You may know Studio Titmouse as the Emmy Award-winning animation studio. The Legend of Vox Machina, mighty nine, Star Trek: Lower Decks, Big Mouth, and beavis and butthead revival. Now, in Flesh and Flesh, they’re bringing a new spin to the actual medium of play. Let’s pull out our weapons. After premiering on Critical Role’s Beacon.tv in February, the series will air weekly on Prime Video for subscribers in the U.S., Canada and Australia, with a special two-episode premiere featuring Episodes 1 and 2 starting June 3, 2026.
I chatted with James Knapp, co-creator, Titmouse producer, and overall GM, to learn more about his take on this chaotic Actual Play.
Sierra “Panda”: This show was not what I expected, in a good way.
Josh Knapp: I think that’s a common reaction. People weren’t expecting what that show would end up being, and I think that’s a good thing.
panda: On your show, you have announcers introduce how sports commentators are doing. Where did that idea come from?
Nap: The announcer was Chris’ idea. Part of my pitch on the show was that I’m not just trying to be the next important role. I didn’t want to be the next one. dimension 20. Perhaps this is my own creative bias. When creating something, if you aim for the next “something that already exists,” you will fail. Instead of trying to capture the same kind of lightning in a bottle that made something successful, you need to expand on your ideas. Just because someone clones something doesn’t mean the clone will be a hit. A clone of that was a hit.
I wanted the show to have a different format, and I thought there were some obvious ways that it could expand on an additive format beyond just being frustrating. Confessional style cameras were a big part of that. I thought, “This feels like something someone should already be doing.” Chris came up with this idea while filming. “Hey, what if someone called this in a game and took over an NFL-style map? So I said, ‘That’s ridiculous.’ You should try it.” ”
It was interesting because I didn’t know who to use as the announcer. And I said, “Do you want to do it? You’re a co-creator and you know D&D. Just grab some other people and do it.”
Combined with the confessional style of the camera and the way we handled the artwork, I think we accomplished our mission. But you can also take another step towards something a little more mainstream, or more accessible to people who aren’t interested in the hobby. We put an MTV style spin on it to make it easier to digest.
It was very important to me that it was not just a clone of an existing real play.
panda: This introduces a more fast-paced style of television that may attract viewers not previously interested in the hobby. I’m going to give it to my parents and see what they think.
Nap: We get along well with people’s parents, at least from what I’ve heard. The husband of Heather, one of the cast members on the show, contacted me. He showed it to his father or Heather’s father, but Heather was uninterested in D&D. Then I got a message saying, “I fell in love with the story.”
Panda: That’s a good catchphrase. My parents also like it.
Nap: Well, there are a lot of bad words. So, I don’t know. Not for children.
panda: Vans are only briefly mentioned in this series. What’s the story of the van?
Nap: That’s all Chris. If you know the Prinoski family, you understand that. They’re the type of people who have the resources and the will to incorporate their friends’ cool artwork into things. When they first signed the lease for their Burbank studio, they thought, “This is what we want. “This place is very corporate-looking, so it has to be done artistically.” When I go there now, it’s filled with artwork and posters. I know the van and the rooms attached to it were all part of an effort to make it feel like a place for creative people to live.
Panda: Shag carpet is extremely soft to the touch.
Nap: We’re planning another tabletop convention there this November, where people can come and play games at Titmouse. I’m involved in planning. It’s called Dirty 20, take note. It’ll be fun. But yeah, the van is great. I don’t think the room is that big.
Panda: If you look at the photo, you can see that there isn’t much space. How many cameras were there?
Nap: I had three full size cameras, two robo heads, one camera on the table, and one behind me, and I rarely cut. So I think we had a total of seven cameras just to cover all the range.
Panda: The show features some amazing handmade maps and 2D miniatures. Is there such a map when DMing? Or is it not possible without resources?
Nap: The gist of the look of the map and standee was another part of my pitch. We want this to be accessible in all formats. I want someone to watch this show and see the set pieces and think I can do it too.
Dwarf forging techniques, beautiful, beautiful things. All the terrain and the amount of effort people put into creating all that stuff is really amazing. It’s not practical for a significant number of casual players. But I took a paper towel tube out of the recycling, used it as a base for a stand, or drew on it with a sharpie, and now it’s a castle tower. It’s something anyone can do. You don’t have to be Heather Mahler or Sean Glaze to draw little boys. The more you practice drawing your little boy, the cooler it will look.
Panda: If you’ve played D&D before, you’ll look at this and think, oh, this is exactly how me and my friends played this.
Nap: The reason everyone is drawing in their composition notebooks is because, as Chris says, “When we were kids, we all had graph paper composition notebooks when we were playing together.”
Because I was trying to decide how to display it. When they’re drawing something, how do they display it on the screen? Cintiqs can’t do it? No, that’s too much. So we just gave them a sharpie and a comp notebook and that’s all we needed.
Panda: I certainly saw you guys go through so many sharpies with the beacon discord that you mentioned. Do you know how many people have gone through Sharpie?
Nap: Many of the sharpies we experienced were simply due to loss. I think there’s a bit of an illusion of how many pictures were drawn because the show was edited as is. We were moving pretty quickly.
We only had two and a half hours per session, so we shot two sessions in one day. They painted whenever they could. Some of the most amazing digital images that pop up are created after the fact.
They definitely went through at least a few sharpenings each, but I couldn’t put a number on it.
panda: Did you have any plans to approach Amazon to host the show?
Nap: When the show was finished and edited, we were shopping around to find out. There were tweets from several different places, important role Beacon said excitedly. “Oh, I’ll take you there.” We thought, “Oh, yeah, that’s easy.”
Honestly, that was the perfect place for us to start the show. Critical Role is known for its love of Critical Role, but it still largely welcomed this new content and format. There were a lot of really friendly people in the community who were willing to not only join us but draw with us. Amazon’s part came from a desire to get enough attention to get resources for season two.
Panda: But are you looking forward to season 2?
Nap: Because of the format of the show, pitching the show is very similar to pitching something like a reality show. Many of these larger networks don’t really know what they’re looking at unless they’re casting shadows. They aren’t as hip to the actual play as Beacon. With such a large network, there was a lot of “oh, this is interesting, too risky, but interesting.”
Panda: Do you have any crazy ideas or brainstorming thoughts about how things will change for season 2?
Nap: Ah, I’ve already finished writing the first chapter. I don’t want to give too much away, just in case we actually get it, but there are definitely plans for a season 2 story. Now that you have some idea of how it was shot and edited, you can plan better.
When we shot the first season, it didn’t even have a complete shape until we edited the pilot episode a few times. Now that we know the shape of things, we know how to write this. I think season two is optimized for the type of storytelling that we were doing.
Panda: Before we go into more detail, is there anything else you’d like to talk about?
Nap: We need to plug in what we’re doing Draw a weapon and play live At this year’s Gencon. I think there are still tickets available. We also do tit panel There. If any of you are attending Gen Con, come hang out. That would be good.
Let’s pull out our weapons It will be available to watch on Prime Video from Wednesday, June 3, 2026.
Image via Studio Titmouse
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