Critical Role released a first look at The Legend of Vox Machina with new character art. The upcoming television series is based on campaign 1 of the role-playing group's adventures. Together, they fight to try and save the world from imposing creatures and sinister magical forces. This particular project originated on Kickstarter, where it broke records. Due to its popularity, Amazon Prime Video picked the show up for two seasons, consisting of 24 episodes overall.
Kickstarter is a crowdfunding company that helps independent projects get a chance of coming to fruition. Critical Role's campaign began on March 4, 2019, with a goal of forty-five days for people to donate money to the project. The $750,000 goal was reached within under an hour of the campaign's starting. By the end of its run, it earned its spot within the top 5 most funded projects on Kickstarter ever, having raised over $11.3 million.
This is not the first time that The Legend of Vox Machina has released a tease of the upcoming show's animation. Now, Critical Role has revealed the first image of official character art for The Legend of Vox Machina. The lead character designer is Emmy award-winning artist Phil Bourassa, who has worked on Young Justice, Batman: Bad Blood, and Justice League. The cast sees the return of characters Percival de Rolo, Pike Trickfoot, Grog Strongjaw, Scanlan Shorthalt, Keyleth, Vax'ildan, and Vex'ahlia. See below for the entire character art image, with the previous names corresponding with the characters from left to right:
Before the pandemic, The Legend of Vox Machina was set for a late 2020 release date through Amazon. Due to the delay, there is currently no new release date that has been announced. However, the animated series is expected to reveal more information soon. Until then, fans can be confident that the cast of Critical Role has returned, composed of Laura Bailey, Taliesin Jaffe, Ashley Johnson, Liam O’Brien, Matthew Mercer, Marisha Ray, Sam Riegel, and Travis Willingham. It will undoubtedly be exciting for fans of the series to see the characters brought to life with this animation that is very similar to the DC projects that the lead character designer has worked on previously. For newcomers to the series, this will be an excellent introduction to a story that can be enjoyed by any viewer looking to quench their thirst for fantasy content.
Between the impressive Kickstarter run and Amazon acquiring The Legend of Vox Machina for two seasons right off the bat, it is clear that the studio has faith in the series. There is a large market for Dungeons & Dragons content, so Critical Role's show has potential for great success. With Brandon Auman (Star Wars Resistance) on board as the head of the writing staff, this show has strong potential. For those interested in checking out Critical Role, the second campaign arc recently finished, although it featured different adventurers than those listed above. A new mini-campaign just started on June 24 under the name Exandria Unlimited.
Source: Critical Role