The making of Vox Machina’s Umbrasyl fight, from Critical Role arc to epic animated finale

polygon.com:

Critical Role’s The Legend of Vox Machina season 2 has officially wrapped on Prime Video, and the finale’s big fight already stands out as one of the animated series’ best. Season 2 focused on the overarching threat of the Chroma Conclave, a group of dragons who threaten Tal’Dorei, and Vox Machina, and the final confrontation spans the final two episodes, from the moment Percy springs a trap to snare Umbrasyl in “In the Belly of the Beast” and the moment Umbrasyl falls in “The Hope Devourer.”

From the animators to the cast themselves, everyone we spoke to was excited about what the season finale meant, and how it paid off the monumental task of bringing the moment — and its CG dragon — to life. On some level, the battle against Umbrasyl was the culmination of seven years of storytelling work. Here’s how it happened.

Before there was The Legend of Vox Machina, there was Critical Role, the actual-play video series led by a band of game-loving voice actors. Episodes 54 (“In the Belly of the Beast”) and 55 (“Umbrasyl”) of Critical Role’s first campaign played out in real time over nearly six hours, taking the band of adventurers known as Vox Machina from the town of Westruun through the sky, all the way to the bowels of Gatshadow, where the crew wages an increasingly desperate fight against Umbrasyl. What the actors and GM pulled off in the game in 2016 became the basis for the animated series’ epic two-episode final fight.

Liam O’Brien Co-founder, Critical Role; EP, actor (“Vax’ildan”), The Legend of Vox Machina

I remember lots of planning, and it kind of went well until it didn’t that night.

Laura Bailey Co-founder, Critical Role; EP, actor (“Vex’ahlia”), The Legend of Vox Machina

That’s the usual. [laughs]

Liam O’Brien