Dear Insane Children, 

Rabbits are multiplying like rabbits around here. Wouldn’t be so bad if they weren’t so… creepy. Eek!

The latest prototype model arrived from the factory. Here you can see the two side-by-side. Note the Left Rabbit has a  black button eye and stitched nose. The Right Rabbit is the one we looked at previously (brown eye, plastic nose). 

Looking at them side-by-side, I actually prefer the black button eye. It doesn’t clash or seem out of place at all. Sadly, I don’t think my pictures are properly capturing the color balance. You can see from the pictures I’ve shared that, depending on the light and angle, the fur appears on a spectrum from grey to brown. 

We’ll ask them to improve the shape of the nose a bit (make it noticeably wide at the top). I’m also going to talk to them about including the brown button (eye) in the bag – in case you prefer that color and want to sew it on.

Alex is working on a bag design. His idea was to have the bag look like an Inmate Property Bag from the Asylum. I think this is a good idea. Makes more sense than Alice holding onto the original bag in which the rabbit was sold. 

What do you think?

Feel free to leave comments below. Though I do think we’re pretty much done with the design process on these guys. 

From Shanghai with The Shining, 

-American (and Lulu)

Dear Insane Children, 

Well, that was fast! The Rabbit Makers have turned around a new prototype. This one includes a stitched nose and a black eye. Seriously, you guys, giving little rabbits black eyes?

I did notice a flurry of “moar longer arms!” comments on the previous post and wanted to say… 

His arms are fine. I think the fact that they look short in that image has to do with lens distortion and perspective. I’ve shown him to several “picky people” (designers, artists, Martin) and none of them mentioned anything about the arms. When prompted, they did a proper “arms inspection” and determined there to be no issue. The UN has verified these reports. 

That’s it! We’re pulling the trigger on the manufacture of a bazilliion rabbits!

Goals

Hey, if you want to help us reach the Rabbit Goal sooner, we first need to cross the Goal for the 2nd set of Embroidered Patches. That happens at 2800 Patrons. Everyone at $10 and above gets the Patch Set sent anywhere in the world with free shipping (and a tracking number – which if you request too early we’ll send Lulu to bite your face). It’s a sweet deal and it gets us closer to Releasing the Rabbits. 

I expect the Rabbits will be ready to ship in January 2019… so, let’s hit those goals! 

PS: Lots of art and fun stuff in the next update. Stay tuned!

From Shanghai with a Black Eye,

-American 

Dear Insane Children, 

Executive decision time! 

Take a look at the picture above in which we have (on the LEFT) the rabbit we all seem to think is THE RABBIT (AKA v0.4). On the RIGHT is v0.2, who you’ve met previously. And here’s the concept drawing from which we’ve been working… 

What we’re looking at today is color and material – the rabbit’s fur – plus final adjustments. These things need to be sent to the factory. Another sample will be made. Then we can start mass production. 

Fur Color

Note that v0.2 has white fur. It’s made from a sort of micro-fiber “towel” material. He’d be great for cleaning your windows! Anyway, in neutral (studio) lighting, he’s pretty close to a pure white in color. This isn’t what we want – but it does give you a point of reference when looking at… 

V0.4 has a light coffee color fur. It’s somewhere between brown and grey. And his “pads” (the accent colors) are a dark maroon. He matches pretty well the colors shown in the concept drawing. This is the same rabbit seen in the photos in the post where he made his debut. If you go back and look at that post you’ll see that, in the right light, he looks nearly white. 

It seems to change color depending on the lighting… which I think is a good thing.

Anyway… I *like* the fur this color, even if it’s not exactly “white.” 

DECISION: What say you? Can we leave the fur type and color as-is? 

(I say, yes – please leave your feedback below). 

Other Changes

Next up, from your comments on previous posts… 

• We will change the nose to black thread stitching. 
• We will change the eye button to black matte. 
• We’re starting research on linen / burlap printed bags.

I really can’t find anything else that needs to change. Holding him in-hand he feels great. Floppy, soft, and just “right.” I’m not sentimental about dolls and such – but this thing has a certain cute / creepy appeal. 

Other last minute comments or feedback? 

I’ll collect everything and send it off to the factory tomorrow. 

Looking forward to your feedback! 

From Shanghai with Rabbit Love, 

-American (and a jealous Lulu)

Dear Insane Children, 

Just a quick note as I am seeing a TON of messages flood in regarding the $35 / 3 Month Tier and questions about how to select art or Chaos Necklace sizes. Here’s the deal:

Please be patient. 

Font Lord has a monumental task in front of him to filter and sort all of the Patron data from the past months, determine who is eligible for various rewards, and then construct the lists which are fed into Backerkit so that surveys can be sent out. 

You should see a survey in your inbox around mid-month. It’s actually a link to the Backerkit site which enables the selection of the art prints, necklace sizes, etc. 

If you want to see what art prints are available prior to that email being sent, then head over to Mysterious and check out the Artwork section. Use the drop-down to select “patreon-art” as a tag. That will filter all the art to show only those images which are eligible for selection at the $35 tier. 

Those of you who were at the $75 (or higher) tier for October will be sent the two prints shown above. If it was your first month at $75 you are also eligible to receive a Chaos Necklace. You will receive an email later in the month where you specify necklace size. 

Are you missing a Chaos Necklace from a previous month? 

That’s because we ran out of stock, had to wait to restock, and have only just started fulfilling those backlogged orders in the past weeks. Just give it a little time. 

My apologies that we’re not as fast or efficient with all this as you might hope or want. We are working with partners like Backerkit and Patreon to reduce the data wrangling portion of this process. That should result in faster delivery of surveys at the start of each new month. 

So… TLDR; please give Font Lord a bit more time before you mass flood the messages with questions about this process. Your selection email is on the way!

Btw, another big THANK YOU to everyone for being here, helping make this happen, and your support and kindness in general! I hope you’re all having as much fun as we are 🙂 

On that note, there are excellent things happening behind the scenes, so let’s keep up the progress and momentum. Going into the new year I think we’re going to have some pretty cool stuff to announce! 

Just some stockings. Hehe. Omri did this style guide. Jen’s going to add these to the store (though I don’t know if she knows that yet). Thought you all would love these 😉

From Rainy Shanghai, 

-American (and Lulu) (and sad wrist, tired faced Font Lord)

Dear Insane Children, 

Don’t laugh. This is normal. This is what happens 95% of the time when you try to get something unusual done in China. It’s like living in The Upside Down. And if we were to ask the people who made this, “Why?” they’d not understand. There is no concept of sarcasm here. This isn’t funny. 

But it is terrifying. 

Feel free to leave your feedback on this… thing… in the comments below. But be careful… and don’t blame me if he shows up at your house and eats your pets. MMmm… pets. 

The Real Hare Hades

EVERYONE LOVED the Rabbit prototype from yesterday. And your comments are all pretty well aligned. We’ll fix the nose and make a few other minor adjustments. I think we have our winner, yeah?! 

It’s been a really fun process! I am so happy to have you all along to see how this works – I had no idea! – and am excited for the prospect of making more creepy toys in the future! 

“Insane Children Toy Co.” – Alex, logo time? 

Speaking of Alex… Last night, I was thinking about packaging. Alex previously sent a cardboard display box prototype:

And as much as I like this as a general concept, I do have a few concerns:

• We cannot guarantee this box won’t get CRUSHED on its way around the world.
• Packing it to avoid crushing will increase shipping costs significantly. 
• It doesn’t look like the sort of thing little Alice would have found on a store shelf.

There are ways to have this box design and avoid some of the crushing / shipping issues. We could, for instance, ship the rabbit with the box but leave the box folded up / flat. That would not protect it 100% but it would avoid a most “crush” type damage. 

But what if… 

We put the rabbit in a linen/burlap sack and printed Victorian Era logo / images on this instead? The bag would be a bit of art in and of itself! And you could, if you wanted, use that bag for other things (yay, recycling!).

This completely solves the “crush” problem. It’s more in line with the sort of packaging Alice would have been used to in her era. And it’s cost effective.

Anyway, let me know what you think in the comments below!

Speaking of satanic imagery… I apologize for the presentation style of these Alchemy Necklace sample images. This factory might be good at making jewelry but they are terrible at taking sample photos. Woo!

Anyway, you can see progress being made… Five Alchemy Pendants are done. Mass production starts soon. If you are interested in these, hit the Mysterious Page where they live and input your email address to the “Email When Available” box. That way you’ll get an email when they go on sale. Might still be another 1~2 months before that happens but, yay, progress!

Omri’s working on a Christmas Poster! This is just a rough start but I can see already it’s going to be amazing when finished. 

No Livestream This Week

Due to the China International Import Expo going on about 2km from my home there are all sorts of traffic and Internet restrictions happening around here. As such we’re NOT going to stream this week. But we will be back the following week with tons of art, story, and design updates. I also hope to have some interesting news on the biz / development side of things. 

I’ll miss you all! (But I’ll still push updates here on Patreon 😉 

From The Upside Down, 

-American 

Dear Insane Children, 

Well… I knew this day would come. We kept pushing and prodding and demanding unnatural things. 

“Remove his eye!” “Give him bigger stitches!” “He’s too FAT!” 

And… well, you can only push a cute little rabbit so far. 

I give you… Satan’s Rabbit! 

I am laughing and scared at the same time. We’re going to need a Holy Hand Grenade!

Anyway, it’s late here but I could not resist sharing this ASAP. There’s actually another prototype shared by a different factory but I’ll save that for tomorrow. This is… hare-owing enough. 

Comments below, please! 

From Shanghai with Grrrr, 

-American