Sometimes the stuff you find by accident turns out to make your whole day. Witness the majesty, the glory and the cornball humor that is The Dungeon Flippers! This is the pilot episode, called “Ace of Wands”, in which we are introduced to the Dungeon Flippers, Cleaveland, a blue dragon on the smallish side, and Maulie the Manticore. Today’s destiny? Help out the Ace of Wands, a wizard hermit who has been hiding out in his castle for 300 years perfecting the perfect wand — while the city that used to surround his lair picked up and left without him centuries ago.
He needs a new place to live.
Dungeon Flippers is an animated fantasy real-estate series about a group of misfit monsters turning the world upside down, one home at a time. It’s created by Travis Fowler, an animator who’s been working in the Atlanta animation scene for almost 10 years, all the while questing to fulfil his dream of making an animated series of his own. He got enough help from the IndieGoGo campaign to get the first episode done, and frankly we’re not sure how he produced so much animation on so little money. This must truly have been a labor of love, and is an astonishing, towering achievement.
What is Dungeon Flippers about?
In the fantasy land of Splendore, EVIL is on the rise. That can only mean one thing … a buyers market for monsters! And no archfiend, hobgoblin or lord of the undead would be caught dead in just any old dungeon. That’s where the Dungeon Flippers comes in! In a land on the brink of apocalypse, this small realty firm aids in the acquisition, sale, renovation and flipping of dungeons, keeps and crypts.
The lead character Maulie, a cheerful manticore, is new to the business but shows great promise with the help of her friend and mentor Cleaveland, a charismatic and business-minded dragon. Maulie uses her newly-found income to rebuild the broken home she lived in as a child, but she might come to learn that freshly grouted bricks and polished spike-pits might not fix all of the problems that haunt her.
The show aims at being a fun spin on the fantasy genre where goblins and demigods alike still have to hang their helmets somewhere after a long day, where business negotiations can be cut short with a good sword and internships may literally bind your soul to your workplace!
Fowler writes:
Animation is a wonderful medium for expressing the wonder of being alive by exploring worlds of imagination and creativity. I feel like the animation industry of late is a pool of watery brand-names pushed by big companies and oily adult shows trying to be outrageous at the cost of their own integrity. I don’t expect Dungeon Flippers to be a panacea of these issues, but it certainly doesn’t fit into either of these categories. At its core, Dungeon Flippers is an ode to the power of imagination and how we shape the world through earnest engagement with the people around us.
Dungeon Flippers has real heart, and that’s something pretty damned rare in animation these days.
There’s even a merch store, where you can get cool stuff like mugs, stickers, pajamas, and even a Maulie plushie.
We can’t wait to see what Travis Fowler does next with Dungeon Flippers. Netflix, are you seeing this? Go talk to this man.
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