The Story of How I Became Involved in Turtlecalls
I know I don’t update here often enough, but the Googles still know I’m here and I thought I would post here just in case anyone still has it in their RSS reader.
A talented friend of mine named Brian Spaeth had an ingenious plan to create a turtle character that makes phone calls. He would charge people a couple of dollars, and then he would call a person of your choice as the turtle, record the call and post it on Youtube for all to enjoy. It was really awesome and hilarious, but ultimately after 150+ of those videos, it became a bit stale for Brian. I don’t want to put words in his mouth, but I think as much as he loves the character and all the turtle’s silliness, he needed a new destination.
Over breakfast one morning, I suggested that maybe the turtle could use his phone calls to teach the basics about letters and numbers. As a father of a two-year-old, I am well aware of that kind of programming now-a-days. Add in the fact that Brian has never had the desire to deal in profanity for his comedy, and it seemed like not that difficult a transition for the turtle to make. I think Brian and I agree on the profanity thing, by the way. I’ve dabbled in it over the years, and I think really profane comedy is funny, but I just don’t have the desire (stomach?) to do it myself.
Anyway, we got to work writing some outlines of what we were going to do. We reached out to an animator named cokelogic because he has a really distinct animation style. We went to the studio to record the scripts after working them out over Skype, sent the audio files to cokelogic, he performed his magic and the Youtube show came together. The first five episodes are online now, and we’re hoping that there’s a reason to make more. Yes, I am playing the elephant (straight man and teacher) to Brian’s turtle. No, I haven’t booked any other voice work yet. :-)
Now’s the part where you can help me. Spread the word. Like it on Facebook. Follow it on Twitter. Show the videos to your . Rate the videos on Youtube by (hopefully) clicking the thumbs up.