Been a minute since we've done one of these, but I am very happy to announce that Chris Rollins will be providing the voice of our resident Brownie. This has been a long time coming, the last casting call was such a long time ago, so it's very much a sigh of relief having this role cast and cast with my first choice of actor. When so much time has passed I never know if someone is still going to be interested so it's always such a wonderful moment when I get the response saying, "yes." It's been a while, but what I can recall about the process of casting Adrian was that there were a ton of auditions for him. But what made the process pretty easy was that I think Chris was the only one to play the character in a nuanced way and was someone I felt like had the qualifications to bring him to life. Memory tells me that a lot of actors really played up his accent and kind of played him in a sort of stereotypical manner, or really just dialed up the awkwardness to a point where it felt inauthentic. Like yeah Adrian has a bit of a hard time conversing with others, but he's not inept. Chris said in his audition e-mail:
"Kind of like Peter Parker from Spider Man or Callum from The Dragon Prince. Plus, I grew to love the Scottish accent when I was Shrek in a production of Shrek Jr ten years ago."
And for me that kind of sealed it. I never thought much about Adrian being like Peter, but I felt that was a fair stance to take, he definitely is kind of like Peter Parker in the recent Marvel films. Not to a T of course, but yeah the way he talks with others definitely is similar. And Chris' experience with the accent again was a huge plus, I don't believe I had anyone authentically Scottish audition for Adrian... I can maybe recall one? But the take on the character just wasn't what I was looking for, but I could totally be remembering that wrong it's been so long now. Either way Chris felt like the right fit from his e-mail and his audition. And since we're here now clearly I was right. For me Adrian has kind of- lacked any solidity in my mind. I'd say most of the cast I have a grasp on in the manner in which they speak, carry themselves. But Adrian it was all just on the paper, but my mind couldn't visualize it for me. There was this sort of disconnect where my writer brain objectively kind of knew who Adrian was what his personality should be, but the other side couldn't pin down how to manifest that to help. So it was kind of like- writing blind in a weird way for me. It was just like, "this is how Adrian should react, how he should speak and why." But I wasn't quite sure how it sounded. It was weird, I had no idea what his voice sounded like and when I tried to manifest it my brain just couldn't hold it and suddenly he'd be silent and just words on a page that other characters like Alice, Lysandra, and Sapphira reacted to. It was almost like I had to lean on the cast around him to guide me in writing him because I just couldn't grasp him on an intimate level. It was a very weird experience this is all to say that I didn't really know much about my character than any of those auditioning didn't. It was kind of like, "does this voice feel like it fits and does this actor sound like they understand this character and the world he inhabits?" It wasn't until Chris sent me the lines and I listened to them that I felt like I had finally known Adrian on the level of these other characters. Chris was able to create a performance that told you all you needed to know about Adrian's personality just by how he spoke. Which I guess sounds like, "no duh" on paper, but I think there's more to it than that. Two voice actors can both look at a line and deliver it that satisfies the situation encapsulating it. But a voice actor who understands the character can do so and have it feel deeper, feel nuanced, feel influenced by a character's upbringing in addition to the situation. Anyone can be like, "now the character is yelling because they are mad." But- how are they yelling? And why are they yelling in that manner specifically? It's the same thing with playing a character that's socially awkward, it's a scale, and it varies situation to situation line to line. How he says goodbye won't have the same energy as simply asking a question trying to get to know someone, for someone who has a hard time talking to someone those are two very different tasks. When I wrote Adrian I didn't know the scale, the intensity. That was something Chris determined and as long as it didn't feel out of place within the context of the scene I rolled with what he told me. And it felt 99% of the time spot on bare in-mind he only had so much context to go off of for any given line. I say it over and over again, but voice acting is more than just the voice, I guess if you only view it as a consumer you're doomed to never understand that. But this project continues to remind me of that fact. Had I hired someone else Adrian wouldn't likely be who he is he could have been more fearful sounding, or- too energetic. Chris made him sound just- right how the words had intended but my brain couldn't imagine for itself. And Chris is great at his craft it shows and when you hear his performance I think you'll immediately understand that. For me his audition made it very clear he was the right choice he was able to play Adrian in a way that allowed him to express a gambit of emotions without one feeling out of place. Which isn't necessarily an easy task. Some of these characters tend to sit in a certain lane, but I often try to make at least a single moment where they step outside it into a completely different one. A character normally jovial will have a moment of anger, or melancholy. And if you're playing a character as an- and I mean no disrespect, but if you're playing one of these characters like archetypal anime characters you're going to hit this point that's really difficult; because you're going to have to go with them to this other part of themselves and display something that you can't "auto-pilot" for a lack of a better word. And I think Chris' experience in theater is what allows him to seemingly effortlessly go from all these different levels of emotion and play them so authentically. Adrian being chipper or even angry, doesn't feel out of place or left field, his voice doesn't suddenly sound off, it all just sounds like him. I don't know if any of my ramblings adequately explain Chris' performance or why he was the right choice for the job, or just how much depth he added to the character, but I did my best. And rather than keep you here any longer reading this novel's worth of an announcement I just sign off here with Chris Rollins welcome to Pleasant Sparkle Academy.
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