice film and our discussions around this topic continue moving forward. I’ll be updating him on all the latest art and design coming out of Asylum and see if there’s a way to link Asylum pre-production with efforts which might help us move forward towards a live action film. Fingers crossed!
We’ll have another live stream later this week (aiming at Thursday morning in Shanghai). Be sure to share your comments and ideas in the comments below and we’ll discuss everything during the stream.
From Chilly Shanghai,
-American