So things have been odd recently. Sometimes good, sometimes bad, sometimes boring, sometimes going at a mile a minute.

First thing's first, I've started a webcomic with a friend. It's called Dumb! Seeing as it's Halloween, I've made a Halloween comic!

Anyway, it's rad, check it out!

I'm also officially a crew member of the Bashurverse! They're working on the 4th episode of "The Adventures of Hobo", a very well-made machinima series made in Minecraft! Here's a link to episode one (winner of the minecraft video contest!)!

Episode 4 is right around the corner, and I've done the voices of several guards in a chase scene! It's going to be awesome!

And finally, I've made a new voice demo. It's only on Youtube right now. I'll upload it to Newgrounds soon: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RvU1rFv 9UyY

I don't know, something is being stupid right now and I can't embed youtube videos. Anyway, click the links above! They're nice links.

- Matt

So even though school had finished and I'm done with college (for now, at least), I'm still incredibly busy!

Big big collaborative projects on the way! I won't touch on a lot of them, as this post would then be huuuuuge! But I do want to talk about some highlights here!

While you're here, I'm going to go ahead and plug my voice demo again. Always on the look out for more work! My contact information is in the description box on the other side of the link.

AND if you're still reading, my friend Sam just recently made a thing that I sorta helped with (as far as refining the joke). It's a little comic put together to tell a joke, and for practice drawing in a different style than Sam's used to. Check it out (also he still needs to be scouted! Someone get on that!): http://www.newgrounds.com/art/view/sup ermegadragon/fisher-of-men

Alright! Now that that's all out of the way, I'd just like to publicly thank Elfman-Rox for letting me be a part of Long Lost Bike! It blew me away that something I was in (even if my part was small, it's still amazing to me) won the Daily 2nd AND was featured on the front page of Newgrounds! I've visited Newgrounds often since I was like, twelve or younger, so it's kind of a huge deal to me.

On another note, my cousin and I recently put this together to make fun of an emo kid: The Cold Endless Darkness. I narrated the poem, while David did the ambient sound and music! We were pretty pleased with how it turned out. (Also I'm a bit mad that you can't give credit to multiple authors in the audio portal. I really hope all of the Portals run in a way similar to how the Flash Portal is run now when the site redesign launches)

And as far as future plans are concerned, my friend Cody is going to animate my voice demo, as well as work with Sam to animate several scenes written and voiced by David and myself. Some time down the line, Sam and I plan on revamping the "Jon Wonton" video because we feel that the acting and animation reall diminishes the comedic value of the script. David and I plan to do a collaborative story-telling thing. David's going to write a story bit by bit, and then I'm going to help him present it in an audio format by narrating the story and creating ambiance for the settings within it. It's going to be like a cross between a radio play and an audio book. Should be rad.

I'm also currently recording lines for several outside projects I was scouted for or auditioned for. There's one in particular I'm very excited about, but I won't get into that right now.

Aaaaand the other big news is that I am looking for a job with all of my previous work experience being in radio. It's not going that great. I'm going to need a job if I'm going to move out soon. Living with other artists, and having a room set aside as a studio for making things... It's gonna be awesome. But first I need money! Ooof. Gotta apply for more jobs.

I'm going to leave you now with a like to my Twitter account for emphasis. Following me will really help me getting my whole "voice actor" thing going, and I promise I won't spam your timeline. I try to only tweet interesting things (with mixed results, mind you).

Thanks for your time!

- Matt

I've made a new voice demo! Check it out!

http://www.newgrounds.com/audio/listen /418899

It kicks the crap out of my old one. This one makes me sound like a professional! I am really happy with it.

In other news, Sons of Valor finished. The last parts are incredibly intense. I'd like to publicly thank everyone involved for letting me be a part of this. The story is fantastic, and they know how to shoot an action scene. Here are the final episodes:

And for those who still haven't seen it, here's the first episode of Sons of Valor:

As far as other projects I'm involved with, I recently did an interview with Tyson Hesse of Boxer Hockey. Tyson moved to my hometown, and a couple students from the high school I graduated from managed to snag him for an interview (meaning they asked him if it would be cool with him on Twitter). Anyway, they asked me to be the person to interview him. It was pretty fantastic. The interview will end up on Youtube some time in the future, and I'll certainly be linking it here.

Boxer Hockey: http://boxerhockey.fireball20xl.com/

That's all for now, folks.

- Matt

GRRRRAGGHHH HFUCKING DCGEDSKLFJ WERGFOJDS

JESUS

So Blue. You know Blue? Top-of-the-line audio equipment manufacturers? Yeah?

They've got $2000 microphones and shit. Their customer support is NON-EXISTANT. How is this possible?

My tale of woe is as follows:

A few days before Thanksgiving Break, I call Blue up with a question regarding my microphone. See, I'd noticed a strange issue with my Blue Yeti, and figured they'd have an idea of how to remedy it.

The issue was that the zero-latency feedback headphone jack wasn't working properly. When I plugged my microphone into my computer, and plugged my headphones into the headphone jack on the microphone, I couldn't hear anything. So I uninstalled the drivers, and tried again after reinstalling them. Once again, couldn't hear anything out of the jack, and the feedback was actually playing through my computer. So again, I uninstall, restart the computer, and plug it back in. The driver's install, but I still have my headphones in. Then I noticed something: When the drivers aren't installed, the microphone works perfectly, I hear the zero-latency feedback and everything. As soon as the drivers finish installing, it stops working.

So I call this number, and I press buttons to get the machien to take me to someone who would know how to fix this. I get the woman at what is the equivalent of their help desk I guess. I explain all of the above, and the fact that I'm running Windows 7 home premium on a Dell laptop.

Hurp-dee-dee, I spent like two minutes explaining everything so she could know exactly what my situation was and the only reply I get is "Yeeaahh... That shouldn't happen at all. Go onto our website and fill out a service request form. Ask for an advanced replacement." I ask more questions, because I'd rather not send my microphone in as I honestly believe there isn't anything wrong with it, but she's convinced there's some sort of hardware defect with my particular microphone.

So I thank her and I hang up and get on my computer. I fill out the entire form, but I get to the Serial Number thing. I was pretty sure I knew which of the numbers on the box to put in there, but I wanted to make sure I did this all right. So I call back. However, their business hours had ended, and I got the answering machine. The woman's voice came up, telling me basically "Welcome to Blue customer Support. I'm not in right now. If you believe there's a problem with your microphone, go onto our website and fill out a service request form and ask for an advanced replacement." The exact same information I got from speakign directly to this person, I got from their voicemail message. Fuck.

So I plug in the numbers, and the next day I get an email with a thing I need to fill out and include with my microphone when I send it back. I fill it out and mail it on the 30th of November.

Twelve fucking dollars it costs me to ship this thing to them. Whatever, I'll have my microphone back good as new soon, whatever. It gets there in two days. Bam. Excellent. I should expect it back in two days, four or five tops, right? Seven if they're having a bad week, yeah?

WRRROOOONG

It's December 8th. I go back home to Springfield TOMORROW. I need to have my microphone if I'm to make my deadlines over the break, and work on new projects and other shit. So I give them another call. I get the same chick, I guess she's the onyl one who works at that part of the company or something? My microphone still hasn't been shipped to me, and I need it to be shipped to SPRINGFIELD, not to Ashland, because I'll be gone over winter break and the school's mail station isn't open during winter break and shit. She totally understands and I tell her the new address it needs to be shipped to, she tells me she's got it all set, and it should get shipped out tomorrow.

Fucking RAD! It'll be at my house two days after I get there! Two days to chill and plan, then I can get to recording!

It isn't shipped for ten god damned days. I get the Fed Ex email so I can track it and it says it should get here about the 21st. Whatever, I'll have it before Christmas, I can do all my screaming while people are out of the house doing last-minute shopping so I'm not scaring everyone (I have to do a pretty hysterical scream for Son's of Valor, and I was looking forward to NOT having to do that in my little dorm and freak everyone the fuck out but HAHA no (also my sister needed my microphone to make a present for my mom but that's not going to happen NOW is it?). Again, I get that email on the 18th. I figure it'd get here on the 20th considering it took two days to get down to california before, so it should take the same amount of time to get here, yeah?

On the 20th it's in Central Point, Oregon. Damn. Well it'll get here on the 21st, it'll all be good, right?

21st, it's still in Central Point. Whatever, it's Christmas Season. It got delayed a day. No biggie.

The 22nd rolls around. My microphone is STILL in Central Point. What the HELL?

So I go and look at the tracking date thing. Try to figure it all out. Oh.

It's being shipped to Ashland, motherfucking Oregon. The place I told them NOT to ship it to. The school's mail system doesn't run over Winter break. so it's sitting. In Ashland. Waiting to be picked up and put somewhere where I can pick it up. See, I couldnt' go down there and pick it up now even if I had to means to do so. It's waiting to be picked up by the mail people at the school. I can't pick it up until it reaches the school.

I missed out on being able to do any christmas specials (I was actually scouted for one, but I had to disappoint because of this). My sister never got to make her present. I was unable to get voice-related work done. And now I have to deal with the loud-ass halls and try to find a time of peace to disrupt with my screaming and this whole thing has become a big dumb unfun pile of shit.

Thanks Blue. Merry Christmas. Happy new year. Blow me.

I need to go to bed.

- Matt

P.S. If the new microphone is "defective" I will destroy the world.

So college is actually exactly as overwhelming as it's made out to be. That was a big shocker to me.

Been meeting a bunch of new people, freaking out about classes and the credits they may or may not entail, eating healthy (I don't do coffee or energy drinks, so real sustenance is pretty important for me), strange surges of homework, tests, working out for the first time in my life, and trying to get enough sleep. Long story short, I've been busy.

Unfortunately, the biggest side-effect of all of this is that I have not done anything creative at all. I recorded lines for a couple projects, but one of them was just three lines of my normal voice, and the sound file for the other got all screwed up. Also, I haven't written anything: no scripts, no short stories, no poems, nothin'.

So there's good news, and there's bad news about my artistic side.

Good news first; one of the projects I have a part in finally came through. Episode 6 of Sons of Valor (the season finale, and the first episode I'm in) just came out! Check it, I'm Pvt. O'Keefe, the guy with the skull hat:

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Pretty rad, yes? It could just be because it's my regular voice, but it feels like my lines are a bit jarring. I dunno. Friggin' rad episode, though (even if my first name is spelled wrong in the credits).

Also, the first game in an independant episodic game series is pretty much done, and all that's left to do is put in the lines.

Bad news now:

The lines I recorded for my first character are really warbly and sound like crap. I need to re-record them, but I can't at this time because I believe:

There is some kind of hardware issue with my microphone. A Blue Yeti. Don't get me wrong, it is my favorite microphone in the world, but the technical support from those guys is non-existant, and there's some strange defect with mine. There's a silver lining though, I'll get a replacement for free if I send it back, and they're going to like, priority mail it or something.

There are also a few other hangups in my life and in various projects that I feel should not be mentioned at this time, but all in all, it's good.

I'm on Thanksgiving break now, and it is so nice. Seeing my friends and family after two months has been more amazing than I thought it would be (also sleeping in my own real bed that doesn't screw up my back is fantastic).

I'm hoping that during this week, I can at least write one piece of fiction. I stated at the beginning of the break that I would write three short stories, but I don't think that's a wise thing to try to do while I'm trying to relax. Besides, I could always narrate it and submit it to the Audio Portal. That would dampen my currently ridiculous need to pump out a new voice demo (the first half of this sentence is god-awful, but It's late and I don't really care). That'd be nice.

There was something else I was gonna say, but I'm now at a loss...

Hm..

Well, I'm sure I'll remember while I'm trying to fall asleep, get mad, and then decide it's not worth posting about anyway.

I'm out.

- Matt

So looking for new new voice parts to audition for has kind of been put on the backburner. What have I been doing otherwise, you ask? Preparing for college, and taking my last chance to laze about for days on end for probably nine months or so.

Through the marathon of videogames and hanging out with friends, though, I have been keeping up with voice parts that I've gotten already. The most recent project I've finished my lines for is Tales from the Void, by Zach Hinchy.

Tales from the Void is an animated series which follows nine characters (in every sense of the word) who are the sole inhabitants of this infinite plain of existance. This place just happens to have all sorts of objects, like video cameras, and buildings. The inhabitants don't really notice how strange this is, and just go about their every day life running around causing mischief.

It's going to air on public access television near where Zach lives. I'm not entirely sure if it will be hosted anywhere on the web, but here's hoping. This sounds like a really fun project.

I play Ol, who is the president of the place all the characters live (which is called, by the way "Americanadia"), but he doesn't really do much "official" stuff. You can see a picture of him here.

He's an interesting character for me. His voice is the first voice I've ever done that was uncomfortable for me. I've done voices that hurt to do, and voices that were tiring, but none that were uncomfortable. I don't know what it is. Ol had a voice actor before me, and I had to try to match the old voice actor as best as I could. But I do impressions all the time, so that can't be the reason. I can't quite put my finger on it. After doing all the lines for the first episode, though, I'm quite a bit more comfortable with the voice.

I look forward to seeing what this project will evolve into as new episodes are added. Should be pretty awesome.

To read a bit more about the characters, and learn about the series in general, head to talesfromthevoid.com (where you can even hear the extended mix of the theme song). There's a countdown to the episode's air date on the website too (also my name is on it if you click on Ol, which is amazing).

So keep your eye on this. It should be rad.

... He says on a day he woke up at 12:24 PM.

So anyway, as I said in my last post, I've bought a microphone. And it's really good. The Blue Yeti. I am wondering how I ever got by with the school's Samsung C01 microphones. I mean, they only record in mono! What the hell??

So anyway, that's one of the reasons I've put out a voice demo. The jump in quality from the old school recordings to the ones on my microphone is mind-numbing. Scared me a little when I heard it.

Anyway, the real reason I've made a voice demo is because I've recently been browsing the Voice Acting Alliance forums and looking for parts to audition for. They sometimes want a voice demo along with your auditions, especially in the bigger projects with a lot of extras to fill in.

Anyway, I was chosen to play Pvt. Dan O'Keefe in an Arma II machinima series. His first appearance will be in part 6, titled "New Recruits". Each part is like a full episode, averaging at a little over twenty minutes each. The series, which has 5 parts out at the moment, has a run time of about 1 hour and 46 minutes.

Here's the first half of episode 1:

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It's a very ambitious project, and they're planning on concluding the story on part 10. I would recommend watching it, especially if you have nearly two hours to kill. Each episode is better than the last, as they learn from past mistakes, and figure out different tricks. Above all, though, the combat scenes are intense as hell. Check it out.

Part 6, the part I'll be in, is scheduled to be released November 24th, along with part seven, and possibly part 8. I don't know how set in stone that is, but I'd certainly bet on it. They're very professional about the production of each episode.

My lines for part 6 have been recorded and approved, so all I have left to do is wait.

In other news, I've been auditioning for several other parts, including a couple games. Those were fun to do, and I'm still waiting to hear back from most of them. I've settled into quite a rhythm over the past few days, and I'm lovin' it.

If anyone would like to recruit my voice for anything, just shoot me a private message. I love contributing to other peoples' projects.

I leave you with a picture of my "home studio".

Until next time.

- Matt

Well. All two (maybe three) of you that will read this. I am finished with High School. And while I said I swore off of animating in my last news post (almost a year ago), I have animated once again. Not because I wanted to, mind you, because it was necessary.

Anyway, not that I am out of high school and no longer need to do grade-based flash bullcrap, I really won't be touching flash to make movies, unless i suddenly get really good at drawing. It's just a huge hassle every time.

This last video, here, Reach for the Sky, was the final product of our senior project. The product fell preposterously short. The process, however, was, for the most part, a success.

Last summer, Sam and I decided that a good idea for a senior project would be a 15-minute long sci-fi flash animation. We really couldn't think of anything beyond that. I just knew I wanted a stretchy character. Anyway, we presented the idea to Cody, our dedicated "idea-thinker".

The next day, he had a main character, a whole cast of bad guys, several space ship designs, and little planetoid colony designs. We continued brainstorming from there.

Eventually we had a story outline, and we realized to make this video look GOOD, we'd have to recruit a bunch (read: at least a couple) of people to help us out. The problem was that the three of us were the only people in our school (of about 200) who knew ANYTHING about Flash. So we decided the main part of our senior project (basically, a little more than the first half) would be to get a group of students together and teach a class. Hell yeah, suck it.

So basically we tried teaching a weekly after-school class, but interest began fading FAST. So we had to come up with some other plan. Our school has this stupid thing throughout January that they call "J-term", where basically you get a break form school but you still have to go to school every day. We usually just refer to it as "a big waste of time". However, we were able to get permission from the school staff to teach a half-day class every day for the month. We wrote up a basic curriculum and then I went off to do a 1-month internship at a radio station and had a blast.

Sam and Cody were in charge of teaching the curriculum alongside two real tteachers who were teacing a completely different subject. It blew, apparently. Everyone could tween, and insert sound, but beyond that, most of the class really just didn't care.

There were two kids, though, that wanted to keep on helping us out, and their names were AJ and Adrion. AJ went on to teach himself some crazy actionscript coding stuff, and Adrion went a little nuts about the possibilities Flash offered.

So we got our lines recorded, and I began dividing them up, and passing scenes around, all while trying to manage them attempting to create some art style that everyone was supposed to try to mimic, all while being yanked around by nearly every teacher in the school over 3 separate OTHER projects whose deadlines were very VERY close to ours. On top of that, we were promised we'd have time during school where twice a week for an hour and a half at a time where all five of the team members could sit down and animate. We never got that time.

Eventually, our project became far too overwhelming for our "students" and they had to drop out of the project. We tried to push on, but there were so many outside forces bogging us downthat we were only able to move at a snails pace.

Finally we decided screw it, we're going to cut this down to a trailer, and then THAT got cut down. Our final product is the trailer that you see has been uploaded today.

There were really two of us who were interested in Flash, and we managed to bring two Freshmen up to our level of Flash "prowess", thus giving them a headstart. Hopefully, they'll make a bigger impact on our four-year-old school with Flash than we did. Either way, it was a crazy process, mostly thanks to our school's inability to manage time. Ah well.

And that, ladies and gentlemen, is why predetermined deadlines are pretty dumb most of the time.

Anyway, as far as the future goes, I'll be uploading a few audio-only scenes from Reach for the Sky to the Audio Portal over the next few days. I just uploaded two today.

I've bought my own microphone, a Blue Yeti. It's a fantastic little device. Expect something after I get the RFTS scenes uploaded.

Other than that, I've got a few little tiny projects in mind, and I'm looking to collaborate with others in the future. If you're looking for a voice actor, you know where to find me.

Until next time.

- Matt

Well Sam, there you go. Enjoy your disappoint.

So there's a new Waffleman-esque cartoon out now, titled "Bagelopolis Short 1". As its name implies, it is the first of many (none) short about the citizens of Bagelopolis. Also this is probably the last "Waffleman Movie" the world will ever see, so savor this. You can watch it here: http://www.newgrounds.com/portal/view/
508646

I'm very proud of the writing, and I can only hope that that alone is good enough so that people will get a laugh out of it.

Which reminds me, I am resigning from animating seriously ever again. I don't have the steady hands required for it, and I am surrounded by people with the skills needed who are (sort of) willing to do it. So from now on, flashes I submit will be pretty. I promise.

And that brings me to my next point: THA FYOOTCHURR!!!

Over the next ten months, I will be acting as producer for a truly ambitious flash animation. Right now it's codenamed "Reach for the Sky". It's the thrilling tale of how a space-cop saves the galaxy from bad guys. Stay tuned.

But no, seriously. I'm required to make this one good, so you guys should favorite me now, so you can be the first to see the movie on the internet in ten months (Alternate sentence: DURR HURR HURR HURR DUHURRRRR). I'll be producer, and the head writer for the movie. Cody will be co-director and co-head writer (lolololol), and Sam will be a co-writer and the head animator, because he can actually draw. Now, Cody and I could fail high school if we don't pull this off, so we're going to be putting blood, sweat, and tears into this thing (and Cody will add a dash of lazy, for taste), but Sam has nothing riding on this, and is just helping out out of the goodness of his heart. THANKS SAM~~~! <33333

So keep on the look-out, because you may find more late-night ramblings of me complaining about the movie in the near-future. Won't that be fun?

I'M OUT

So I wrote a "Waffleman Short". It was originally going to be an easter egg for the "third" Waffleman movie, but Cody has animated about ten seconds of it, and he did that last week.

I actually just now finished animating it. It's got background music, which is nice. It's rushed though, and you can totally tell. All the animation was done today. Once I make credits for it to be presented at school, I'm going to tweak a few things then put it up here on Newgrounds. I'm also going to re-upload Waffleman 2 with better audio. That seems to be the number one complaint among people I show it to.

Anyway, I'm going to say this: never again am I going to animate a whole movie by myself. I simply cannot draw, which makes me impatient, which makes me rush, which makes my "animation" even worse. Cody can draw, our friend Sam can draw. They're both capable of animating, just one chooses not to, the other hasn't really been formerly introduced to animating.

Anyway, the reason I put this off to the last minute was because I had no choice. This flash movie is due tomorrow. If I don't get it in tomorrow, I don't get a grade for Tech Media, and it doesn't get shown to the school.

So yeah, I'm going to go finish that up now. Good night.