Forums, Production and Awards

 
The Voice Acting Alliance  This forum is deadicated to the production and showing off of audio production in it's varied and various forms. The members are welcoming and ready to offer useful advice to people who are technically and artisically looking to further themselves in the field of audio production. For the casual listener there is a large section of downloadable audio content directly from the producers themselves.

 

The Voice Acting Club  This is another forum frequented by the voice acting community. Originally set up as a "link to" site to help facilitate the completion of original animations from other creative sites like NewGrounds . The Voice Acting Club has grown into a much more general site much like the Voice Acting Alliance. Althought there are subtle differences between the two, many members cross post on both sites when auditioning and displaying completed works.

 

Perfectly Normal Productions  This is very much a "watch this space" link. Perfectly Normal Productions will, in the very near future be pumping out mindblowingly professional audio content over the internet. More information on theis subject can be found here.

 

Darker Projects  An excellent audio production group. Initially covering audio fanfics they have since expanded into original story lines with completely copyright clear content.

 

Dreamseed  This is an interesting experiment in the field of pay per listen audio production. Alexander Davis, has produced some very good productions and there are some free samples on his site to try before you buy. Although this is the logical next step for new audio on the web it is still yet to be proven how popular cash for audio will be.

 

Back To Reality Productions  This is another internet audio production group based in Brisbane. This was another fan based production group that's just started expanding into original content.

 

Blue Voices  Production site of one of the more highly respected and proactive members of the internet voice acting coummunity. A wide range of original and fan based productions can be found here.

 

The Mark Time Award  A yearly accolade awarded by The American Society For Science Fiction Audio.

 

The Parsec Awards  Dedicated to rewarding excellence in various aspects of Speculative Fiction Podcasting.

 

Blogs, Tutorials and Listings

 
Society of Audio Addicts  This blog scours the internet for downloadable audio content with a dramatic theme. Although at times difficult to navigate due to the sheer ammount of linked content. This is a huge regularly updated audio drama news resource.

 

Audio Theatre Resources  This older listing is more geared to the maker than the listener, with indepth articles and practical advice on aspects of audio production.

 

Modern Audio Drama (YahooGroup)  This older listing is more geared to the maker than the listener, with indepth articles and practical advice on aspects of audio production. (Subscription Required)

 

 

Libraries, Copyright and Tools

 
The Creative Commons (Audio Section)  As a reaction to the some what draconian copyright laws the creative commons was started to help asset makers get in contact with producers. By supplying a sliding scale of copyright, a producer is encouraged to involve musical artists and actors in the production process, instead of ripping them off or not bothering.

 

The Internet Archive (Audio Section)  If it's copyright expired, or free to air then chances are it'll be somewhere in the Internet Archive.

 

Zerus Vocoder  One of the better pieces of audio alteration software on the web at the moment. Simple to use and produces stunning results. Well worth a download and a couple of hours experimentation.

 

SpongeFork  One of the most unique audio manipulation devices to be seen anywhere on the internet. This piece of software is well worth the extremely modest price tag having practical applications in voice work, music production and the sound effects industry. There is a limited demo and plenty of samples to help wet your whistle should you need more convincing.

 

Audacity  An audio recording, reformatting and editing programme so simple and easy to use, that it's being bundled free with some solid state recorders these days. Multi-format and a hell of a lot more stable than it used to be, Audacity is the weapon of choice for many voice actors around the globe.

 

Woodbridge Productions  Excellent make-up training courses in the UK. Covering a diverse palette of technical disiplines. These courses taught me pretty much everything I know about make up, prosthetic application and fabrication.

 

Charles Fox  One of the best theatre, photography and SFX make up shops in London. The staff are extremely well informed and extremely helpful.

 

Good Tutorials  Despite being mainly for photoshop users this site of links has some excellent tutorials relating to animation, effects and design. Pretty much every link will take you forum after forum of talented Photoshop operators. You can loose hours cross linking alone. Just remember to bookmark the good things you find!

 

User Bars  More of a personal hobby horse of mine, user bars are currently used to speedily convey a forum members personal interests. This site is great for showing designers who else is out there making what. I feel that these minature slices of advertising have much wider uses than just showing devotion to a place, program, or thing. As I hope to illistrate in the near future with my own designs.

 

Weebl  One of the flash animating titans of the internet. To quote the man himself: Weebl, the pie champion. Weebl is the animation, and audio guru. With a background in sound engineering, and design, the only possible route he could take was to harness the powers of macromedia flash and create whimsical, yet highly calculated, works of modern art otherwise known as toons.
Homestar Runner  Highly addictive (but then it has to be as it's keeping several people alive) Homestar Runner is a vast flash site, hell it's more than a flash site it's practically a franchise. There are weeks worth of animations here, I personally recommend Strongbad Email.
David Firth  Ha ha ha. Yes well...... You probably shouldn't click this. This "man" does for the medium of flash animation what John Wilkes Booth did for presidential theatre attendance. I'm not entirely sure how you get a computer to record a variable Kaffka enduced waking nightmare, but it would appear that the boys over at fat-pie have managed it. If your in the mood for wet work flash, then the sources don't come much purer than this. 100% dead meat, with all the trimmings.

BrassGoggles  A listing of all things Steampunk, as you can see from the cut of this site this is a subject that is some what close to my heart. I find this site very relaxing and useful for picking up ideas. Being a vetted site only really good stuff makes it there. Well worth a browse.
The Steampunk Resource  A slightly more focused site this one. It provides a fine over view of Steampunk. Well worth a browse if your in the mood for learning or buying
Dr Steel  You could say many cynical things regarding this artists motives..... Yet when all is said and done there are two truths that can be drawn from this, one man creative extravaganza. Firstly motives aside, there is a blinding multi-levelled talent there. Secondly if you think about it, at least he's honest; it does exactly what it says on the tin. Shamelessly and single mindedly driven to subjegate the world. So buy a badge hell, buy two.
The Long Now Foundation  Civilization is revving itself into a pathologically short attention span. The trend might be coming from the acceleration of technology, the short-horizon perspective of market-driven economics, the next-election perspective of democracies, or the distractions of personal multi-tasking. All are on the increase. Some sort of balancing corrective to the short-sightedness is needed-some mechanism or myth which encourages the long view and the taking of long-term responsibility, where 'long-term' is measured at least in centuries.