medic trio (even before YouTube
existed) known as Hank & Jed.
They made short films for festivals
and even Public Access TV.
With the advent of YouTube in
2006, Hank & Jed went online,
bringing their brand of humor to
internet audiences. As the crew ex-
panded, they began making a name
for themselves as they developed
animated series in conjunction
with Machinima. One thing has
never changed, however, and that’s
their approach to creating stories.
“Everything we’ve done has been
improv,” Schnur explains. “[Even]
going back to our animated series
Doraleous and Associates. That
was kind of a parody of Dungeons
& Dragons and Lord of the Rings.
There was no script and we found
[in] doing that, there’s much more
gold there with the interaction
with our group. We know each
other and we really knew our char-
acters and how they would react to
one another.”
This loose style has formed the
core of their content ever since.
Even their acclaimed animated
series, Battlefield Friends, utilized
the approach. “We never had a
real script...It’s messy a bit, but it
works. So we’ve been doing this
from the beginning.”
While animation was their
main bread and butter for years,
the crew formed Neebs Gaming
and shifted their focus entirely in
2014; even quitting their regular
day jobs to handle it full time.
“We weren’t making much at the
beginning,” Schnur reminisces,
“but enough to get by. I had aNEEBS GAMING
COMEDY, COMMUNITY AND SURVIVAL
Sandbox games like Minecraft provide a setting perfect for improvised
storytelling and character building.