Actor Alan Tudyk can notch a few more achievements off his bucket list. The Firefly actor can be heard in Disney’s latest blockbuster, Rogue One: A Star Wars Story, as the newest droid in the universe—K-2SO. Tudyk performed the motion capture for the CGI character live on set alongside the rest of the cast at London’s Pinewood Studios.
Tudyk is also a successful cross-platform creator thanks to Con Man, a hit digital comedy series he created with PJ Haarsma and Nathan Fillion. Season two is available now on the Comic Con HQ subscription service. Con Man has also been expanded to a free-to-play mobile game, which is also a hit with genre fans.
The actor, who can also be heard as Heihei in Disney’s blockbuster Moana, joined [a]listdaily to talk about the power of crowdfunding and why he’s excited about Electronic Arts’ Star Wars Battlefront VR game.
The thing about this movie that’s interesting is it’s an original Star Wars story, so you’re stepping back into a world that people are familiar with. What was that like for you?
I think it’s a much more personal movie. It’s a more intimate movie in that way, but it’s just a standalone story. It’s a story where we have a mission and we have to complete the mission. And it’s about how to do that. Spoiler alert—we’re successful, so it has to be a good story since you already know that we get away with it. But it’s shot in a more intimate way and it just has that—not smaller, but it’s more intimate is the right word.
Can you talk a little bit about the new U-Wing spaceship?
I think we were only interior on the U-Wing. There were portions of the U-Wing in pieces. It wasn’t like the X-Wing fighters. Several of them were just parked there. It was impressive and exciting to be like a little kid running around going, ‘oh my God, it’s real!’ And to see that smoke coming out of the bottom of them. But the U-Wings were big set pieces, almost like a room that you walked into, and the spaceship is in there. You’re inside the ship. So from our perspective you’re inside the spaceship looking out of the windows, holding onto the controls, calling down on the radio. In that way it was more practical than anything I’ve ever done. I flew a spaceship for Joss Whedon in Firefly and our spaceship never moved, really. The Star Wars spaceships move, so that was exciting.
The Rogue One movie was also the very first one to actually use virtual reality during production. Were you able to look in and see any of that stuff?
I didn’t, I never looked at any of that.
The other VR angle is that Star Wars Battlefront is coming out with the Rogue One X-Wing VR Mission, so you’ll be able to play that on PlayStation VR once the movie launches. What are your thoughts as someone who’s played games in the past about VR and what that opens up?
Oh my God! It opens up your schedule to getting lost. I love VR stuff. It’s amazing. I can’t wait to play it in the Star Wars universe. I think it’s going to be the future in gaming for sure. I know a lot of people who want to play games and don’t have the time to learn the controller . . . if they’re coming to it later in life. Unlike these kids, who are now born with extra joints in their hands, because they can beat me every time. I don’t know how they’re wired. But with VR, anybody can pick it up and just start playing in as many worlds as are possible. I can’t wait. I think it’s a good idea.
So, we’ll see more challenges than finding the Hawaiian-shirted driver?
To a lot of people, it’s funny, man. I’m terrible at it. That, and finding the medicine for the sick guy is just, uh . . . you make your messes all over the place. The game really sucks you in. I’ll set up my Con real quick and collect some money and then 20-to-30 minutes later, I’m still in there typing away, killing aliens.
It’s cool to see the posters on the wall with Nerd HQ and Comic-Con HQ that tie into the real San Diego Comic-Con. Where did the idea for this Con sim game come from?
PJ Haarsma and I were taking Con Man around—before Nathan (Fillion) came on—to different production companies. We spent a lot of time during that year-and-a-half dreaming about what would be cool to do with this world. We saw it was deep, and not just the show within the show. We wanted to do comic books of the show within the show and the game, and have comic books in the game. That concept of managing a Con that you build up and manage is my game. It’s not just a game I’m playing. I still show it to people and say, ‘look this is my game.’ I’m very proud of it.
Con Man: The Game has received great reviews from players. How validating is that for you?
Frima did a great job. I couldn’t be prouder. We crowdfunded it. And one of the things that happens with crowdfunding is people get ideas that are often really great and then it takes a really long time for them to follow through on the funding—if ever. We started working on this game right after we finished the first season. We went to Comic-Con to premier the trailer for season one and that Sunday we flew to meet with Frima. We had already been choosing artwork for the game, so we sat down and flushed out a lot of other stuff. And we’ve been building it ever since. So we didn’t wait at all on anything. We just went, ‘let’s do it all at once.’ And we have. It’s a bit overwhelming, but I’m so glad it came out and it just looks so good.
Will we see the second season of Con Man impact the game world?
Absolutely. We’ve already got ideas for season two, where there’s a whole other group of stories and characters and Cons to come. Just like last season, where we had two conventions within the season. One was the Ex Con and the other one was the Ba Con. This year we have the Long Con and the Shaka Con, which is the biggest Con of all. There’s a bunch of new characters, and each character has their own history and the movies that made them stars in this world. Some of them are actual celebrities like Lou Ferrigno, who plays himself. But then Leslie Jordan, who appeared last season, was getting ready to go play a mad scientist in this first superhero movie. Now he’s made that movie and he’s become a success and he’s doing a dark origin story, so there’s that movie that can be reflected in the world. There could be fandom around that and collectibles around that. It just grows and grows and grows.
Have you thought at all about a console game?
We haven’t talked about it. I think if there’s some way to grow it within the mobile platform, I would love to do something that takes what Pokémon GO did.
With augmented reality gaming?
Yeah. Definitely something that could build out that way. But we don’t have any immediate plans to do that. We’re focused on Con Man and then integrating those storylines for the game. And building and expanding the game as it is so that it can keep up with people’s skill level. It’s surpassed me pretty quickly.
