Similar to my description of fighting games in my Dr. Kiln picture, American McGee's Alice had the same effect on me but whereas with fighting games I veered away from them entirely until a certain point, the Alice games always intrigued me if only out of morbid curiosity, but that may have also been due to my being older when I first saw anything about it. I recall seeing posters and what not of it in Hot Topic and Spencer's Gifts and thinking "Why would someone make such a morbid version of Alice in Wonderland?" and while I was disturbed I couldn't look away like a train wreck I suppose, but again due to upbringing I never played it. Fighting games was one thing, but something like THAT in my house? Hell no! Plus having a computer to run it was unlikely back then and even if so I couldn't play a computer game to save my life (still can't but I'm... mildly better now)
So American McGee's Alice came and went and that naive curiosity faded until it resurfaced with it's sequel. At the time, I had every possibility to play it and almost did but having never played the first I held back and yet again it came and went. Finding the original was next to impossible, I suck at PC games and so on and the novelty came and went. It wasn't until last year that I suddenly recalled the game and how much I was interested in it when I was younger and thanks to some help I managed to track down the original and played it... only to learn that the sequel has the first put in it as possible DLC... oh well!
That little embarrassment aside, the Alice series quickly became a favorite of mine. Allow me to clarify that Alice in Wonderland is already one of my favorite series, so it wasn't hard especially as the games pay way more homage to the books then I ever anticipated! Still, I quickly feel in love with this morbid spin on the series and what each character symbolizes in the fractured mind of Alice, it was finally the dark version of Alice I had wanted to see after a certain someone fucked up his shot at it. That being said I didn't intend for this to look so much like something wrought from the mind of Tim Burton, but I guess that's just how my mind works, let's be honest. In all seriousness though I meant to draw this more akin to the series' art design but somewhere along the way I just started making this look like a Burton cartoon and I liked the effect so much that I kept going. It was very liberating to that effect, I also figured "Hey, someone may as well make a good looking Burton-ized version of Alice in Wonderland ad I guess that's me!"
In the end, after finally playing the games I knew I had to add in American McGee's Alice into the mix. I might have added her higher, but the sad truth is as a game the first Alice fails pretty hard. It's obvious that someone really wanted the story and visualizes to be seen but the only way it got approved was as a video game and it wasn't the right medium for it. It would have worked much better as a film. Madness Returns did better, but it fell prey to that same problem and dragged in repetitive issues near the middle mark. I still enjoy them, but mostly for the concepts and visualize so I couldn't put her much higher then this, I'm sure most would agree.
