Just happy wiggly soundwaves

(Full actual official thank you post tomorrow because it's late but oh my god, thank you. THANK YOU.)

Behold the custom stamp! I designed the school’s emblem on Canva and got a stamp done because I thought it would be fun 🤩

With under two weeks left in our Season 3 Kickstarter, we have just over $1600 to raise to make it to a greenlight for season 3! Pre-production continues apace--in fact, tonight we are reading the final batch of scripts with a small group of our main cast--with the hopes that we can pull the trigger on setting recording dates the second we make our goal (we have the studio on standby for reservation and cast emails drafted and ready to go as I type this), and get the season in your ears as soon as possible - but we'll need your help to get there. The best thing you can do for us, if you've already contributed or aren't in a place to contribute, is help us spread the word about the show. We are very much in a place in this campaign where every small donation pushes us that much closer to the finish line, so if you've been waiting for the right moment to recommend us to a friend or family member, this is a great time!  

Now twelve years later I spent some time this evening trying to track down that comment to give a very belated clarification. Whoever you were stranger, hey. I only said no because I based Carlos heavily on me, and since I wasn’t autistic, Carlos wouldn’t be either. Well. I’ve learned some stuff in the intervening decade that strongly support your literary analysis.

[Image description: digital drawing of Gwen Hartley and Boots from Second Star to the Left podcast. They are both facing away from the viewer, with Gwen kneeling on one knee while she points with her laser sword at a group of weird looking trees in front of them. Her space suit and leg prosthesis have small scratches and is slightly smudged with dirt. Boots - a spherical robot with wheels on each side and colored a pale yellow - also has some dirt and scratches, indicating that they been traveling for a while. They are surrounded by large blue green and yellow cabbage-like plants. The group of trees in front of them have very thick - almost egg-shaped - trunks topped with small clumps of purple-orange leaves. Their exposed roots raise them from the ground, almost as if they were walking. End description]

TRANSCRIPT

Exciting news, detectives! A generous benefactor has offered to match all pledges to our Kickstarter campaign dollar-for-dollar through Sunday, 7/5, up to $500! If you've been waiting for the opportune moment to contribute, this is a great chance to maximize the impact of your pledge!

The game developer part of my brain is usually very aware of something called dev blindness. When you're making a game, most developers are keenly aware that the act of making it has trained you to be -- literally -- the best person in the world at it. Holding that awareness in your head -- even when making audio drama! -- is EXTREMELY useful. Because parsing sonic information is a skill, and it is something that our listeners are exercising their imaginative muscles to do to follow along. What can, to us, feel like further richness over a foundation we're extremely familiar with, can to a listener feel like one step too far into 'brain hurty' hours to figure out this brand new thing you're exposing them to. What's really helped me combat this -- without just swinging way over into extreme minimalism -- is being very purposeful about breathing room. My number one note after any finished mix is usually, "how can we make this about 80% slower across the board"? Especially at the start of a new show, when we're still learning how all the elements fit together -- and even if it initially sounds okay to me. Because it's not about me, it's about the person we're trying to coax into this world. Audio is one of the few mediums where we get to take our time. TV networks tend to push for constand dialogue/action, and acting in so many mediums means pushing for realism that drives towards "fast and thrown away". I love that audio gets to be, uniquely, a "take your time" type of medium. Injecting time between transitions, or spacing out your dialogue and in-scene action a little more, doesn't detract from all the ambitious things you may otherwise be doing with your sound. So that's the thought of the day, in what I hope I can keep up as a daily series. I'm so grateful that so many of you have followed me so soon, before I've had the chance to really say or do anything of interest here, and I feel compelled to try to earn the kindness you've already shown! If there are any questions or themes you'd like to throw my way, I'd really love that. I get to spend most of my days actively working on audio drama for most of them, and I'd love to share the many wonderful things I get to learn from the extremely talented rooms I get to be in.

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Hi Tumblr! My name's Roshan -- I'm an audio drama creator with the Singapore-based studio Andas Productions. We're all about shows with a sense of wonder, scale and heart. We especially love adapting stories! (See: DC High Volume: Batman, Temujin, catskull, and Sayang.) I love everything you're about, Tumblr, though I must confess I'm just a little bit terrified of the many buttons and columns and sub-tabs you possess. Though many of my friends think you're the coolest and I've only heard nice things, so I hope we can get along. I especially love over-thought, over-written posts. Is that acceptable here? The internet hasn't been friendly to big text dumps elsewhere for a while and I'm hoping maybe that's cool here. That'd be nice. (Tagging @thelaurenshippen who has been so effusively supportive of me hopping on here -- am I doing this right?)

They just released a supercut, and it is appropriately the length of an epic movie, about two and a half hours long. Listen to it, and listen to the talkback episode, and revel in gorgeous historical adaptation.

#ForAmbrosius