Entry 001: Azlina, my public voice roles so far, and where my voice acting passion stems from

I got the honors to do Robby24's voiced animation project by voicing Yunero's Azlina around late last year.

Apparently my role started to come in right before a minute in. Ya kno, building lore first.

I also had to build up the courage to FINALLY watch this WHILE listening to it when I was in a closed-friend group chat and the conversation about personal project suddenly sparked. That part of the session was... worth it. Guaranteed lots of excited screaming and, pretty touching feeling during the end there.

I honestly felt super bad to Robby on responding SO late on my reaction because we did back and forth chat for the briefing session up to WIP-sharing session. During the voice-rolling process he was so understanding with my free time, and very supportive with my voice acting skill. I'm confident to say that we need more directors like him, to express ourselves as we develop.

Out of multiple voice roles I've done in the community and online in general (for maybe 7 years online now, since 2015?), I'd say voice-casting as Azlina in this one is the most improved version I could ask for thanks to my new phone and very supporting home conditioning. Thick blanket and Audacity are also my best pals supporting my voice cleanliness. 

And now, we're talking about the flashback...

Surely, at one point, I like to get reminded on how far my liking if not.. 'passion'.. for voice acting stems from back when classic Cartoon Network rolled not-too kid-friendly shows, Disney XD's Kick Buttowski still rocked on, and Nickelodeon rolled badarse Avatar: The Legend of Aang and Hey Arnold! It has been sort of engrained in my brain that cartoon isn't just something that only kids can enjoy, heck years later I still do nowadays. I have dozens of unwatched animated movies (looking at you, Studio Ghibli), to be finished Avatar: The Legend of Aang series, Teen Titans, My Hero Academia, and tons more for the games and some of their memorable voice acting. Well, some of them - to me Assassin's Creed III and IV: Black Flag still stand out for me.

Kick Buttowski gonna kick the school gym to a new experience! Also, Flash animation series being made into TV show ftw.

Out of these buncha name drops, there's one and only one that stands out to where I ended up finally getting my interest in voice acting at.

Turma da Mônica

Even after decades, I still damn wish there'd be dedicated English voice actors wanting to do these but I do wonder what can happen behind the scenes... heck I'd be interested to voice act this series in my local language since they used to publish the translated version of this comic series.

Upon typing this blog I actually ended up watching some of the recent marathons (would skip the ones that didn't provide Portuguese >>> English auto-translation though), and I laughed a lot. Very glad these voice actors haven't changed even after decades of its existence, especially Jimmy Five/Cebolinha character being voiced by Ang

é

lica Santos. I believe knowing how she managed to role a boy in this series is such an inspiration to me on wanting to do more voice roles despite the gender limitation.

Also the fact that the animation style isn't that difference from the comic definitely what makes it still standing out on my taste.

I suppose a series introduction for those who just noticed this series would be without characters, so here's my attempt.

The plot's basically quite simple with these kids' series, from left to right:

- Jimmy Five/Cebolinha: A boy with only 5 hair strands and dozens of infallible plans to steal Monica's blue rabbit doll where the boys deemed it dangerous to be kept around. Among the gang, he's the only one that wears shoes. Has an issue with spelling words with 'r', so in English he'd misspell them with 'w' (e.g. really becomes weally, library becomes libwawy, something like that), but in Portuguese, he'd misspell 'r' with 'l'. Also also, he was meant to be the true protagonist in the franchise until Monica showed up.

- Monica: Ah, the so-called Limoeiro gang leader. Strong as hell, could spin Samson a.k.a. her blue rabbit doll to be a makeshift helicopter and.. to hit naughty boys who would call her out with taunts. Would be very demanding with her position at times, even between friends. She do be like that.

- Smudge/Cascão: Dirty boy who hates water, fears it, even. I'm surprised his gang stays with him despite the filthy smell he has. I believe out of other gang 'members', he's the one with the most creative imagination when it comes to create scenario with toys. I love this episode where he tells his friends that toys can't do stuff to you, you should be the one that does stuff with your toys.

- Maggy/Magali: Adorable girl who loves eating. Like, a lot. Always stays hungry even after eating tons of them. Her younger cousin is very much the exact opposite of her when it comes with appetite, though. Made that one comic up there slightly more sensible, did it not?

Heck I am SO into the series I made myself a Discord thread specified for these videos to understand the plots. Only works with some of the manually-captioned videos, though...

Other experiences?

Before my current pull with Yunero's Azlina up there (not canon to the actual owner of the character, and I can understand that), I also tried voicing Damond (indigo stick character) in Hanif13's Arzon Action E5. Using this super old SF-666 microphone with less-audio interface, I cringed quite a lot watching this one and would stop at some points... my current phone was much more superior to take cleaner results.

I remember Hanif mentioned about my voice going to get low-pitched, aand it might as well be right hahaha, I hadn't asked him since this video release. ALSO, after 4 friggin' YEARS I finally had the courage to listen to this animation with the voices. I wasn't that bad doing those expressions, after all.. I think. I'msorryHanif

As another example, there was this other one.

Oh dear me, one of probably the most cringey form of voice acting I've ever done even with my own character... someday I'll make my own. Still had a blast on having that done.

I used to audition as follows:

• Zeurel's Monkey Wrench pilot as that one annoying 'space cat'-looking, Scratch. Didn't get the role. I remember still using poor mic quality if not my acting skill wasn't convincing enough.
• Gildedguy's Falcomaster3000 Ep. 2 as the narrator. Again, didn't get the role. Likely the mic issue and not-so-convincing accent. Latter becomes a bit of issue since I use super simple English on daily basis. Feel free to listen at my take.
• As I was listing this and checking my old emails, I apparently used to audition as an old mate's Happy Tree Friends OC... haha. I'd like to link it but I'm afraid he may have moved on from that phase so I wouldn't link stuff here, unfortunately. I remember getting the role, I think? I honestly forgot whatever happened to the final result, but I got praised despite 2015 darned even-lower audio quality.

Something to expect you to see me more into voice acting world would be:

• vyrde's Ardiani for a supposedly-1K Q & A sub special (and animation by 5LUG_GIRL/MINDY woot woot!). Perhaps they'll consider 5K special. Status: All lines acted, unless they want me to take more lines, which I'm welcome about.
• Hatena360's Alive stickfigure movie? I should definitely go to the audition asap... I'm interested with that news anchor role and I got just the right references for that (love me The Onion). Here's the audition audio, and I did a civilian take, too.
• I'm totally gonna list more when I get into more role auditions.

Learning about voice acting and even having passion in it does affect my life, I think I get to do silly voices ever so often whenever I want to just... cope. Or I feel it's something to ease myself out of duty stress aside of games.

...only if there are scripts of it.

I lack time to make one nowadays. Even this blog that's supposed to be released at the beginning of this year gets delayed a lot due to duty stuff and, probably some time mismanagement in my side. Which is why I tend to voluntarily apply for ones I have interest on or when being approached upon.

And boy, maybe it'll be about time I get to voice act in my own project.