Moving Past Auditions and Collab w/ Jordan Rudolph!

Well, things have been crazy at the day job recently.  My schedule has been in flux and I'm looking into backup options for if the worst should happen and they close our branch of this nonprofit.  Still, I'm making the time to both honor the commitments I've already made to projects I've been cast in and audition for new ones.  Voiceover is the one thing in my life where I love being busy, and I feel listless if I don't have a full plate.  It helps me keep perspective and avoid getting too bogged down with worrying about the day job.  The goal has always been to have it be temporary anyway, not a career.  If I end up having to make a change, then I can always do something else to make rent.  Whatever I need to do in order to keep us moving toward our real goals!

But that brings me to the topic I wanted to touch on, just to remind myself if not educate anyone that might happen by this.  It's important, once you've finished an audition and submitted it, to just move on.  Not all projects make it past the casting stage, and even if they do the sheer odds are that you probably aren't going to get cast.  So treat the audition as the entire job, finish it to the best of your ability, and move on to the next thing.  If you get an email or a DM later on announcing that you got it, then great!  If you don't, then it's no big deal because you've already got other things on your mind.

I had to remind myself of this today, because there was an audition that I know I just nailed.  I think I did fantastic.  Just blew it out of the water.  But there have been no updates nor casting announcements for about a week.  Not even a "thanks for auditioning, we're going over them and will get back to you!"  So I kept that tab open, refreshing it every day, checking to see if they'd done anything with it.  I've realized that all it was doing was stressing me out and keeping me from doing other auditions.  It's a useless waste of my attention.  So I closed the tab and recorded ten more auditions and all the lines for Grandpa Joe this morning.  BAM!  Much better use of that energy.

If they go dark, or someone else gets cast in that project I was obsessing over, then I at least have a new voice I discovered during the process I can use elsewhere.  I also learned a ton about my audio software just by having to deal with a character that is VERY LOUD AND ENERGETIC ALL THE TIME.  It's a net improvement in my skill level no matter what.  I can be happy about that. 

(Thanks #VOLife Clothing for the new t-shirt!)

Another thing that I'm excited about is my recent collab with Jordan Rudolph that was released last week.  I tweeted about it, but I wanted to throw the link on here as well for Facebook and Instagram readers.  In her cover of Kiss the Girl from Disney's The Little Mermaid for her Patreon, which you should totally check out, Jordan asked me to contribute the spoken lines of Prince Eric!  I haven't done a lot of voice matching, but I loved the opportunity to practice copying the cadence and inflections of another actor -- in this case the amazing C.D. Barnes, who you may also know as the voice of Peter Parker/Spider-Man from the 1994 animated Spider-Man cartoon.  I think I got pretty close!

Looking forward to the Memorial Day Weekend, when I get to record for a podcast here in Portland (which I will tell you more about next time) and do some more auditions!

Casting Updates!

Hey guys, I've got some fun news to share! First off, I am so psyched to be cast in the role of the incorrigible Grandpa Joe in a new weekly webseries coming out this summer called Existential Chris, animated by @Tthunderb0lt on Twitter. I'll be joined by a few other VA's I've gotten to know on Twitter and Discord who I'm thrilled to work with for the first time!

"Existential Chris" banner on the left, Grandpa Joe on the right! Art by @Thunderb0lt.

Next, I've been contacted by The Story Geeks/The Reclamation Society to come back and record for parts three and four of Death of a Bounty Hunter, a full cast audiobook coming out next year where I play Ellis Warburton II, a banker in way over his head. :) I recorded for part two last December and the Story Geeks crew were amazing as well as the other cast members I met. I can't wait to pop back down to LA in a couple months to help get it finished! The Story Geeks is also a podcast covering geeky topics and their first audiobook, Time Slingers, is due for a general release very soon. So give them a look!

Death of a Bounty Hunter banner belongs to The Reclamation Society/The Story Geeks.

Finally, I've just recently contributed to a standalone mod for Warlords Battlecry 3 (Infinite Interactive, 2004) called The Protectors, where I voice a brutish, growly monster character. I'm not privy to all the modding team's details about their new content, but my contribution should be showing up in the next update! They've been working on and adding to this project for nearly nine years! So if you're a fan of the original game, go ahead and check them out. (And don't forget to support the original game, available on Steam and GOG.)

Banner credit to The Protectors Modding Team.

I am thrilled to be able to contribute to all of these projects, and there is going to be so much more to come. So keep on the lookout for future blog posts from me, and if you haven't already feel free to follow me on Twitter (@StroudKyle) and Instagram (kylestroudva) for news on these and other animations, video games, audiobooks, podcasts, and other roles I get to put my little mark on.

For those of you who have been reading along with me since I've started, and to those of you who still have no idea who I am and may have just clicked on a random retweet, you're all AWESOME and thank you for taking a few minutes out of your day to check me out. This is still only the beginning, and I can't wait to see what the future has in store.