Dear Insane Children,
One interesting thing about this virus whole situation is that it might just push the world into a New Mode of Being. Maybe we don’t need to all go to an office every day? Or we can telecommute to that meeting in Paris? Maybe game development teams of hundreds can be spread out to multiple homes and small studios around the world? Perhaps physical retailers are a thing of the past? For example…
I read this morning that Amazon is hiring 100,000 new distribution workers to keep up with online shopping demand during the time of coronavirus.
Here in China, the existing online retail/delivery mechanisms really helped make the transition to National Quarantine much easier. And it’s helped companies shift towards more a work-at-home and shop-at-home lifestyle. If you look at the pollution maps of China you’ll see that this has very positive knock-on effects for the environment.
And guess what? Here in The Asylum… we’ve already been doing the whole online-community-driven design-production-shipping thing. Yay!
Don’t be surprised if you, me, and our community of Insane Children become a model for the next phase of creative development.
Distraction Time
Let’s put what we’ve built to good use! What you need right now is something to distract you from the TP Hordes and madness outside. And our creative team has just the thing (many things actually… tons of art and design piled up in the time since I went all Waterworld on you).
BOOM! Let’s start with an Exploding Baby Walrus! He’s cute, cuddly, and explody. You can carry him, throw him, and watch him go BOOM!
This is first in a set of weapon concepts where our artists are inventing art/story layers to put atop our list of required weapons and items. As Omri says…
OK i had a talk with American on how they came up with the ideas for the weapons on Madness. So we are going to do the same kind of process to achieve the best result. As all the weapons have specific actions anyway and their designs are only aesthetic.
Keep the sketches fast, cool, Only aesthetic, let’s see how it looks like. From that pile we will fish out the ones we all love and use those. Have fun and go crazy but Please don’t incorporate Doll parts into the designs, it’s too “early” we won’t be visiting that realm.
The list of weapons we’re trying to skin include:
- A Clock Bomb
- A Long Ranged attack
- A Long Ranged Bomb
- A Heavy Melee weapon(the Flamingo i think is good, we need to explore options)
- A Short ranged Melee weapon (Vorpal Blade)
- A Shield
- A Stealth Distraction object (Percussion frogs sound pretty cool)
- Specials: DeathTime, Old weapons, incorporate specific weapons when we have Mods on like Rage or Chaos.
(Note to Jen: Jabber Grabber!)
The last one here Jen called an Astronomy Projection Umbrella and she says it works as a shield/umbrella but could also be used to blind and stun enemies.
Crowd Design Drive… Engage!
Now it’s your turn!
Add your ideas, notes, and suggestions in the comments below. Can you come up with cute and punny names for the weapons shown here? Do you have ideas for other creative ways to fill the list of weapon slots? What other cute and innocent animals would make for good bombs, flame throwers, and shields?
Give us your suggestions. A few of them might even get the Jen Treatment.
How about a baby elephant with an Extend-o-Trunk that Alice can use to grab, swing, and whip? Elphant Terrible? Maybe with a dual-use Poop Patty function to drop sticky poo traps?
Suggested Reading
Looking for a book to read (or listen to) while in quarantine? I am currently re-reading (actually listening to it this time) “Chaos” by James Gleick. It’s a fascinating and compelling journey through the process of inventing a new way of looking at the universe. And it contains LOTS of concepts which apply to the narrative we’re crafting for Alice: Asylum. Have a read (or listen) and you’ll understand what I mean.
Listen carefully when you reach the section on the nature of light and color. Newton and Goethe described their observations of the color spectrum in two very different but ultimately compatible ways.
As we grapple with concepts like The Shadow Self… think on this:
Unlike his contemporaries, Goethe didn’t see darkness as an absence of light, but rather as polar to and interacting with light; colour resulted from this interaction of light and shadow. For Goethe, light is “the simplest most undivided most homogeneous being that we know. Confronting it is the darkness” (Letter to Jacobi).
Sure to keep your brain occupied in a more productive way than binge-watching Netflix for days on end!
From Shanghai with Lucky & Lulu,
-American