Alice: Madness Returns

"...the worlds that Alice leaps around are stunning, mind bending, and unbelievably cool."

GamePro.com

I recently purchased a book called The Art of Alice: Madness Returns. It’s the design accompaniment for the Video game by American McGee and Spicy Horse Games. The story behind the game is that Alice has recovered from psychotic episode in which she was locked away in an asylum. The game is based on her realisation that the death of her family, for which she blamed herself causing her breakdown, was in fact the doings of another. Just as her own world has been turned upside down and ruined, her beloved Wonderland has also been taken over by a dark force rendering it evil, twisted and on the verge of collapse. Alice must find the evil in both Wonderland and the real world in order to survive.

Ken Wong was the Art Director for Alice: Madness Returns, American McGee and the design team at Spicy Horse Games produced the Art Of book showing stunning visuals and descriptions of the process they went through to create the beautiful yet frightening world of New Wonderland.

The Following is a trailer advertising the game and showing many of the environments Spicy Horse designed for gamers to explore:

Here are some of the images taken from the book that are significant for my own project of the Magicians Nephew:

Martins F, Kerslake B, Lei H, Lei (ART) J, Melo (ART) L (2011) Art of Alice: Madness Returns. Dark Horse Books, Milwaukie

This is the Cover design for the Art Of book. It instantly captures the mood of the game and what people can expect as the venture into the world of Wonderland. This is a good way of showing for a film (or in this case a game), what kind of atmosphere and visual impact a production is going to make.

This is an early exploration for the forest environment by Sun GuoLiang. I love the idea of a floating forest or tree structure, existing in the clouds above us. It feels quite magical.

I like the use of colour in this visual. The monotone effect with a single focus colour works well to create an exciting atmosphere.

This is a good example of clockpunk being graphed onto organic elements. Clockpunk is one of the styles we are going to incorporate into our telling of The Magicians Nephew so as a visual reference of how this can be effectively done this image is useful.

Another example of clockwork being fused with nature (inside the trees).

Again I like the use of colour in this image. The chrome base with highlights of blue work well to create a sinister atmosphere. I also like the illustration of the Caterpillar- this looks like it was done using a graphics tablet.

MAPS!!! Its all about Maps! We really want to create a Map for MN showing how the all the worlds around Narnia link together through The Wood Between The Worlds. This would not only be a useful visual explanation of how the story proceeds but it also has the potential for a beautiful visual.

Another stunning visual incorporating Clockwork. I like the panoramic quality this visual has and good use of colour.

Some examples of how the design department made trees look more 'fantasy-like'- using a stylised colour pallet, mushroom-like canopies and placing it on top of a giant snail.

Nice monochrome visual with a single colour to add significance.

I like the composition of this image- the dark ship at the bottom and swirling light effects overhead.

Nice use of contrasting colours with the Blue being the main colour of the image with highlights of orange. We wanted to use contrasting colours in our design to create drama.

The oriental style motif works well here and its stand-alone nature makes it a nice example of how I could sketch develope ideas before I place them into an exact environment.

This is a good idea for how we could design the elements for Charn (the dying world)- the tower formations would look good as the twisted towers of Charn and the figure heads are useful for Hannah when she looks at the statues of the kings and queens found in Charn's Great Hall.

I like the way this image of the Queen of Hearts Castle has been rendered- it looks like photo collage and illustration combined- the photos give it a realy nice texture giving the whole thing a rough and gritty feel about it.

This is a Colour Script they created to show the different colour schemes and moods through all the different worlds. This is good practice used in the film industry also to show at a glance the kind of mood each location has or needs. We will produce one of these for MN.

I’ve really enjoyed looking through this book- they have made some stunning images and really creative ideas for the environments. I will try and take on board some of their techniques when I do some of the designing for MN. I think Atmosphere is one of the most important things I’ve got from looking through the book- without an appropriate atmosphere a scene will have no depth and won’t look visually interesting, without atmosphere the storytelling cannot be enhanced.