Category Archives: Patreon

Twitch Stream Incoming!

Dear Insane Children, 

Alright! I think we have everything set up, tested, and ready to go with Twitch. 

We are scheduled for tomorrow morning (Shanghai time). Here’s the time info: 

And my Twitch Channel can be found HERE

I’m too new to Twitch to know if there’s any sort of Schedule Notification… but I think that if you subscribe to my channel you will receive a notification when I go live. So… give that a try? 

And if you know a thing or two about Twitch (more than I do, for sure!) then please join and provide some feedback on this first stream. 

I’m nervous! 

Sunflowers

Omri produced a re-make of one of our more popular prints, Sunflowers. Joey did the original version of this for the Otherlands project. (Technically, Van Gogh did the original version of this). This print will probably be added to our art collection. Should it be a Patreon reward? I don’t know! 

Speaking of Patreon and Art Prints – I will work with Font Lord to create another one of those monthly Art Print Guides… and fill that in as best as we’re able. So you can see what’s come before and what’s coming up. 

Lucky is TOO COOL for this world. Sorry… just had to share. Yan bought him little sunglasses and I’ve never laughed so hard in my life. 

Ok, will share all the latest art, design, story stuff on the Twitch stream tomorrow. See you there!

From Shanghai with a Twitch, 

-American

YouTube Party is OVER – Prepare to Twitch!

Dear Insane Children, 

After several frustrating days and multiple Truly Dumb(tm) interactions with YouTube support, I’ve decided to throw in the towel. YouTube Studio is so broken that it won’t schedule an upcoming live stream properly. Kinda looks like this… 

See the date mismatch? Yeah, well that’s what makes it impossible for me to know what time I’m actually scheduling for – and what time zone is that? Why are the dates different? Why can’t YouTube Support see that this is a problem we can’t fix by “rebooting, updating to the latest Chrome, and trying a different encoder.” FFS, YouTube! 

And, no, I can’t test/edit the time/date after the fact because that interface in YouTube Studio Live Room looks like this: 

Note the lack of “cancel” and “confirm” buttons at the bottom of that UI panel. Yeah.

ANYWAY…

Tomorrow’s YouTube Live Stream is CANCELED.

I am moving to Twitch! 

Here’s the new home:  https://www.twitch.tv/americanmcgee 

Am I supposed to ask you to follow me over there? Subscribe? Hit Like? SMASH A FRIKKEN BUTTON!?!? I have no idea! Just DO THE THING! 

And please allow me a few more days to finish getting everything set up over there. 

I had hoped to get it done today but Yan’s mom went back to their hometown after many months stuck in Shanghai. And I am at home alone taking care of Lucky… Need more time!

In Closing

YouTube sucks. 

We’re moving to twitch:  https://www.twitch.tv/americanmcgee  

Do THE THING. 

I’ll announce a time/date for a Twitch stream soon. 

Lucky says “thptptptpptpt” (I taught him how to do that. Yay!)

PS: Enjoy a beautiful wallpaper (top image) from Dario. For Hatter’s Domain. Here are his social media accounts if you’d like to follow him and check out his other work: 

https://www.facebook.com/marzaillustration/ 

https://www.instagram.com/marza_illustrations/ 

@marza_illustrations on Twitter

REALLY happy to have him creating illustrations for Asylum. Amazing stuff!
 

From Not YouTube,

-American

Live Stream = Dead Stream

Dear Insane Children, 

Martin and I seem to have worked out the dark voodoo of Zoom + YouTube + Defeating The Great Firewall and are ready to bring you a Live Stream. 

BUT as I have mentioned previously once or twice: YOUTUBE SUCKS

They got rid of the Classic (functional) interface and replaced it with a New (non-functional) interface which no one asked for! What does that mean for us? Well, I can’t schedule a live stream for any day in the future because… 

I put in 4/4 as the date… but the TIME selection is stuck on 4/2. And, no, there’s no amount of scrolling that moves the time/date forward to 4/4. It just loops back around to the start of 4/2. 

In short, it’s shite. 

I don’t even know what’s going to happen with it now… 

Anyway, I hate YouTube. 

Here’s THE LINK if you want to try to set a reminder. 

The idea is to stream at 10AM on April 4th (Hong Kong Time) which is April 3rd at 7PM PDT. No idea if it’s going to work. Probably not. 

Did I mention that I hate YouTube? 

From Shanghai with Grrr,

-American

!!!! ENAMEL PINS. PLEASE READ !!!!

Dear Insane Children

Font Lord here with a reminder of what’s going to happen now that April has rolled around in regards to the Enamel Pin Goal you’ve all been so excited about.

Firstly, you may all know from THIS POST that your tier no longer matters, so there’s no need to write in, all in a tizzy and panicking that you might have missed out on the pins.
All Patrons charged in April will be emailed about the pins, it’s just that those who pledged under $35 will have to make up the difference over on Backerkit.

So, talking about Backerkit, on April 7th, we will be doing a ‘smoke test’ which is basically a test to make sure the new system is working with a small sample of Patrons. And once that’s confirmed to be ok, we will then do a mass email to everyone else on the 10th.
So please keep an eye on your inboxes during that time and be sure to look in your spam or promotions folders. (You can even do a text search for Backerkit)

Then in Backerkit, you basically add your address and/or add payment details and you’re done.
We’ll send the pins out with tracking in the coming weeks. But of course, please expect some nonsense COVID19 shipping delays   🙁

There’s also an exit shop on Backerkit too where we added a few items from Mysterious at bargainful Patron prices if you’re interested in that  🙂
(Including extra Pin sets)

Also, just a quick quickie about the next print (for those Patrons charged in May), we will be doing the latest Omri sensation FALLING APART !!
Nice !!!

So there you have it.

Hope you’re all doing well and staying safe and socially distant if possible.

– Cheers

Letting Go While Holding On

Dear Insane Children,

Strange Days indeed. I hope you’re all staying safe and warm somewhere. Share your situation in the comments below. We need to hear from each other and support each other – now more than ever! 

Here in Shanghai, we’re OK. Our 14-day home isolation period ended on Saturday night. On Sunday, we drove into the city center. The drive from Qingpu to the heart of Shanghai usually takes about an hour – though it’s only 18km in distance. This weekend? It took us about 20 minutes from door-to-door. That’s crazy! I’ve not seen traffic (or lack of it) like that in 10+ years. The streets are empty. And the restaurant where we went for lunch… only had guests at 4 tables (out of about 50).

Things are certainly not back to “normal” here in Shanghai. 

What’s it like where you are? 

I Am Become Death

Omri started work on a new illustration (main image above) and I wrote some notes: 

I like it as a start. That Mercury symbol… is related to War and Anger. 

The arms remind me of Vishnu. “Now I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds.”

For the musical notes I recommend you listen to (and borrow score from): 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a53s4jyCqqU

(Richard Wagner – Götterdämmerung – Siegfried’s Funeral March)

Götterdämmerung (German: [??œt??d?m????]; Twilight of the Gods),[1] WWV 86D, is the last in Richard Wagner’s cycle of four music dramas titled Der Ring des Nibelungen (The Ring of the Nibelung, or The Ring for short).

The title is a translation into German of the Old Norse phrase Ragnarök, which in Norse mythology refers to a prophesied war among various beings and gods that ultimately results in the burning, immersion in water, and renewal of the world.

War is Chaos. War leads to Death. Death is Dissolution. Dissolution leads to Rebirth. 

Run with that! 

Let us know in the comments below your thoughts on Omri’s illustration and my feedback. 

GHOSTS V AND VI

Many of you are, like me, fans of Nine Inch Nails and their various spin-offs and influences. One of our supporters (thanks, Tom Resnick) brought to my attention that NIN just released TWO FREE ALBUMS of amazing instrumental music. 

Perfect mood music for our efforts on Alice: Asylum! 

And… the march of the pigs… 

In The Mood

Now that you’re in the mood for Asylum work…

I sent this email to the Asylum team yesterday:   

It’s taken me two weeks since my return from Thailand to catch up on all things Mysterious, shipping, and biz/legal/finance here in Shanghai. But I finally have a clear calendar and relatively open task list so… we can get back to work on Asylum. Yay! 

As you all know, the deal with (Insert Hollywood TV/film group) fell through. But at the same time that deal was going away, we got a note from EA Australia about another media company (REDACTED Productions) who are interested in Alice as a TV/film project. That interest also means EA (a different team from the one we’ve been working with) is taking a fresh look at Alice and the progress we’ve made so far. 

There are also some nibbles from the guys at Epic. And here’s news to explain why… 

https://www.epicgames.com/store/en-US/news/epic-games-publishing-announcement

For both the EA and Epic conversations, we would really benefit from the Game Design Bible being in a more complete state. In the time since we started fleshing out Asylum, we’ve put together tons of great art, design ideas, and story snippets… but it’s time to bring it all together into a document we can share with potential financiers and publishers. 

That effort has started inside this Google Doc: 

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1D-5-F1QzCbh9EgDeRJmvLqrJMdgqezMcIL2YZEf-aww/edit?usp=sharing

See the attached PDF for an example from Alex of what the final Design Bible will look like in terms of final format, layout, and content. 

The Google Doc currently contains a copy/paste of all the content collected over on the Alice: Asylum Wiki. Going forward, we’ll put our story, art, design efforts into the Google Doc – that means that work on the wiki (including Crowd Design) will pause for the duration of this phase. We need to refine and condense all of our ideas. That content can then be filtered into the Design Bible itself.

Already you can see that this provides a much more presentable format for our efforts. 

To manage this process, we’re going to take schedule and task guidance from Alex. He’s working on setting up a project management structure using Monday (monday.com) and invites to that system will be sent to you all soon. 

Omri will continue working with the artists to provide direction and to produce key concept images. 

Artists keep making art! ? 

While all of this is going on, we still need to feed the Patreon machine. That’s where we get the bulk of the funding for our team’s overhead. Art Prints are a big part of this – so we’ll want to make sure that there are plenty of Key Concepts which can be converted into Art Prints – the “Tea Port” illustration from Dario or Omri’s “Judgement” are good examples of this. A section will be added in Monday for this as well.

So… expect to see an invite to Monday soon. And then you’ll see tasks related to all of this appearing in Monday. 

These are strange days. But we are – so far – fortune to have the support of our Patrons and a clear mission in front of us to keep our minds and hands occupied. 

Let me know if you have any questions, concerns, or suggestions. 

Now… I am going to get to work on some story stuff! 

That should give you (and the team) a clear idea of what we’re doing in the coming months. 

I’ve attached the Alice3_Book_Draft PDF to this post. And you can click on the link above for the Google Doc where we’re putting all this effort. 

THANK YOU

I know I say it often but I really can’t say it enough. Especially in this crazy time. 

Your support makes it possible for a team of EIGHT People (Norm, Alex, Omri, Jen, Martin, Joey, Dario, American) to focus their creative energies on the Alice: Asylum project. 

You’re keeping the lights on at a time when so many people and businesses are forced to close up shop. We’re lucky to have a production model suited to this situation. But luckier still to have the support and trust of our Insane Children!

I am truly humbled. And I sincerely hope that our efforts and output match your hopes and expectations. 

Let me know in the comments below your thoughts on what I’ve outlined here. Are there areas where you’d like to see improvements? Things that are unclear? 

Tell me! I’m listening 🙂 

OH, Live Streams!

Yes, I know many of you are hoping for a Live Stream again soon. I will work on the tech issues related to that today. And will aim to host one on my Thursday (Wednesday in the US) at the usual time (around 6PM PST) … if everything is running smoothly. Expect an update on that as soon as I make sure all systems are A-OK. 

From Shanghai with Humble Appreciation, 

-American

The Walls Are Closing In

Dear Insane Children, 

American here with a quick note… 

I just spent the week picking, packing, labeling, and shipping out a huge number of art prints. Pretty sure that was the single largest batch of orders ever to be sent out the door at one time. Woo! 

Big THANK YOU to Yan’s mom for helping me with all that plus juggling Lucky. Yay!

BUT… wait… 

Before we get too excited. A couple of things: 

Closing Borders

China just closed itself off from the outside world. Like – literally – you can’t fly into China now. They limited all countries to only one (1) incoming flight per country per week – and that’s only for essential/emergency travel situations. 

Since all the planes will stop flying IN that means… a lot of the packages we’re trying to get OUT will just get stuck on the ground. We don’t know how many because these packages take a variety of routes on their way to the world outside. Some via air, some via sea, and some via ground, air, sea and a combo of all three! 

Our logistics partners are urging us to stop trying to send stuff until all this blows over. 

At the same time, they are saying that the packages we’re sending WILL get through… just much, much more slowly. Like 30+ days slowly. 

So keep that in mind if you are waiting on an art print (or prints). 

New Stuff

I do have some new stuff related to the Design Bible that I plan to announce in the next few days. Basically outlining how we’re going to push to get that fully fleshed out over the next couple of months. And what that means for things like Crowd Design and our Live Streams.

Speaking of… 

Live Stream!

Wew it’s been a long time since we did one of those! And it’s also something I have in the plans for next week. It’ll have to be sans-Font Lord (Martin Sans) since we’re still not allowed outside visitors in my housing compound. 

But I’ll figure out a way to get him involved. And you too! 

Let me know in the comments below if there’s anything special you’d like discussed in the next stream. Got questions? Ideas? Put them in the comments below. 

But first… I need a bit of a rest. 

From Behind the Great Wall of China, 

-American