◂ ORBITAL RANCH STUDIOS DARK CELL

Process

How we built it

DARK CELL started out as a spy show. This is how it turned into a galaxy, and the rules we write by.

Generated with AI tools, under the creative direction of Jesse Alexander. I set the direction, made the calls, and threw out a lot. The machines did a great deal of the drafting and all of the painting. Everything on these pages is still in development, and we like showing our work.

How the art gets made ▸Collage first, paint second. The bodies, the studies, the rejects.Try the Alien Form Workbench ▸The collage tool itself. Locked for now.The Field Guide ▸Every people, with six possible bodies each.

Five things to know

Born a spy show.A 2024 CIA thriller turned into a galaxy. Collage first, paint second.We don't ask a machine to dream a monster. Push the proportions.Same material, very different bodies. Nothing's locked.One lunch, painted seven ways. We keep every reject.A wrong body for one people fits another.

The road here

From Langley to the Goom

  1. 2024 · The spy pitch

    BAD APPLES began as a CIA thriller about a young targeting officer and a team of very bad people, built on the real-life experiences of Sarah Adams, a former CIA Targeting Officer.

  2. Fall 2026 · Into space

    We took that team out of the shadows of Langley and put it on a retired prison ship at the edge of a black hole. The spy show became an anthology of hunts, adult anime with comics and novels in mind, and everybody but Abigail stopped being human.

  3. The board

    Ninety-nine fugitives, nine kinds of story, and a cork board in the galley to keep score. Each one got a title, a home, a lens and a reason to break your heart.

Five more steps
  1. The galaxy

    Twenty-eight peoples, six regions, a hundred and twenty-two places and thirty-four ships. Then a whole book about ordinary life out there: what people eat, watch, bet on and get buried with.

  2. The names

    We renamed almost everything, more than once. A name has to pass the Say It test, so nobody reading it, saying it or hearing it stumbles. That's where First Drawer, the Goom, the Stack and Belo came from.

  3. The look

    Evidence Pulp, a design language for government paperwork filled out by monsters.

  4. The art

    Collages first, paint second, then the proportions pushed as far as they will go. The whole method is on its own page, How the art gets made.

  5. The notebook

    Abigail started keeping a field notebook, and the crew started writing in her margins.

The rules we write by

Six rules

The Heart Rule

Every fugitive is funny in one specific way and aching in one true way. The funny gets you in the door. The ache is why Abigail writes their name down.

The Cleveland test

Could it happen in Cleveland with the nouns swapped? Then it's out. Every scheme has to need this galaxy.

Bodies first

Every people has a body that does one strange thing, and every fugitive's plan turns on what their body is made of.

The Say It test

Short names, spelled the way they sound, no hyphens, no apostrophes in the middle. It has to fit on a box lid.

Straight dark

About one hunt in five plays dark from start to finish. Jokes go at the hinges, before the danger and after the survival, and never on a death.

Back to the galley

Every hunt ends at the long table, tired and hungry, and nobody leaves until the board is updated.