hi there! i’m bo and i’m making a short 2D animated film for my final year of university! it’s about gay girls and family and mars and i need two voice actors. you can contact me at any point via tumblr or ninebluebirds@gmail.com 

quick things to note:

• payment to be discussed according to your rates
• please be 16 or older (for legal reasons re: university policies)
  
• it will deal with themes of parent death and violence
• you will be credited under whichever name you choose
• you must have access to decent recording equipment (at the very least, a microphone that won’t pop, etc) unless you live in wellington, nz, in which case i can get that for you
• both characters are queer so only queer people can apply, the main character mercury is a trans girl so only trans girls/transfeminine people can apply for her role, both are POC so only POC can apply, etc
• minor elements of the plot and dialogue are liable to change in the near future. if the changes make you uncomfortable or unwilling to continue to work on the project, that’s fine. i aim to not have that happen and if changes were made that required further voice work you would be compensated duly

plot background: humans came to mars about 30 years ago from the time the film is set to find a bizarre but habitable planet that already has its own ecosystem and wildlife. humans started to settle in and build cities, struggling with issues of poverty and an inhospitable environment, and within ten years people began to get ill with a strange sickness that was suspected to come from drinking too much of the local unfiltered water on mars. this sickness drained colour from people and made them behave strangely. a regime within the cities is constructed in order to eliminate people showing signs of the sickness in an attempt to stop it from spreading. the overwhelming poverty and difficulty of life on mars meant that people continued to get sick, with resentment building towards the wealthy few who didn’t get sick + the law enforcers. 

now, onto the characters!

Mercury is a trans girl, African-American/Pakistani, about 16 years old. She lived with her mother Maya until she was about 14, at which point Maya died of a degenerative long-term illness unrelated to the water sickness. At age 6, Merc and her mother met a strange lady called Ruby while exploring the ruins of an old Martian temple. Ruby and Maya date and Merc soon sees her as a parent figure. When Ruby is killed by police soon after Maya’s death, Merc struggles to come to terms with this and has to survive by herself up until the present day (the time of her narration). Like many poor people in the city, she also has the beginning stages of the water sickness, which makes her more of a loner than she would otherwise like to be. Merc has the majority of dialogue, as she does a voiceover throughout the course of the film. Mercury’s dialogue examples are here. Looking for a black and/or middle eastern trans lady/transfeminine person who can sound approximately 16-18 (character ages can be varied somewhat).

Ruby is of an indeterminate age (around 20-30, potentially) and is not human.  This voice role can go to someone who’s either trans or cis. When Mercury and Maya met her in the ruins, she was a martian creature called an oona, which is able to imitate the forms of others. Oona are responsible indirectly for the water sickness, and Ruby has what would be considered a bad case of it, although in her case its due to oona being poor at mimicking pigment. She has not told Maya or Mercury that she isn’t human, although she suspects they may have guessed. She is usually light-hearted and mischievous, but in the dialogue section she has, she is discussing Maya’s recent death with Mercury and is trying to comfort her, while being quietly distraught herself. Ruby has limited dialogue (about 40 seconds, give or take). Ruby’s dialogue examples are here. Looking for a woman of colour who can sound between 25-35.

if you have any questions, please direct them to either my tumblr or my email. signal boosts are appreciated very much and if you’d like to follow the progress on the short film itself, there’s a tumblr here that doubles as a workbook, or this tumblr itself. thank you!