Epic NPC Man (NZL) follows Greg The Garlic Farmer, who lives inside a video game and has to deal with the other mindless NPC’s and the crazy player characters.
We talked with director Adam King to gain insight into what goes into creating a comedy series based around video-game logic, as well as how the series has grown over the years.
What inspired your series?
Epic NPC Man was an idea that spawned from a simple thought that Alan had. He proposed ‘What if a computer character in a video game was sentient’. He hadn’t fleshed it out much beyond that. As an avid World of Warcraft player, when I happened upon this idea of his it spun me into a whirlwind of ideas of following a very unimportant character.
How long have you been working on your series?
Epic NPC Man has been going for over 3 years now, and we’ve loved every second of it. It has been through a lot of changes. From initially being about only Greg The Garlic Farmer, to including other characters, to mainly being about game logic, to expanding a magical fantasy world – including a high quality long form film we have coming out soon called Baelin’s Route. We are so enthused to see where this world goes in the future.
What is the brainstorming process for coming up with skit ideas?
Generally Rowan, Alan and myself get together and start chatting about various funny game logic things we have seen in the games we are currently playing. Then we ask ourselves ‘what would that look like in real life’. Most of our best ideas come from the very simple yet stupid things that so many video games are guilty of. For example using cheese or bread to heal yourself (even if it’s a horrible stab wound.)
Epic NPC Man Episode 1
What was your greatest challenge creating the series?
The first initial hurdle was the fact we wanted to create a low budget series set inside a fantasy video game. This meant realistic fantasy locations and fantasy costumes. We were so lucky in the early days when we had literally zero budget that we found Howick Historical Village in Auckland which is the set for Honeywood. We were also lucky that the Crucible LARPing society allowed us to use their costumes for free, meaning we had amazing fantasy costumes for the series.
Are there any funny stories from filming the series?
As a comedy series, there are a LOT of funny stories from the series. We have a blast filming it and making NPC Man never feels like work. The beauty of the internet means we get to share these funny stories with our fans on a regular basis as we release the behind the scenes and bloopers from every single episode every week.
What is your favourite part of the series?
My favourite part of the series is the world that we have built. When we first started making it, it was basically just a joke world we used to swing punches at all these video games. Then the further we went, the more we realised that the fans LOVE this world we’re slowly creating. So now we put a lot more effort into world-building, continuity of characters and the world. But we still keep it fun.
I also love how invested our fans are in the series as well. They absolutely love the characters and the world. So much so we get amazing fan art, fan fiction and even fan-submitted episodes ideas. It really does feel like it is a world born from 2 million people – not just 3.
What is the future for your series?
The world of NPC Man (Azerim) has become so rich and fleshed out that these days many episodes are not fully hinged on game logic, but are now about the characters and the world.
We even have a full new YouTube channel dedicated to playing Dungeons and Dragons within the world of Azerim, fleshing out the world even more and telling long-form stories with the medium of D&D.
The 30 minute Kickstarter funded film Baelin’s Route is also in production at the moment, following a fan-favourite character on an adventurer around the world of Azerim.
Then further into the future, we want to keep telling bigger and better stories from within this world with all the wonderful characters we have built up. More 1 shot films, books, comics, a Minecraft world, multi D&D campaigns, maybe even full-blown fantasy feature films.
FOLLOW EPIC NPC MAN