Do you want to be in New 'n' Tasty?
 

http://www.oddworld.com/2013/07/who-...-be-a-mudokon/

I'm actually kinda tempted to do this myself. I wish we could upload it on other websharing services, though. I don't want to have to sign up to SoundCloud.

Heh, that's a good idea, but brave of them to do - I'd hate to be the person whose job it is to go through all the submissions. It'll probably be wince-tastic.

That being said, I'm tempted to try my luck. Also, this guy (AstraVexx) would probably do well if he contributed, so here's to hoping he follows OWI's news feed.

Yay! That's my job!

this is so cool!! i think i'm gonna give it a go

I want to but how tremendously embarrassing.

Also shitty mic.

In fact, what is your policy on female candidates? Having already established that the only female Mudokons are the queens, wouldn't it be a tad awkward? (I understand Abe and pals are genderless but they have always had male voices).

You can just be an effeminite genderless/male Mudokon. Hand flounce optional.

If one of the mudokons mysteriously sounds like Christopher Walken I will be very happy.

One of my best friends actually owns a professional recording studio. We are going to have some fun next week :D

We can probably fiddle with it. Might be useful to talk in a natural, low-sounding voice (ie don't try to sound like a Mud).

It's a problem that came to our attention some time ago; we want all fans to have a stab at it if they have the voice and the equipment, but we don't have any female characters.

Worker-class Mudokons are biologically (as well as behaviourally) asexual. It makes perfect sense to me that they would each sit somewhere on a male-to-female gender gradient, but all hovering around androgyny or gender-neutrality. So you'd have female-expressing Workers, maybe they have slightly different facial structure, maybe they feel comfortable in a tube top, maybe they tie things into their ponytail. Some way to make them read as female without them being male+boobs+eyelashes. Why would they even have breasts, biologically?

In a factory setting, especially a slaughterhouse, the male end of that spectrum would be prefered. Sensitivity and compassion are no good when you're killing animals on an industrial scale, and useless slaves are gotten rid of, usually while they're very young. This is why Sam sewed sensitive baby Abe's lips together, to stop him crying and upsetting the livestock. But all the same, "female Mudokons" (but still asexual workers) would be there.

They would be different and picked on. They would be torn between how the world (their world, restricted to the factory of course) wants them to be or how they are perceived, and how they actually feel and identify. They would be treated as a sub-class for no decent reason beyond the Mudokons who conform to what society expects wanting to stay in that position of power. Because power structure is all Mudokons know.

And then when Mudokons are freed and they start exploring their identity, both as a race and as individuals, they can really start going a whole bunch of different ways. And we don't have to worry about making sure the designs look silly and feminine, because now there are feminine Muds, and things in between. We see them rebuilding a rich, diverse society that stops caring about the societal rubbish they were brought up on. It makes their discovering nature and themselves all the more visually and emotionally apparent.

So I spoke to Lorne about that, and he was very open about the idea. Together we thought this would actually be quite revealing about the way the industrial races treat the natives, ignoring their identity, destroying their traditions and turning them against each other. Subtextually it drew from the struggle of people facing oppression in an unwelcoming society. It would also let us stop having to exclude about half the fans and voice artists that might want to get involved.

But the condition was always going to be "if we have time", and creating variations of characters was something that had to be dialed back for time. We wanted Mudokons working in the barrel storage and packaging to be wearing overalls, and those working in slaughter and processing to have aprons. I think there's a few different designs for Natives, but variations as a whole got dialed back and "female" Mudokons along with it.

But, y'know, if you're happy to voice a character that presents as male and everyone will refer to with male pronouns, that's fantastic. It will help allude to this kind of identity variation. And if you're not happy, then I'm really sorry and understand where you're coming from. I hope we can be better accommodating to people in the future.

On a side note, I recorded a whole bunch of lines today. It was fun!

Just to clarify: We should record ourselves saying the words in our natural voice, right?

Also, do you want us to riff around the words/phrases or only say those specific words?

If you can do a semi-decent Mudokon impression, go for it. The less we have to play with it, the higher quality and more natural-sounding it will be.

At this point, consider these auditions. If the recording you send us is good quality and we can get a good Mudokon voice out of it, we'll get back to you with scripts and direction. You can ad-lib lines then as long as you also do the compulsory lines. Feel free to ad-lib now as well, though.

Thanks Happydan and Wil especially for that in-depth reply, I might feel a bit less conspicuous giving it a go now.

Man, I don't have a good mic. Though I would totally train it to West Yorkshire if I got the gig.

Wil, didn't you try to get Simon from the Yogscast to voice a Mudokon? Don't gunna to lie, that would be amazing. :)

And even though I could try to make the Mudokon voice, I really don't think I can. It would sound terrible.

I might give it a shot, swallow the embarrassment and all that. Based purely on the premise that 11 year old me would have leapt at the opportunity to be in an Oddworld game.

I may or may not have sent a few messages to Simon and Lewis through various channels of communication. I never heard back from either of them. Oh well. We still have some pretty awesome voices. I recorded lines today. I may have mentioned it already. :D

Anyone famous?

Simon Pegg and Dara O'Brian, here's hoping!

You guys need to get Markiplier. He could be a really manly Mudokon.
And fuck it, I'll have a go.

I'd love to try this but I don't have anything to record my horrible voice. Wish y'all luck to those that try out for a spot.

Well, I did it. Uploaded it to soundcloud and sent a PM to the Oddworldinc account there... I can't really get the mudokon accent right, so I didn't really try very hard except for the angry hiss which sounds a bit pants regardless. But this was fun to do anyway for the hell of it, although I think I'm pushing my luck a lot. :P

@happydan - If by some miracle you decide my VO is somehow good enough, I'm quite happy to do more lines or re-do the ones I've sent.

Yep, just sent my submission via PM as well. I really hope they will like it :)

Brian Blessed would be the best thing ever.

MULLOCK'S AALIIIIIVE

A quick search reveals there are around 145 hits on SoundCloud for the word Mudokon and most of them are submissions...

Well have fun happydan. :p

Pffft. I'm the one making sure every submission is catalogued. And then it's Mike our audio guy who has to listen and judge them all.

Good luck, and be sure to include the ones I send then ;)

And put them on the top of the pile or something...

I'm betting a lot of the submissions aren't good quality enough to be useful, judging by a couple of the others I listened to, despite the instructions of "You must have a good mic". Acting quality is probably questionable as well in a lot of them (like mine, heh)... But it was always going to be that way when the the general fan base was asked to submit voice samples. :P

The more submissions there are, the more chance there'll be of finding usable VO material.

E: *later* I'm not being fair - This was a good idea and it was very fun to take part in, which was the point of it. I'm also sure that there have been plenty of decent submissions as well. Good luck to the people working on this. :)

I would like to see how many people can pull off the Mudokon voice? I know I can't. :/