The time has come! 💜 We are looking for eight voice actors to bring to life our main cast and a secondary character for the upcoming demo of Lost in Limbo, a dark fantasy-romance visual novel!
DEADLINE: April 10th!
Reblogs are extremely appreciated ; v ;! Thank you all as always for the unending support you give us!
I propose the Voice Actors' Law of Equivalent Exchange.
Every time they stunt-cast a non-VA to fill a vocal role previously held by an experienced voice actor, that voice actor gets to dub lines over one live-action character played by the non-VA. Next time you're in theaters, it's gonna be my voice coming out of your mouth. And it will not match the lip movements at all.
“Robert Pattinson showed up with iPhone voice recordings and had already nailed the voice for ‘THE BOY AND THE HERON’ before recording started. It was his first ever voice role and he finished in 2 days.” (source)
Mickey Mouse's entry into the public domain comes with significant caveats. While the Mickey Mouse who appears in Steamboat Willie (and other media published in 1928 or earlier) is free to use, there's established precedent that specific elements of a character which appear exclusively in later works which still fall under copyright may be protected, if sufficiently distinctive.
(This is the basis of, e.g., the infamous "Sherlock Holmes can't respect women" lawsuit: the Doyle estate, which at the time owned only a tiny handful of the latest-written stories, the others having already fallen into the public domain, argued that specific personality traits which Holmes exhibits only in those later stories are sufficiently distinctive as to be the valid subject of an infringement claim.)
With respect to various elements of Mickey's visual design, such as his red shorts and signature gloves, the matter is clear: just don't use those for another few years. However, there's another thing Mickey's public domain iterations don't exhibit: speech.
The present consensus among copyright scholars seems to be that "a character speaking" is not sufficiently distinctive as to qualify for protection, but the vocal characterisation with which Mickey Mouse is famously associated may so qualify. So, if you want to be scrupulously safe, you can have him talk, but not in that exact specific voice.
Which raises a fun question: what voice would you give him? Wrong answers only.
Guess the drunken cat is out of the bag. Alongside being a writer for Lackadaisy, I'm psyched to announce that I'll also be voicing Virgil! @lackadaisycats