"To age truly is to suffer the ultimate treason: that of one body against oneself."
- King Taravangian, Stormlight Series by Brandon Sanderson
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The Hiatus of American Kingdoms and the World of Kaiserreich Art Book
With American Kingdoms entering pre-production, I wanted to take a moment to address some common questions about The Divided States and the World of Kaiserreich Art Book. Both are ambitious projects that haven’t seen public updates in some time. While I’ve previously confirmed the hiatus on Discord, I realize I never made a public statement about it here. So this month’s dev diary is the place to do that and clear up any uncertainty.
As many of you have already surmised: Both The Divided States animatic series and the World of Kaiserreich Art Book are on hiatus until further notice.
Concept art for The Divided States: Battery Park — a standalone animatic.
The reasons are, as always: a lack of time, health issues, and money (the three are, of course, related). The Divided States is easily one of the most intense projects I’ve ever worked on. Episodes 01 and 02 combined total nearly 30 minutes of animatic storytelling, with close to a thousand frames of animation. Illustration, editing, and direction were largely a one-man effort, and the process absolutely consumed 2022 and 2023. At its worst, I was working 60-70 hour weeks, including full Saturday shifts from 9am to 7pm, plus admin in the evenings. It was, frankly, brutal. In the end, I guess my spine gave out before my nerves did 😅.
All of this happened against the backdrop of a worsening spinal condition, which led me to undergo pain therapy through most of 2024. Regulars will know I suffered a spinal fracture years ago, which caused my spine to slip forward - a condition called spondylolisthesis. It causes chronic pain and, in the worst cases, paralysis (not mine yet, thank God!). Long periods of sitting seem to have worsened it, though I hesitate to blame TDS directly. The neurosurgeons I consulted told me this kind of degeneration just happens when you pass 30 - joints that slip tend to keep slipping until surgery is required.
Regardless, I ended up spending most of late 2024 and 2025 managing pain through medication, rest, and a custom-built ‘bed desk’ that I now famously work from.
My supine bed desk, affectionately called “The Cockpit.” It’s actually pretty comfortable.
Rotating between standing, lying down, and sitting has helped relieve pain. But such improvements are likely temporary. At some point in the next five years, I’ll require a double spinal fusion. The surgeons recommend waiting until I’m a bit older. So for now, I just keep on working I guess.
The Finances of Making an Animatic Show
The unnamed protagonist of Battery Park, terrified as the landing craft approaches New York Harbor.
Financially, there’s no way to create a series like The Divided States without it being a side project. The sheer man-hours are enormous, and we simply don’t have the budget to bring in enough support to make it anything else. Most of you already know this, but KCC is not my full-time job. It’s a side endeavor that more or less breaks even, but doesn’t provide anything like a living wage. If anything, the experience has given me a deep appreciation for what manga and anime creators endure to get their shows made. It’s daunting.
So far, I’ve supported myself with freelance graphic design work. More recently, founding Flagmaker & Print has given me more financial stability. But running that platform and developing the app eats into the time I’d otherwise spend on KCC. Between all of this, I’ve had to halt active development on the Divided States universe. Creatively, financially, mentally - I need a break from the WW2 alt-history genre.
Does This Mean the Show and Book are Cancelled?
That’s a harder question. I still really want to tell the story of Emily, Albert, and Sawyer. I hope to return to that universe someday. That’s why I hesitate to call the project “cancelled.” Give me a good year, and I might be right back in that saddle. But given how rough the past few years have been, I want to make fewer big promises- and deliver on the ones I’ve already made first. Practically speaking, the WoK art book is going to deep storage, while TDS is staying a little closer to the surface.
I think the next time we return to TDS, it will be with shorter standalone content. That might be 2026, 2027… hell, I assume I’ll stil be alive and making alt-history content in 2035. I’ve been here for a decade, it's likely I will be here for a decade more. The spinal thing is mostly non life threatening, so that is at least one positive thing to take away from the whole ordeal. It's going to suck, sure, but it's not going to kill me.
Dogfight over New York – concept art for the standalone The Divided States: Battery Park. It strikes me we don't ever see something like WW2 fighters duking it out between skyscrapers, a really cool visual.
If TDS returns, it’ll likely be in a different format. You might see TDS lore come back as “World Of” monologue reworks, standalone episodes, or narrative content that sits somewhere between illustrated audiobooks and short documentaries. We are trying these format experiments out with American Kingdoms first. That medieval alt-history, specifically, is a big experiment for us and a lot of the content we are making does not neatly map to our 'animatic', 'world of' and 'documentary' formats. We hope to discover some things there that we can take forward in The Divided States when it returns to active production.
What About American Kingdoms? Future Experiments in Format, Universe, and Lore
American Kingdoms might seem like an odd follow-up, launching a new universe right after putting others on hiatus. But this is a creative decision. As I’ve said in previous diaries, going through a true health crisis does leave some marks. First and foremost, it reminds one very clearly that 'Allright, I am not going to be on this earth forever.' . There's a ton of stuff I want to try out creatively, and I think now is the time to reflect on things and try out stuff. Rather than lying defeated in the bed desk, I will lie victoriously defiant in the bed desk!
I plan to create a smaller series of videos in the American Kingdoms universe that also lets us try out new formats. If those do well, I hope to return those learnings to The Divided States. I also wanted a sandbox for things like collaborative worldbuilding wikis, and content that wouldn’t quite fit into the Kaiserreich framework. Some will be standalone videos, unrelated to Kaiserreich. One idea I’m excited about is the “Three-Way Cold War” - the German Empire making it to the Cold War. Another is just letting loose with dieselpunk art and story ideas that don’t fit the any canon.
One recurring problem is that I write much more than we can reasonably produce. Since we favor creating bespoke illustrations for every video, production at Kaiser Cat Cinema is generally a slow and expensive affair (Shout out to the Patreons). I’m considering launching a spin-off channel with audio-only content, so we can work on more scripts without needing 10 illustrations and custom animation for each single release.
Standalone projects
A great piece of feedback I once got from Flamefang (Head writer on KRDOC9) is that I tend to overthink this stuff. Why does every show have to be a multi-part series or feature-length documentary? He's right, so I am also going to work on getting a few standalone videos out that do not relate to any universe directly, with no plans for a followup. First among these would be a Germany in Vietnam monologue, taking some of that sexy Kalterkrieg energy into a spinoff lore video with a fun twist on the 'War is hell' Vietnam genre.
Oh yes, and then there's Dieselpunk, which is an excuse for me to voice my own video as a roaring Kaiserreich space marine proclaiming the glory of the God-Kaiser.
To wrap up, expect to see new types of content from KCC in the coming months - different universes, different ways of storytelling, different ways of making content. We'll be watching all of these releases closely to see what the community vibes with and what the team loves making, and adjusting our creative plans based on that.
Until then, this is VincentDN, signing off - and so goddamn proud of the work we are doing 🫡