#bread-into-toast

[pokemon-npcs]

@snickeringdragon, @bread-into-toast

(referring to this post)

[humansbgone]

Just binged the whole series. It is all IMMACULATE and (among many other things about the series) your voice acting is fucking incredible!! Any tips for someone who wants to get better with doing different voices?

Aw, thank you so much!!! I really appreciate that. As for voice acting...

(Apologies in advance, I'm using my own terminology for how I think of voices here to describe as well as I can)

This will vary depending on your voice, but I find I have "speaking spaces"--high and low, front and back (feminine voices are usually more in front, masculine in back). So you've got front-high, front-low, back-high, back-low, and then up in your nose (for nasally voices). Work with kind of shifting into these five spaces, and you'll be amazed at the range you can attain! Then, just work on pitching up and down *within* those spaces, and you'll get an even greater variety.

For example, Rose, the ants, the default human, and Violet are all front-high--Rose is the lowest, default human higher, the ants are higher still, and Violet is highest. Sophodra and Commander Vera are front-low, with Vera being lower than Soph. Mundle (the fly), and Harvey (Rose's dad) are both back-high, and Gregorsa is back-low (and then I pitch him down in Audacity even more). Lieutenant Mobia is high, but kind of midway between front and back--I start front, then pull back. This avoids the vibration I usually get from starting in back. (An upcoming weevil and future mosquito will be nasal.)

And yeah, pay close attention to the vibration (that is, whether you can feel a voice really making your vocal cords reverberate)! It makes a very big difference in the way a voice sounds. Sophodra is high-low and has a lot of vibration (she's close to back); Vera is low-low and has very little vibration (closer to front). Rose, Mobia, the default human, and Violet are low vibration, the ants are medium vibration. All the back voices are high vibration.

The way your character thinks about the world also makes a huge difference. You can use what is physically the same voice and make two characters sound completely distinct. Like, what emotions a character expresses (do they seem fearful? snooty? caring?), or how fast or slow a character talks.

There's also accent. Even little regional things! Rose says "sure" quickly like "sher," but Sophodra says it more like a smooth, luxurious "shew-ore."

Finally, it's worth thinking about a character's vocabulary. Not just whether they use big or small words, but the kinds of phrases and wording that will pop to the front of a given character's head. Non-confrontational phrasing, maybe, or phrasing that gets a point across faster. What are your character's priorities when communicating? If you can tell your characters apart even when they're written down, you've got good characterization, and that will carry over to making the voices unique. (Of course, this only applies if you're also doing writing, or allowed to improvise.)

Sorry, I know that's a lot. I hope it helps!

[revretch]

I'd love to learn more about cockroach vision - I'm having a hard time finding a resource that talks about how vision varies by species. Do you have any good resources to recommend, or funky knowledge to share?

I always recommend scholar.google.com for the initial results, then sci-hub (Google for the current address) to unlock! Scientific papers are the best resource, because you're going straight from studies that prove the thing, and aren't half-remembered hearsay like many insect sites. You also have to make sure the papers haven't been disproven since then, of course, since science is always matching forwards.

For instance, I found this resource that says German roaches have color vision (and so, probably also American roaches), meaning I was wrong about yet another animal being colorblind! ;U;

https://academic.oup.com/aesa/article-abstract/80/6/820/2758963

(The search term I used was "American cockroach color vision" without the quotes)

As you'd expect from an animal related to a praying mantis, roaches have very fine vision! You can tell how well an insect can resolve images by how many ommatidia (little eyes) make up the two big compound eyes. The tinier the ommatidia and the more of them there are, the better the insect's vision! (Arachnids, conversely, are more like us, and will rely on a small number of big eyes.)

[littjara-mirrorlake]

Trick or treata

Happy Halloween! You get HAUNTED TRIANGLE.

[leofrith]

what type of music keeps you grounded?

Hi! Sorry for disappearing, I had written a response to this and was about to post it before my computer crashed without warning. Thanks for nothing, Lenovo! Anyways.

31. What type of music keeps you grounded?

Can be any kind of music depending on my mood, but I usually tend to gravitate towards slower electronic type stuff. Or if I need some background music it's soundtracks, instrumentals, or even just music in another language that I don't know. Some of my go-to artists include:

Apparat (and their collab project Moderat)

Bob Moses

Sigur Ros

This Will Destroy You

Kalandra

Daughter (and Elena Tonra's Ex:Re)

Agnes Obel

Send me a number!

[fishyfishyfishtimes]

Favourite aquatic mythological creature?

26. Favourite aquatic mythological creature? Mermaids! I used to not particularly like them as a kid because they were never fishy or interesting enough for me but now as an artist I’ve found a new love for them! I like my merms when they’re more “scientifically accurate” and resemble actual real life fish. Shoutout to aquatic dragons too, I had the biggest dragon phase as a kid and as a water enjoyer they were the shit B)

[chimeride]

If you're accepting submissions: a bishop-fish

Bishop-fish, the 204th Known One.

[pokeology]

(@hex-catcher-jacket) say, yeah - any idea what niche makes the toedscool/tentacool convergence a thing? Wiglett and diglett are both clearly evolved for burrowing, but I don't get what about the toedscool shape works for both a terrestrial runner and an aquatic predator

Complicated. I don't study classical evolution, but I'll hazard a guess.

It may be a tentacool descendant that's adapted for life on land due to competition in the water, similar to wooper. There is a running theory that all life evolved from a common water-type ancestor- that being a very early mew- so it may be a very modern example?