Almost seven years ago, critical role, a webseries about a group of vocal friends playing “Dungeons & Dragons”, premiering on Twitch and YouTube. Although the members were initially unsure if an audience would be interested in watching someone else’s tabletop role-playing game, all doubts about critical roleThe success of has long been sidelined after two awards, three campaigns and 15 seasons, still going strong.
Now, critical role veteran founders and voice actors Sam Riegel, Travis Willingham, Taliesin Jaffe, Laura Bailey, Liam O’Brien, Marisha Ray, Ashley Johnson and their intrepid Dungeon Master Matthew Mercer have embarked on one of their craziest adventures yet – the premiere of their first adult animated television series based on the team’s first live-streamed RPG campaign.
The Legend of Vox Machina, directed by Niko and the Sword of LightIt’s Sung Jin Ahn, releases its first three episodes today on Prime Video.
“This whole trip has been so crazy,” Johnson says. “It changed all of our lives in the best way.”
“It was a life-changing experience,” confirms O’Brien. “The VoxMachine the stories were literally we open the wardrobe in the attic and walk into Narnia. There was no way we weren’t going to go back to the beginning and tell this story of our falling in love with the game.”
The 2D series – hosted by the multiple Emmy Award winners at Titmouse – follows an eclectic team of half-elf ranger named Vex (Bailey), his twin brother Vax (O’Brien), human gunslinger Percy (Jaffe), a goliath barbarian named Grog (Willingham), a sex-obsessed gnome and bard named Scanlan (Reigel), the half-elf druid Keyleth (Ray), and a magic priest gnome named Pike (Johnson). Known as “Vox Machina”, the group of misfits embark on various quests to not only save the land of Exandria from dark forces, but also to help pay for their ever-growing bar tab.
Along the way, they encounter powerful and interesting characters such as Sylas Briarwood, voiced by Mercer, who also lends his voice to other characters from the series. In addition to critical role players voicing the main cast – and the same characters from their original campaign – they all also serve as executive producers alongside Star Wars: Resistanceis Brandon Auman.
“It’s totally surreal,” says Auman. “I am a huge critical role fan and seeing all the classic campaign moments come to life is just amazing and so much fun. And watching the faces of the team light up when they see the animation, how excited they are, they’re like kids. It has been a fantastic process.
It was also a surreal journey for the eight critical role stars who started with the hope of creating a single 22-minute special animated episode. But their 2019 Kickstarter campaign took off like a rocket, eventually becoming one of the most funded film and video projects in Kickstarter history. “We were hot on our heels, no doubt,” Willingham says. “We had a goal of $750,000 for the entire 45-day campaign. And it was gone before lunch. None of us expected it. We had ‘Oh shit’ meetings about ‘Okay, what do we do next?’ »
In total, over $11.3 million was raised for the project, which not only allowed the team to expand its special to a 10-episode season, but also caught the attention of Amazon Studios, which picked up the series and ordered 14 additional episodes. episodes, allowing the project to extend its initial run to a second season.
“Yet even now we walk around our homes with our mouths hanging open in awe that everything has come together the way it did,” Bailey says. “There’s no way any of us would expect the Kickstarter to take off the way it did, or the series to be made the way it did. turned out so beautifully.
She adds, “VoxMachine was, and is, our heart and the heart of critical role. We are so excited to see it in action.
Ahn says that one of the keynotes VoxMachineThe executive producers of Titmouse when discussing the design of their adult comedy was that they wanted the series to feel like a “Saturday morning cartoon for adults, for fans and anyone who grew up with that love. for animated shows.
“We knew it would be a fantasy action show for adults, but also cinematic,” notes Ahn. “Sam, Travis and the critical role The crew expressed that the heart of their characters and the story is a bunch of blunderers playing fair. And that’s what would resonate with fans.
He continues, “So if you watch the show, the colors of the world are actually quite vibrant. And we intentionally chose that even though we know the story can and will go to dark places. But overall we want the tone and identity of the show to still be fun and not take itself too seriously because being serious wasn’t what critical role was always on.
The Legend of Vox Machinaanimation director Arthur Loftis, known for his work on braidworked closely with Ahn and character designer Phil Bourassa of young justice to define the exact look of the show. “I had watched a ton of shit from critical role, so I knew the story and I just wanted to get inside Matt’s head and play with whatever they had in this streaming world,” says Loftis. “Phil made several passes to the main characters, and we looked at different aspects of how the show has been portrayed before, like the comic book series Critical Role: The Origins of Vox Machina. We’ve definitely gone out of our way to push the quality beyond anything we anticipated during initial development.
Which is saying a lot, considering the show has a cast of seven main characters. “It’s a nightmare to tell any animation studio, and it presented us with a lot of challenges,” Mercer says. “And part of that was finding an animation style that allowed us to create dynamic, detailed characters that were visually striking and could animate well, but didn’t completely destroy the animation studio that was working on them. One of the things Phil is so good at is creating iconic designs that are streamlined for animation.
Ray adds, “Phil talked so much about the visual we wanted to achieve. We wanted it to be colorful, bloody and we also all come from a love of anime, but we wanted to put our own unique spin on it.
Ahn and Loftis say that thanks to “buckets of cash” from the Kickstarter, they and the animation team had the freedom to not worry about going over budget and just focus on creativity and fun.
“I don’t think fans knew what this Kickstarter budget was capable of,” says Loftis. “Being in animation and seeing that money come in, and understanding what that kind of budget can bring, there was so much excitement knowing that we were able to do something amazing that fans won’t see coming. It’s going to be so much cooler than they probably thought. It’s a dream project in so many ways.
The animation has already taken over critical role team by surprise. “I remember months ago now when we got together and watched the entirety of Season 1,” O’Brien said. “And I know how this story goes. I was there. But I was still amazed staring at the screen watching it unfold. It came out better than anything we could have dreamed of.
“We were creatively involved in just about every step of the way, although a lot of incredibly talented designers, writers, artists and screenwriters and all of those people really carried that vision forward,” Mercer notes. “We’ve worked alongside them and helped guide when we needed to, but a lot of times things would come back from designers and artists and background artists and it would be cooler than I imagined.”
Everyone on the VoxMachine the production hopes the series will please in the long run critical role fans as well as those who have never seen a single campaign. And maybe even convince those who don’t like tabletop games to donate critical role or “D&D” a try.
“Obviously we had the ‘Critters’ in mind when we wrote every word of this,” Riegel says, referring to critical role Fans. “But I’m actually really excited to meet new friends and find new people who aren’t into fantasy or role-playing and have no idea what critical role Where VoxMachine is. These are the people I’m most looking forward to seeing fall in love with these characters and seeing fall in love with the world of Exandria like we all did when we first started playing all those years ago.
Jaffe is especially excited for viewers to watch the first two episodes, as neither contains content that appeared in the original campaign, sharing that “it’s going to be that wonderful time when fans of critical role and new people arrive and everyone is surprised and shocked at the same time for a little while.
The show has already managed to convert a few members of the production team.
“We’re telling a complex adult story, but with very funny characters who can range from assholes to sincere heroes,” says Ahn. “From a narrator’s point of view, this kind of scale is so fun to play and has changed my life. I didn’t even know critical role before, but it was great to go on this ultimate path to learn what these characters are about. I am now a Critter forever.
But Jaffe, Reigel and everyone else on the team believe that VoxMachineThe initial appeal of stems from the same roots that dictated critical roleis success. “Just seeing a bunch of friends being a bunch of jerks,” Johnson says.
Ray adds: “Much of what has made critical role itself a success, and what I hope audiences feel in this translation to an adapted scripted format is our relationship as friends. I think there’s a certain magic you can achieve when you have such a close relationship as we all do. And we really wanted to make sure that was captured in The Vox Machina Legend.”
And despite the show’s immediate and overwhelming support, Mercer says it was friendship, not fandom, that drove The Legend of Vox Machina to existence.
“We don’t create media to make the best story,” he says. “We don’t create to make the most profitable story. We don’t create for the greatest number of people to enjoy. We create it for each other. This is hopefully the magic sauce.
There will be 12 episodes in total for The Legend of Vox Machina Season 1, with episodes 4-6 airing February 4, episodes 7-9 airing February 11, and the final three airing February 18.
Victoria Davis is a full-time freelance journalist and part-time Otaku with an affinity for all things anime. She reported many stories ranging from activist news to entertainment. To learn more about his work, visit victoriadavisdepiction.com.