Blue Sky: The Podfic

This Tumblr is dedicated to turning the Portal story Blue Sky into a full-cast audiofic. Don't know what Blue Sky is? See here. - Thank you to Waffles, the author, for letting us do this. Contact the directors and co-producers here (never feel embarrassed if you want a question answered), or e-mail them at [email protected]. You can also note the director at her deviantART page. Portal, Portal 2, and all characters in the series are property of Valve. Blue Sky, original characters, and the Human!Wheatley design belong to Waffles. Co-directed and co-produced by Artoveli and Ridel. Click on the tabs at the tabs above to find out more.

[podsky]

WELL LOOKS LIKE SOMETHINGS STARTING UP AGAIN!!! YOU CHANGED THE THEME, ERGO, YOU'RE OFF HIATUS

‘:-D

[podsky]

Is the project still going? I've been dying for the next chapter... I loved the first. Reply soon! Thanks!

Understandably, we’ve been getting a lot of notes like this over the past few months.  It’s my pleasure to tell you all that things are finally starting to come together for a release of chapter 2!

Part of the problem has been Harry’s busy schedule.  Since he’s our Wheatley, we can’t really produce the new chapter without him! He’s contacted us recently though to say that his lines should be deposited in the staff drop-box soon.

Another hitch we faced was of course the loss of our original Aaron Halifax. Again, I am pleased to announce that we’ve found a replacement in Mr. Will Sherron, otherwise known as ferrousphantom!

Aaaand the last hitch is really myself, as one of the co-producers, dragging my feet on approving some of GLaDOS’ lines. I’m uh, I’m going to go do that. Now. (or possibly tomorrow)

In the meantime, at least we can all enjoy Portal 2: The (Unauthorized) Musical, which is seriously fantastic and warms our hearts here at Podsky as yet another example of what this fandom is capable of. ^_^

[podsky]

neverrwhere answered your question:OPEN CASTING for role of AARON HALIFAX

My husband definitely has the deep voice, but sadly also comes with a non-negotiable British accent…HMMMM

Ha ha, do you think he’d be open to trying a slightly twangy American accent? I think most of us would be doing an accent, honestly…

[majorajackson]

no offence to this podcast (because i love it) but the way “twangy” is being used above makes it sound like you plan on him having a slightly “southern” accent, but to my knowledge the story takes place in Michigan, right? People in that area talk slow and “normal”, like a typical midwestern “no accent” accent

although it’s the far future, i think it’d be reasonable to say that Aaron would probably talk in the indiana/michigan way of talking which would not include any “twang” but phonetically pronouncing every word (except you and to)

UNLESS 

that’s just how the british reffer to all american accents, here twang is almost always reffering to a southern accent or a hill billy backwater accent

[podsky]

Hm, perhaps "twangy" was the wrong word to use.  we're not looking for a Southern twang so much as a country twang.  Just the slight bit of accent that already comes across in his dialogue as it's written.  Speaking as a Canadian who's spent a number of years living In The Country, you don't have to be a Southern American to have a bit of twang in your voice. :-)

[podsky]

neverrwhere answered your question:OPEN CASTING for role of AARON HALIFAX

My husband definitely has the deep voice, but sadly also comes with a non-negotiable British accent…HMMMM

Ha ha, do you think he'd be open to trying a slightly twangy American accent? I think most of us would be doing an accent, honestly...

[podsky]

OPEN CASTING for role of AARON HALIFAX

Hello everyone!

It seems that due to circumstances beyond his control, our current Aaron Halifax has had to bow out of the project.  As we have reached chapter 2 however, we are in DESPERATE NEED of an Aaron in order to move forward!

So we're reopening casting for this character.  If you feel that you can pull off the role of a tall, powerful, grizzle-haired man of about fifty with a lined, no-nonsense face and craggy brows that suggest that here is a man it would be better to have as a friend than an enemy, please send us an audition tape!  Here's a batch of lines for you to read in any such audition (I left a bit of narration for the sake of direction, but please just read the dialogue):

--

"Well, I better get hoofin'.  Store won't open itself.  See you later, Mystery Girl.  Hey," he added, pausing, "you see that shooting star this morning?  Came right down over the northeast fields just before dawn.  Coulda knocked a vort's eye out- brightest thing you ever saw.  Good omen, huh?"

--

"Well, if Mystery Girl says it can keep till tomorrow, it can keep till tomorrow," said Aaron easily. "I got to get back, anyhow, before Garret brings the place down round his ears.  Thinks he can rig up some new kind of relay to fix all the signal problems he's been having, which is great, 'cept he's turning the whole damn stockroom on its head to do it.  I don't understand half of what's coming out of that kid's mouth these days."

--

"You know, moment I set eyes on him, I thought he reminded me of someone. Took me till just now to place it." His eyes stayed on her, kindly, concerned.  "Someone I met 'bout four years ago now.  Just walked into town one day out of nowhere, just like that.  Jumping at shadows, looking at every little thing like they'd never seen the like of it before, like any second they were going to wake up and find themselves somewhere else.  Somewhere they weren't too partial to, either.  Now, that someone... she was strong, and she got better.  Him, though... Kind of squirrelly, isn't he?"

[podsky]

Alright, so the response to our last post (about whether we should reblog the occasional post about the personal projects of Podsky's individual team members) was very positive! For those who'd rather skip these, we'll be tagging them: podsky member projects

For Spotlight number one, we've got Dawn Michelle Bennett (dawnmbennett), who will be doing the voice of Different Turret (we like to call her Knell :-).  This is not her first time voice acting, and she wanted us to let you know about Freedom Planet, in which she does the voice of the main character, Lilac the Dragon Girl!  Freedom Planet is now available on Steam (PC) and Humble Bundle (PC and Mac).

[podsky]

Hey Podsky! I’m sure you guys are getting a ton of messages about the podcast and such, so I’ll keep this brief. First, can’t wait for Chapter 2 (that goes without saying) and second, if you guys ever do a kickstarter or something like that if you need some extra funds, I will be one of your first supporters :D What you guys are doing is so epic and I would love to help you guys out if you ever open up that option. Anyway, keep up the good work. You guys ROCK! Thanks :3 - ElvenWhovian

Thanks ElvenWhovian! :’)

We can’t really do a Kickstarter or anything like that, because this is a fan project and as much as possible we’re trying to avoid illegality by not accepting money for it.  That being said, this does provide an elegant segue into something we’ve been meaning to ask for a while:

Would you, the fans and audience of Podsky, be open to us reblogging the occasional project from members of the team?  Things like commission announcements, personal kickstarters, or even news of their on-going creative projects?  It wouldn’t be a constant thing, just something once or twice a month (if that). In the case of commissions and kickstarters, it would be a way of funding and supporting the project in an indirect and legal manner, and the team would certainly appreciate it!

Please take a moment to weigh in with your opinions on this- we don’t want to annoy people if it’s actually a terrible idea. XD

[podsky]

Visit Original Link

Hello, patient podsky fans! Popping in with an update on the state of things behind the scenes for episode 2. :-D

First of all, let me tell you about the audio clip up there.  It's actually an unusable intro draft that Matt (our sound editor/the voice of Space Core) put together a while ago.  It's unusable because of copyright laws.  D'OH! But it's so great that we wanted to share it with you anyway. :-)

Now! When we released episode 1 we said that we expected episode 2 to be ready sometime around the end of June.  Clearly, we're a month past that now.  The fact is that we're still waiting for a few people's lines to come in (notably Wheatley's. Harry's a busy guy.  I think we can all agree that it would be difficult to produce chapter 2 without Wheatley! XD).  But they'll come in, don't worry. I don't want to give you a new ETA just in case something else comes up, but I'm still going to say... sometime soon-ish!

In the meantime, enjoy Matt's sadly unusable draft intro, and dream of the chapter to come! ^_^

[podsky]

Hey Blue Sky! I really like that song by Harry101UK, but none of the downloading options work. Is there a way you could provide a download or place to buy the song?

You'll have to talk to Harry about that one.

[podsky]

Going Forward

Hi everyone!  Co-producer/Director Artoveli here, speaking on behalf of the Podsky team.

We've been completely bowled over, blown away, humbled, tumbled, and overwhelmed by your ecstatic response to Podsky chapter 1.  Seriously, the response has been unanimously positive and incredibly supportive!  Shmowzow!

Of course, our inbox has been filling up with messages from understandably curious/worried/cautiously-optimistic people asking what our release schedule is going to be from here on out, which is the main reason for this post.

We've talked about it as a team, and we're going to try a 2-month creation period for each chapter.  A bit of a wait, but compared to TWO YEARS??? it's a veritable fire-hose!

Estimated ETA for Podsky chapter 2: Round-about the end of June.

I'd also like to take this opportunity to give a shout out to Matthew Zuckerman, who did the bulk of the sound work for chapter one, and who will be our chief sound engineer from here on in.  He joined the team originally to play Space Core, but has ended up bringing much, much more to the project.  He also composed most of the original music you heard in the first chapter.

[organicgold]

IT’S REAL AND I’M LISTENING TO IT AND I’M HAVING EMOTIONS

[applebagelunicron]

LET US ALL HAVE EMOTIONS TOGETHER MY FRIEND

[waffleguppies]

HELP I’M HAVING AN EMOTION

[podsky]

Can, can we join you all?  It's been a pretty emotional day for us too... @_@

[podsky]

Visit Original Link

This time it should work!

For those without iTunes.  We love you too! ^_^

See this post for the full credits, as well as the link to download it from iTunes.

[podsky]

Blue Sky - Chapter One: The Recall

Download Chapter 1 from iTunes

Space, thought Wheatley, was big...

Chapter 1 credits:

Author - Waffleguppies

Directors - Mocha, Artoveli, Ridel

Sound Engineers - Devin Zoltowski, Matthew Zuckerman

Music - Harry Callaghan, Matthew Zuckerman

Narrator - Talythia Starseeker

GLaDOS - Jessica Eggerth

Wheatley - Harry Callaghan

Space Core (Kevin) - Matthew Zuckerman

Announcer - James Hyett

Chapter 1 image art - Marshtwain

Portal is the property of Valve

[podsky]

Re: The Posting Issues

Thanks for all the suggestions guys!  We've been trying to post the link from a DropBox account, but it's not working.

HOWEVER, You will still receive it today because we're putting up a direct link to download it from iTunes! :-D

Just one moment while we get it ready...

[podsky]

Last-minute uploading issues

Hi everyone!

We're attempting to post chapter one, but the file won't play in the draft!  It's an external link, since the actual file is far too large to upload from a desktop.

Any thoughts on what the problem might be, or how to get around it? Please send us a note! We're all itching to release this thing, and such a last-minute hitch is really frustrating!

[podsky]

Visit Original Link

Space, thought Wheatley, was big...

Download chapter 1 from iTunes

Chapter 1 Credits:

Author - Waffleguppies

Directors - Mocha, Artoveli, Ridel

Sound engineers - Devin Zotowski, Matthew Zuckerman

Music - Harry Callaghan, Matthew Zuckerman

Narrator - Talythia Starseeker

GLaDOS - Jessica Eggerth

Wheatley - Harry Callaghan

Space Core (Kevin) - Matthew Zuckerman

Announcer - James Hyett

Chapter 1 image art - Marshtwain

Portal is the property of Valve

[podsky]