Hi there

Font Lord here again with just a little update on what’s currently going on in this neck of the woods for those who don’t know   🙂

As the main image up there at the top suggests, we are in the final 4 or so days for the Enamel Pin goal.
And as you may know from previous posts, you now no longer have to change your tier if you want to get these. We have worked with Backerkit to make this choice happen for everyone who’s a Patron this month.
Read more about that HERE, but basically, those above $35 will automatically get the pins, and those below $35 can make up the difference on Backerkit in April.
The only reason you might want to change your tier is if you want to get some of the benefits of being at a higher tier, such as getting the print of the month which is…

UnHappiness

This is certainly in my top 3 prints.

And speaking of prints.
The reason you might not have read so much from American recently is that he’s currently up to his eyeballs in signing and shipping out backlog of about 2 months of prints. Yikes !
Let’s all take a moment of silence to pray for his wrist.

We hope to get American back up and running and out from under a mountain of shipping tubes in the coming days, so look out for some more posts from him here in the not too distant future talking about how we’re moving forwards and what’s going on while the world is in its current nonsense state.

And just quickly if you didn’t know, we did actually put a couple of those Letterman jackets into the Mysterious shop from all your feedback in the previous poll post I made.
Thanks for taking the time to vote and such.
Always great to know we’re on the right track with our Inmates  🙂

So that’ll just about do it from me.
Stay safe out there, wash your hands regularly and don’t lick stranger’s faces.

– Cheers

Dear Insane Children, 

One of those things I always end up pondering when I’m in “altered states” is the fractal organization of the universe. The idea that patterns of organization (shapes, ratios, distances) repeat on scales that range from galactic to microscopic. And that it stands to reason that we, as an expression of the universal pattern, might find reflections of the idea in unexpected places – say in our moods, emotional responses, interpersonal relationships, physical health, and life events. 

Do we honestly expect all these universal mechanisms to suddenly STOP at the door of our conscious experience? And if these mechanisms do continue then what might that mean for the explorers of the mental landscape? Perhaps there’s a larger map of meaning to be found in the expressions and experiences mankind repeatedly expresses across generations of fables and religions.

Dark Crystals

Joey recently sent along a bit of inspiration – not really linked to any particular location or narrative element in our narrative (yet). But it provides an interesting point of reference to the notion I described above. Namely…

Crystals represent order. A crystal lattice is the essence of order. Could be that Hatter asks Alice to trace the source of the material (crystal) that the globe is made from. These shapes are also fractal… they contain repeating patterns that are observable from the macro to the micro. The picture Joey’s drawn is a good example… are those giant crystals or is Alice small and they are tiny ones? This is a topic I’d like to explore in the narrative and design – scale, perspective, and the fractal nature of information and reality. 

Nature is a fantastic place to explore these notions since nature is an explosive expression of fractal self-organizing patterns. We’ve already touched on aspects of nature=psychology=nature in our use of Alchemy throughout the Alice games. That’s why it’s there – because it makes physical the elements and processes of transformation. And, as we all know, transformation is life. 

One of my favorite things about telling stories in Wonderland is that everything exists in a dreamlike state. Alice’s surreal reality becomes a metaphor for everything she’s ever known or experienced. An interface for the direct examination and manipulation of her definition of self. 

Like a naturalist-chemist, she can collect, study, and ultimately understand the very nature of her self. 

Elements of Discovery

Of course, this is a GAME and we need to dress up all these concepts in fun and engaging art and mechanics. Here’s some art…

As for mechanics… 

Crowd Design Time! Share your ideas. How might you construct a system to game-ify the collection, combination, and use of these elements? How might that fit into an overarching goal representing Alice’s journey to understand herself? 

Lots of great art from Joey here. Let her know in the comments below your thoughts and feedback! 

From Self Isolation in Shanghai, 

-American

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:  

1. A Clock Bomb
2. A Long Ranged attack
3. A Long Ranged Bomb
4. A Heavy Melee weapon(the Flamingo i think is good, we need to explore options)
5. A Short ranged Melee weapon (Vorpal Blade)
6. A Shield
7. A Stealth Distraction object (Percussion frogs sound pretty cool)
8. 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.

It’s on Audible or Amazon. 

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

Dear Insane Children, 

This afternoon Yan and I will begin our journey from Thailand to China and hope to arrive home in Shanghai sometime tonight. We’ve sent all the Pirates home safely from Pirate Jam – a huge stress off my shoulders. Chaos is packed up and ready to go into the boatyard for the summer – she took really good care of me during my two month Golden Exile. Our bags are packed, our flight still on schedule… 

And we both can’t wait to get home to Lucky! 

It’s strange how this coronavirus situation has changed over the past weeks. When news first broke, I thought China was the last place I wanted to be. Now that the situation there seems under control in China, and the rest of the world is apparently descending into madness – why hoard toilet paper?!?! – I’m actually relieved to be heading back to a place where they’ve got serious measures in place to deal with the issue. 

I will try to capture some of today’s journey in pictures and video to share what the experience is like.

Now that Pirate Jam 2020 is finished you can head over to my YouTube channel where there’s a Pirate Jam Playlist containing all the episodes we created this year. These are shorter format, with greater emphasis on our Pirates, their adventures, and their games.

What’s not captured in those videos – and was kept mostly hidden from our guests – was all the drama taking place behind the scenes. Leading up to the event we had lots of guests canceling, boats breaking down, cooks threatening to mutiny, and more… All the stuff I will cover in an upcoming livestream where we play all the great games that were produced. Those games will eventually get uploaded to the Pirate Jam itch.io Page.

Back to the Asylum

It’s been difficult to focus on Asylum work while in the midst of all the aforementioned madness. But now that I’m headed back to the studio in Shanghai, I am excited to catch up on all things “Alice” and to sync up with our team. We’ll resume our efforts on Asylum design and planning – I’ll restart the conversations with potential financiers and publishers (though it’s difficult to imagine we’ll get much traction while virus panic is gripping the world). And we’ll get back on our regular schedule of YouTube streams and Discord design sessions. 

I really appreciate your patience and understanding during this unusual time. 

And now that I’m heading home… I hope to repay your kindness with lots of content and interaction – just the kind of stuff you might need if you happen to be locked down in some toilet paper battleground. 

From Thailand with Love, 

-American

Dear Insane Children

Font Lord here again with a few little bits and pieces you might be interested in.
(Don’t worry, Pirate Jam is wrapping up now and normal service will resume with American writing all the posts very soon  🙂

Firstly, I noticed that one of our manufacturer people sent out an email recently and they had started doing Letterman style jackets, and with Spring/Autumn now coming up depending on which hemisphere you’re in, maybe this is the time to add something like this to Mysterious?

So, the awesome Jennifer D’aww whipped up a bunch of ideas, and here they are.
What do you think.  Insane Children please sound off and take the poll and that’ll give us an idea of if we should pop any into the shop and/or expand on the design   🙂
Also feel free to write in the comments if you have any thoughts and ideas.

And what might look good on a jacket?
How about some Enamel Pins?    😀
(Nice segue)

I’m sure a lot of you saw our last post about this, but if you didn’t here’s a link to it, and we just wanted to remind you that THIS IS THE MONTH !!
You can read all the details in that linked post, it’s very thorough, but basically, you don’t even have to change your tier anymore if you don’t want to. You can make up the difference on Backerkit in April.   🙂
Still, feel free to post that link/pics on your social channels and such if you think you might also know someone who’d love them.

And to round things off, here’s the final version of the image you may have seen in an earlier unfinished state by Omri Koresh, called How Fine You Look When Dressed In Rage. Which I think I might just refer to as Dressed in Rage from now on   🙂
I’m fairly certain this will end up being one of our monthly prints in the future and may be responsible for the printing shop we use running out of red ink that month.

Amazing, I think you’ll agree.

Well, that’ll just about do it from me.

Hope you’re all doing well, staying safe and washing your hands frequently for 20 seconds.

– Cheers

Dear Insane Children, 

American here with a quick “Ahoy!” and update. I’ve been super busy with Pirate Jam these past days. Buying provisions, prepping the boats and crew, and making last-minute adjustments to our plans. So many variables and so much variability within those variables: Wind & weather, guest numbers, boat statuses, payment negotiations, and of course… the ongoing coronavirus outbreak (and all that implies). 

I gave the event the theme: “Uncertainty“

And woo boy there’s been good reason to have “uncertainty” on the brain. 

For example: One of the boats we planned to have in the event broke down and had to be replaced. Not a great situation 2 days prior to the event. But… the coronavirus has scared away all tourism from Thailand and that means there are tons of fancy charter boats sitting around going nowhere. So I managed to get a beautiful Lagoon Catamaran for the Free Lives team from Elite Charters on Phuket… for an off-season price. Woo! 

The ATM machine at the marina ate my primary ATM card. This card was issued in Hong Kong and can only be replaced by a trip to Hong Kong (to manually punch in the PIN at a local bank). I’d moved all the event cash to that Hong Kong account – which meant I was suddenly unable to pay for cooks, food, skippers, and other cash-only services. Ouch! But… the local SCB bank staff are wonderful. They agreed to stay late and return my card within 24 hours – instead of the usual “5 business day” turn-around. Woo! 

Our cook and her assistant almost quit the event when they realized that their “galley ship” hadn’t been properly equipped in terms of kitchen and cooking hardware. There were sour faces, tense negotiations, and general bad feelings… Not a great situation 24 hours before the boats are meant to leave the dock! But… we sorted everything out and are now enjoying some of the best fresh-made Thai food I’ve ever eaten. Woo! 

I guess the moral of the story is that things only remain uncertain for so long. And then the outcome arrives. Good or bad – it’s often better than being in a state of not knowing. 

Speaking of things you’d rather not know… 

This is what happens when 5 female guests cancel their trips at the last minute. We had a murder mystery dinner planned but not enough girls to fill all the female roles. Should we cancel the murder mystery? Nah… just throw a dress on Phil and, presto-whammo… Bob’s your… mother?

(I too wore a dress and stuck fake boobs down the front… but so far – thankfully! – no pictures of this have surfaced. Ha!)

Anyway, you probably need to go wash your eyes now. So I’ll leave you to it. 

From the Pirate Jam Fleet in Phang Nga Bay,

Capt. American