Animation Source Forums

I had this crazy idea which I might or might not try, depending on member interest, resources, and future opportunity. I'm considering making the Toby stories into a series of audio "books" modeled after radio dramas. For those who haven't heard one of those, it's like hearing the story acted out, with sounds effects and maybe background music. They also sometimes have commentary at the beginning or end as bonus features, which is possible too.

I'm thinking of this as a new way to bring the Toby stories to life, and maybe make them more available to people who are visually impaired (I've had at least one person on here say the font was too small to read).

Again, I can't promise at the moment that this will ever come to fruition (if it does, I do intend to include the stories not yet written about the pups). But as of now I'm taking votes, along with suggestions for programs, music, etc. And if anyone wants to be involved, please say so here as well (though I have no idea how I would coordinate it online).

EDIT: If you vote yes and are interested in the idea, please say so (don't just vote, post). If you vote no, please say why.

Yes, I think you could pull it off. =3 A very cool idea. I have a couple of questions, though (assuming that you actually did it):


~Would these "audio books" be available for retail, or download on a site, etc.?


~Would you be recruiting voice actors?


I must say, a very creative idea. ^^

I like it! It'd be something new, and creative to.

I say go for it!

Nice idea!

Well...it worked okay for The Giver. But that was an awesome book.

I'm guessing you'd be the one reading it. Before doing this, I suggest first asking yourself if you have a good voice for the job. Next I suggest questioning on if you can act xD If you want the full effect you need to be able to present emotion while you read. Otherwise you're going to bore everyone.

Thank you for the encouragement (same to Kia and Skulblaka). Yes, assuming such were possible, I would make them available for download either on this site or another, and I'm fairly sure I could do that if the project worked at all. As for retail, probably not. If it were only dealing with my characters, which some of the stories are admittedly, I might consider that. But since my stories utilize characters from other sources (three fellow writers on here plus Universal Studios), it would probably get into licensing, which would get really complicated, which I don't want. If such problems could be overcome, I'd consider the idea with some seriousness.
And yes, I would be recruiting voice actors. This would be especially difficult with the characters belonging to other writers, since said writers would of course want a say in what their characters sounded like, and even more difficult in the case of characters like Balto, who already have established voices. Also, depending on the resources available to me, I might find myself having to limit it to recruiting of people in real life. As I said, there are a lot of variables.


Well, naturally. Where do you think I got the idea in the first place? (although I never liked The Giver. Give me Lewis or Tolkien's works any day)
I would probably be doing the narration, which in the particular style I'm aiming for would put me in a fairly minimum vocal role and largely reduce the risk of me boring the listener, since most of the action would be conveyed by the other actors. If you want some idea of the style I'm thinking of, try to get your hands on a copy of the recorded dramas of The Chronicles of Narnia.

Well, this would be an interesting thing I'd like to see. *voted YES*

Audio books and radio dramas would be good for fans of your work that maybe can't find time to visually read your stories . . . so why not have you tell them the story yourself? Niiiiiiiiiice. *needs to make a comeback*

Here's a suggestion: maybe post samples on YouTube? It might get a larger amount of fans, plus you could add art and pictures of the characters too (for us that can see and would love an additional visual aid . . . you don't have do though, but it's an idea). I'd subscribe to that - you write great stories BTW!

- Juuchan17

Glad you like the idea, and the stories. And maybe that YouTube suggestion could get somewhere, I don't know. It would be a good way to get people to come here and read my stuff, at least, although chances are it would have to come after the sound recording. The tricky thing is that I've seen a lot of tacky videos that were montages of still shots and sound. But if I can pull it together well, and get the right pictures, I might just do that. Thanks for the input, I'll remember it.

No problem. Perhaps you could put a slight teaser on YouTube and have a link leading back here to the rest of the story. If people like them enough, then you could make more or something.

Either way, it's still something new. I wish you the best of luck on this project, shall you decide to do it!

- Juuchan17

I think it'll be an exellent thing to do.I mean,right now I'm lstening to an audio book,it would be an interesting thing to do for the "toby Series"

I had actually suggested to RTW that we do an audiobook of his stories as well. There seems to be a lot of great stories that would be great in audio form, too!

That's more or less what I had in mind. I guess the best approach would be to do some of those during the audio recording process.


Indeed.


Agreed.

Sounds like a really cool idea. I'd deffinately listen to it

DT, I would LOVE to help. If you need anything at all, ask me!

Go for it! Go for it! It would be so great. It could possibley even advertise the site, if the audio books went nation-wide, possible world-wide if everyone liked them.

Thanks.


XD You misunderstand me. These would be non-commercial, so unless they went viral they probably wouldn't be going "nation-wide" or "world-wide" apart from the fact that they'd be on the internet. As much as I'd like to go for what you seem to be thinking of, I have rather limited chances given that A) my series contains characters licensed to Universal, and B) it also contains characters borrowed from people I've never even met (kelev, redwolf03, and in one story SilverKia), which could potentially make for really complicated licensing.
To boil that all down, I'm glad for your support and offer of assistance. But when all's said and done, I wouldn't bet on my stories hitting bookshelves (except for those who print them out privately), letalone CD. Now my bona-fide books, that's different.