I understand fully that this is in very early Alpha but after creating my character this area loaded. Looks weird like it was meant to be 3D? The color channels seemed slightly misaligned. Also my character never appeared nor did any UI. Just some lovely trees moving in the breeze, some flying cars (with strange trails behind them).

Exact same result for me. Thanks for posting.

If you read down through the recent notes on your launcher - this is a known issue that the server loses handshake with the client after character creation.
You character should be fine, just close the client using the 'X' (upper right of your window or by alt-tabbing and closing it) and re-launching the game. When you login, choose that character, and enter the game... you will see that same scene for a moment, then you will spawn in the normal world spawn point.

See you in there!

Just wanted to say that this happened to me as well, and Haplo's suggestion worked. I loaded up in the start zone.