Welcome back everyone! Some housekeeping this week, because The Divided States, my first project and my first love, just got a full website overhaul 😀
New Divided States project site
TDS is the project that started all of this. The Kaiserreich-inspired noir thriller alt-history where a German victory in the Great War and an American Red revolution collapse Federal authority, and ordinary people get ground up in the Second American Civil War that follows. The project is currently on hiatus (more on why in a minute), but "on hiatus" does not mean "abandoned" I wanted the site to stay current and actually worth visiting, so I have been continuously updating it alongside American Kingdoms
The new content hub system
After finishing the new American Kingdoms project site, I realised the whole system was too good to use once. So I ported the tempklate straight over to TDS, and the site now carries far more info than it used to. The headline addition is a proper Factions section and interactive map, giving a good first breakdown of the 2ACW world and factions. Each faction card links to their respective Youtube intro, so sites like these serve as a natural content hub that folks can use to find the videos they want to see. If you want the full breakdown it lives at dividedstates-project.com/#factions.
The Divided States map
My favourite part: the same interactive Leaflet.js map from American Kingdoms is now installed here too. Click a territory and you get the faction, its flag, and a chunk of lore. As an alt-history worldbuilder this thing is a delight, it turns a wall of setting notes into something folks can actually browse at their leisure.
One nice side effect: every faction flag on that map is a real design. If you want the Revolutionary States banner (or literally any design you can dream up) as a physical print on your wall, you can order it as a custom flag over at Flagmaker or the merch site. Making flags is what funds the drawing, so consider it the world's most on-theme merch table 😀
But then... Adult Stuff
For everyone asking about new episodes, let me recap the State of the Cinema: I am fridging the more ambitious KCC projects while real life takes priority, which right now means renovating and fixing up the house. Animation is enormously labour-intensive, and it's unfortunately not something I can combine with a full-time day job at Flagmaker, let alone a crippling spinal fracture (more on that later as well)
The Art Blast / Dev Diary era
While I spend more time on IRL/adult stuff, this year I am mostly experimenting with a lighter format for CC: art blasts over videos. By now, most will be familiar with my big concept art drops with lore attached, like this Battle of the Bulge 2044 piece from the WW2044 side of the house (a Sd.Kfz.341 IFV variant outside Vielsalm). It scratches the same storytelling itch, it lets me keep publishing while the big stuff is parked. Crucially, they are much less labour-intesive than animation, directing voice actors and editing. This will be a lesson I'm taking forward to future KCC projects as well: matchinbg the format to the time I have available between the adult stuff. This way, I can keep supporting KCC as long as I want to make art for.
The dream of episodic content
My dream of building a true episodic series has not gone anywhere though. It is the whole reason I keep the TDS infrastructure alive and maintained rather than letting it lapse. When the time and the budget line up, I want the foundations here clean and ready to go.
That is why I've been building out KCC sites as content hubs. One place that pulls together the dev diaries, the shorts, the behind-the-scenes and the YouTube stuff in one place. Historically, Youtube actively supresses outbound links and tries to trap you in one platform. They all do this, so my doctrine has been 'They build walls, we dig tunnels'. The tunnel in this case, is elaborate Cloudflare-hosted static project sites!
Battery Park: D-Day in Manhattan
To wrap up, some of the recent concept work keeping the flame lit. This is TDS: Battery Park, my attempt at reimagining D-Day in New York. Brutal amphibious beach fighting colliding head-on with dense urban combat, landing craft in the harbour and armour grinding across the bridges. Me, Yana and Quentin built a series of concept art pieces exploring how we would break down this animatic short.
Visually, we are thinking of paratroopers coming down between the skyscrapers, riflemen in the rubble at street level. Even with the project parked, I keep writing scripts and banking ideas for future episodes
That is the state of The Divided States: parked, but tended. If you want to fall down the rabbit hole properly, go poke around the new site and its map at dividedstates-project.com. And if a faction flag catches your eye, well, you know where the flag shop is.
- V
About the Author
Vincent 'VincentDN' De Nil is a designer and app developer specialized in the reproduction of historically inspired flags, propaganda posters and artwork. He is the founder of Flagmaker & Print and the Kaiser Cat Collective. KCC is a global coalition of content creators united in the mission of creating high-quality narrative alt-history content, set in the great What-Ifs of alternate timelines.
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/vincentdn/
Kaiser Cat Cinema: https://kaisercatcinema.com/about
Flagmaker & Print: https://flagmaker-print.com/pages/about-vincent
ArtStation: https://www.artstation.com/vincentdn
Discover our alt-history projects
What if there had been an American Medieval age? https://american-kingdoms.com/
What if there had been a Second American Civil War? https://dividedstates-project.com/
What if WWII had happened in the 2040s? https://kaisercatcinema.com/s/about-ww2044
What if there had been a three-way cold war? https://kaisercatcinema.com/s/about-coldwarproject