Sonichu Organizing Sonichu Audiobooks -

[Trickie]

Someone in the Sonichu Issue 11 thread suggested that we should get new audiobooks together, and I thought it was a great idea, so I thought I'd start a thread to get things going and start assembling a team.

Ah, but a good team will need a good name, won't it? I think we should call it the Sonichu Audiobook National Implementation Committee. Or SANIC for short. (No? Fine, okay...)

I myself can do a lot of things, although my strength will probably be writing and editing (by which I mean editing text so that it's clear and easy to read and understand), my only problem is how much time I have available.

Additionally, we'll need someone who can do video editing and/or sound editing, as well as someone who can do narration. If you want to be a writer or editor, don't be afraid to throw your hat in either (because I'll probably end up just being an organizer anyway, that is, if someone else doesn't take over organizing this thing)

So, if you're interested in the project, go ahead and chime in here!

 

[MasterDisaster]

Oh I am all for the voiceover. I'll smear my buttery vocals all over your earholes.

 

[Chris-Chan Cure]

I'm interested for this project, i can take care of editing but i'll leave it that to someone more competent among kiwis (i can also fill-in as a writer or for the voiceover if needed).

I'm a fan of the Sonichu Audiobooks and thought about making one myself for Episode 12.5: One Lucky Dog, which was skipped over by Vivi and Deth. While it's a genuinely sad episode that's touching in some ways and i understand why Vivian doesn't wanted to tackle it, there are still many things to make fun of it (as CorruptedGamingShow and Brendaniel demonstrates in their reading).

 

[A Random]

I tried doing an audiobook for the fan-remade version of episode 19 - the Date Ed one.

Though I guess people can see why I didn't finish it [aside from people just not saying a thing].

 

[KingCasio]

Hey, I'd love to help! I can do some video and audio editing in my off time, and I would love to do some tidbit parts in the voice acting area. If you ever need advice with any of those things, hit me up.

 

[GV 002]

I'd love to volunteer my voice for this! Haven't done any audiobook stuff since Tiberius Rising.

 

[SteelPlatedHeart]

I'd like to throw my hat into the ring as well for voicing.

 

[Trickie]

We seem to have a decent amount of interested people, so if you guys and anyone else who stumbles upon this thread want to get started, we can get together on skype (my id is trickie.cat, be sure to let me know that you're adding me to your contacts for the audiobook group).

Here's some of the positions that we'll be looking for:

• Writers and Editors - We'll need a few of these, myself included. Not too many, but enough that we can have some people to work on making the observations of the narration not only clear, but funny as well.
• Voice Work - We'll probably only need a voice for the narrator, though. Doing extra, individual voices for the characters will definitely take extra work (especially on the video editing side), and it'll make things harder to coordinate, so unless we have a massive dedicated effort behind this, I don't know if we want to go that far. The original audiobooks were fine without them, after all. This doesn't necessarily mean we'll only want one narrator, though. I'll be wanting to do a try-out or two with people, and if we get a couple of people who are on the same basic level as far as sound and quality, we can split up the work between them (i.e. have them taking turns narrating the videos).
• Video Editors - We'll need one or two people who can edit videos, which means panning and zooming about the pages as the narration goes on. This can also be split up between two people and they can take turns editing, but they'll need to make sure to stay on the same page as far as style and timing goes if we go that route.

There's also the matter of choosing music for the situation, but that can either be handled by the writers/editors or it can be handled by committee. It's not really something that needs to be its own job.

 

[Handsome Pete]

Someone in another thread mentioned Vivian's annotations on the original audiobooks. Any new audiobooks should probably have something like that, although not necessarily done via YouTube annotations (which are ugly as hell, impossible to save, and subject to disappear whenever YouTube does some behind-the-scenes tinkering). Maybe some kind of pop-up annotations right on the video?

I can't be the only one who loved the annotations, right?

 

[Trickie]

Someone in another thread mentioned Vivian's annotations on the original audiobooks. Any new audiobooks should probably have something like that, although not necessarily done via YouTube annotations (which are ugly as hell, impossible to save, and subject to disappear whenever YouTube does some behind-the-scenes tinkering). Maybe some kind of pop-up annotations right on the video?

I can't be the only one who loved the annotations, right?

That'd be cool, but... how? I'm sure there are people who like annotations, but there are probably people who hate them too. I guess you could try to make separate annotated and non-annotated versions, but that'd get cluttered quickly wouldn't it?

 

[KingCasio]

Guys, we've gotten some work done, and I want to say that it if things continue like they did last night, then we're on our way to having an excellent audiobook!

 

[Trickie]

Yes! I should probably make a quick update.

• Progress! We've got things well underway. We've started getting the script ready, and we've already started doing narration and audiovisual tests to see what we've got to work with and we're looking fantastic so far. Once we've gotten far enough into the process, I hope to release a "preview" of sorts, but not until we've come a lot further along than we are now.
• We're pretty much fully staffed. The positions that we more urgently needed have been filled, so if you were really hoping to come in to be a part of the S.A.N.I.C. Team, feel free to still add me on skype for the skype group, but unless you want to help with the writing and the script editing, you'll probably be on standby.
• We might not release the full thing soon. Now obviously, unless we split the episodes up into parts, we're going to have to wait until the Christmas Special is completed before we can actually finish the first audiobook, and the same for any subsequent audiobooks. If it takes too long we might split it up into parts, but hopefully it won't come to that.
• Annotations! We've also tentatively decided to do two versions of the audiobooks. One without annotations and one with them, just so that we can keep a version with the annotations in tact. They'll also not look quite as ugly (hopefully).

 

[_blank_]

I didn't want to pop my head in here too early, but if you have any work you needed done in a pinch like video editing or illustration or something, feel free to hit me up. I'm already doing a lot of other stuff on the side, but I wouldn't mind being a contributor if the need arises.

 

[Holdek]

I would like to recommend an aspiring voice actor named Anthony LoGatto for a cameo.

 

[YI 457]

Voice acting/editing. Why not.

 

[Marvin]

So, @Holdek and I were talking in IRC, and we were talking about the difference between doing the audiobooks "straight" versus taking some creative liberties with how you portray the characters.

Doing them straight would entail portraying them as Chris imagines them. Like low quality saturday morning cartoon characters. Which is funny, considering how shitty everything is.

However, you could also portray things as a normal viewer might see them, which is of course, how everything is batshit insane.

There are pros and cons to each method, but one argument in favor of taking creative liberties (or at least with this scene), is when Black Sonichu gets called black:

Inos: *low key* happy kwanzaa brother
Black Sonichu: AGAIN!! *breathing hard* HOW MANY TIMES MUST I BE MISTOOK FOR *spluttering* AFRICANNN AMERICANN?? I'M ONLY *hate and bile* BLACK BY A GENETIC ACCIDENT!!!! *huffs* I HAVE NOTHING AGAINST THE HOLIDAY AND THE PEOPLE AND THEIR HERITAGE, BUT COME!!!! ON!!!! DOES MY FUR LOOK LIKE SUNBURN COLOR?? HECKKKKKK!!! NO!!! *hyperventilating*
Bubbles: *scared, like Blake is about to commit a hate crime* Blake... stand down...

This would be very amusing because Chris has no clue how bonkers this scene is. Think you guys can do this? I think it'd be pretty funny.

 

[Trickie]

So, @Holdek and I were talking in IRC, and we were talking about the difference between doing the audiobooks "straight" versus taking some creative liberties with how you portray the characters.

Doing them straight would entail portraying them as Chris imagines them. Like low quality saturday morning cartoon characters. Which is funny, considering how shitty everything is.

However, you could also portray things as a normal viewer might see them, which is of course, how everything is batshit insane.

There are pros and cons to each method, but one argument in favor of taking creative liberties (or at least with this scene), is when Black Sonichu gets called black:

Inos: *low key* happy kwanzaa brother
Black Sonichu: AGAIN!! *breathing hard* HOW MANY TIMES MUST I BE MISTOOK FOR *spluttering* AFRICANNN AMERICANN?? I'M ONLY *hate and bile* BLACK BY A GENETIC ACCIDENT!!!! *huffs* I HAVE NOTHING AGAINST THE HOLIDAY AND THE PEOPLE AND THEIR HERITAGE, BUT COME!!!! ON!!!! DOES MY FUR LOOK LIKE SUNBURN COLOR?? HECKKKKKK!!! NO!!! *hyperventilating*
Bubbles: *scared, like Blake is about to commit a hate crime* Blake... stand down...

This would be very amusing because Chris has no clue how bonkers this scene is. Think you guys can do this? I think it'd be pretty funny.

The idea we had was to play the narration itself mostly straight while allowing it to make amusing observations and exaggerate things where it seems appropriate, and then save the MST3K-like commentary for the annotated version (there's going to be separate videos for this, so that we don't have to deal with youtube's annotation system). So it's not really going to be as over-the-top as the Sonichu animated series, but we're not planning to play it completely straight.

As for that scene in particular, I've talked to MD and I think we can definitely do that.

 

[Shiny Marshtomp]

Hi I run the library and also did voices on the Spazkid series... and a couple things on the original audiobooks as well.

If you want me to advertise this on the library, just ask. You can either make your own video for me to upload or I can throw together a fast one (I don't have any good video editing software on this computer right now.) Like 15k+ people subscribe to it so you'll get plenty of eyeballs seeing it.

 

[Marvin]

Another thought: Can Kevin have a really cartoonish, stereotypical Jewish accent? Like Woody Allen.

 

[MasterDisaster]

Another thought: Can Kevin have a really cartoonish, stereotypical Jewish accent? Like Woody Allen.

I actually wanted to do that; been practicing it just for that occasion.