This was my first 2024 speech for Toastmasters, I had begun working on it in November with a Christmas theme, but there were no speaker slots in December so reworked it as the first speech of 2024. This is for my Level Three “Engaging your Audience with Humor” speech.
I am a member of Toastmasters 4 Writer.
Have you ever considered the Internal Logic in the Christmas song “Rudolph The Red Nose Reindeer”? I have, and it scared me.
What my speech and you’ll be asking … ?
MY VOICE ACTING GOALS – 2024
1 – Full Time Job
2 – Make myself known to Casting Directors
3 – More Regular Voice Over Auditions
4 – Book Voice Over Roles
5 – Start a regular Stream
6 – Be part of an Improv Group
7 – Play at least one Dungeons & Dragons game
8 – Be able to afford more VO training
9 – BLOG MORE
DETAILS OF MY GOALS
1 – Full Time Job
I am seeking a production position in television animation, but open to other positions in and out of the Entertainment Industry:
Production Coordinator.
Administrative Assistant
Executive Assistant
How can I support your company? Ask for a resume.
2 – Make myself known to Casting Directors
Get to personally know at last 10 Casting and Voice Directors at
Animation studios such as Disney, anime ADR directors, games, and commercials.
Who should I reach out to?
3 – More Regular Voice Over Auditions
A minimum of 500 Voice Over Auditions.
4 – Book Voice Over Roles
• Book a minimum of 10 animation/anime roles that I can talk about by the end of 2024.
• Book a minimum of 25 commercials I can talk about by the end of 2024.
5 – Start a regular Stream
Start with prerecorded posts on YouTube and then stream live either on Twitch or YouTube to discuss my experiences and what I’m pursuing.
If it works out, I might create a VTuber.
What should I Stream? Thoughts?
6 – Be part of an Improv Group
Before Covid I got to sit in on one Improv session, and took an Improv Class at Fullerton College. I’d like to attend at least 4 Improv Sessions in 2024.
7 – Play at least one Dungeons & Dragons game.
Have loved D&D for a long time, but have only played two games, both in my Improv Acting class.
8 – Be able to afford more VO training.
I want to take the “Singing for Animation” class with Voice Masters.
9 – BLOG MORE
I realize that I haven’t blog often, but I intend to do more this year. The blog may relate to what I Stream.
Recently, I did my third speech for Toastmasters.
My wife and I are members of Toastmasters 4 Writers in Burbank, California – District 52.
My second and third speech were connected because what I learned from giving the second speech would be applied to the third. The Second speech was about my family, especially my grandfather, James Shaw, who was from Ireland and came to America. There are many great stories I could tell about him and his life. When it came to telling the third speech I chose to focus on him as a Marathon runner, especially winning one in Belfast Ireland.
But as I began to do research for this speech, I was finding more questions than answers. On top of that there wasn’t a lot of recorded history about the 1909 race, and that the first Belfast City Marathon didn’t happen until 1982.
So this speech began as much about learning the truth about the race as it was about my grandfather winning it.
A big thank you goes out to John T. Glover who wrote the book HISTORY OF NORTHERN IRELAND MARATHON RUNNING for helping me locate the facts.
As part of my Voice Over training, this past semester I took a class at Pasadena City College entitled: ANNOUNCING FOR ELECTRONIC MEDIA. There were many projects we did, including Voice Over, music radio intros, and more, was being able to create my own radio program and do an interview. Of course I called the radio show FOUR NAMES OF PROFESSIONAL CREATIVITY.
So I asked my good friend Craig Miller if I could interview him about the book – STAR WARS MEMORIES: My Time In The Death Star Trenches.
I learned a lot in the experience and in the class, and was absolutely thrilled when the instructor asked if my interview could be included on the Lancer Radio Network public website.
Enjoy the interview, then go check out Craig’s book.
In January I did a morning warm up sketch of a girl being bullied and knocked down at school. It soon turned into a series of sketch and then a complete narrative.
Here’s the series in it’s completion:
At the start of the year I had great 2020 Vision (go back and read the blog) – that vision had such great plans for the year ahead…
It didn’t go at all as planned (for none of us). Even before Covid struck, on the second day of the year I was told I was being laid off from my job which I had for 10 years.
So I was home, and soon my wife would be working from home as well. I truly believe that to be a blessing.
A family member is in the hospital (praise God not with Covid).
That all said, the year wasn’t all that bad for me. Being home most of the time allowed certain things to happen, or things for me to discover, that I wouldn’t have if the world was still going as it had a year ago.
I had already planned to take Voice Acting Classes, by the end of that first class I was determined to make Voice Over as part of my career. I soon found other classes and workshops I could do online that I wouldn’t have been able to do previously. Joined Toastmasters, got back into college courses, and became an Improv actor.
With 2021 about to start, I am confident that there many blessings that came to me through 2020 even as stressful as it was.
What is to come next, I am not entirely certain but am Determined to grab hold of each and every blessing that is to follow.
God Bless you all. See you in the new year.
For the last few years I have been working as an interior illustrator for Airship 27, a publisher that focuses on what is called “New Pulp.” Fast pasted adventure tails in the styles of the pulp novels of the 1930s.
Today I get to tell you that they have released the latest book that has my artwork inside.
Volume 3 of THE BAY PHANTOM novels by author Chuck Miller entitled “Midnight in Hell’s Cathedral”.
Here’s the Press Release and Cover Art by artist Chris Rawding followed by one of my interior illustration.
Check it out and pick up a copy you’ll be in for a thrill ride.
Airship 27 Productions is thrilled to announce the release of the third action packed Bay Phantom adventure by stellar New Pulp writer, Chuck Miller.
Once again Mobile, Alabama’s mysterious crime-fighter, the Bay Phantom, finds himself battling another criminal mastermind. This one is know only as the Kraken and has the power to turn people into mindless puppets and have them do his bidding; leaving chaos and destruction in their path. As if that wasn’t enough for the Phantom to deal with, his friend, Tom Dart, is about to be executed in state prison for crimes he did not commit. Can Maribelle Darcy devise a plan to rescue Dart before the fatal hour arrives?
And then a certain Federal Agent named Elliot Ness arrives in town with the goal of capturing the Bay Phantom.
“Nobody writes like Chuck, Miller,” insist Airship 27 Production’s Managing Editor Ron Fortier. “Chuck has a truly unique style that blends both black comedy with off-the-wall pulp action. You can say what you will about this series, but it is never boring.”
Returning to the series to handle interior illustrations is artist Kevin Paul Shaw Broden and Chris Rawding provides the cover all under the helm of Art Director Rob Davis.
Once again pulp scribe Chuck Miller weaves a zany, madcap pulp thriller like no one else can. This is action-adventure with a Southern Twist not to be missed.
Available in paperback at Amazon and soon on Kindle.
I have a new VISION for 2020 and that is my VOICE.
As you know I am a professional animation scriptwriter, a comic book artist, novelist, and have worked in animation production.
I n this new year of 2020 VISION, I am looking toward a new horizon by taking ACTING CLASSES focusing on VOICE OVER for animation.
I’m no fool who thinks this will be easy. It will be hard work and may take a long time, but I am willing to give it my all.
Growing up, taking art and writing courses, I never once thought about acting. Now, looking back, I see how it would have been beneficial to both my artwork and script writing. Over the last few years, I have become more and more interested in VOICE ACTING and all the great actors who work on series I follow. I’ve begun to want to know more about that side of the industry I am already a part of.
As I begin this 2020 VISION QUEST of my future by making my voice heard I hope to chat, network, and learn from many of my Voice Over friends online and in person.
While taking classes in acting, trying my hand at, reading books and watching my fellow actors perform and get to know them, I will be documenting some of my experiences here (though some I won’t be allowed to write about.)
So, I would love to have you follow me on my journey, whether to laugh as I fall on my face, applaud when I succeed, or provided some much need guidance and support along the way.
This is going to be scary, challenging, exiting, and fun. I’m looking forward to every moment of it.
2020 beings today, and I have a lot to be looking out for.
…yeah, right!
The rain was fierce today. It was so bad this morning that I chose not to drive the freeways to my part-time job.
After I took my wife to her job I headed straight home. Figured I could get some writing done.
That was not meant to be.
I lucked out and got a parking space right out front the apartment. However, my lucked failed when I discovered that someone had broken their key off in the gate’s lock.
With the rain pouring down on me I attempted to get the piece of the key out, but to no avail. So I headed back to the car where I waited in vain for someone to come out the gate but no one arrived.
After talking with my wife on the phone, and attempting to reach the apartment manager, I planned to go spend the day at a local shopping mall before someone could get the door repaired. But before doing so I wanted to check one more time to see if anyone was around that might let me. But by then the rain was coming down so hard that the street was a flood and when I opened the car door I stepped out into ankle deep cold water soaking my shoes and socks.
So for the next few hours I spent in the mall with ice cold soaking wet feet until the manager finally got back to me with the code that would let me in without a key.
So don’t anyone ever tell me it doesn’t rain in California.
At least I didn’t come down with a cold.
Kevin Paul Shaw Broden
Four Names of Professional Creativity
I have done some reworking on the novel, and on the cover as well.
I digitally painted it in Painter and Photoshop.
Additionally I tweeked the subtitle: A Paranormal Romance Mystery
You can buy a copy of the novel at any ebook distributor.
Years ago, my wife and I had the opportunity to write several episodes of the Japanese animated series MIDNIGHT HORROR SCHOOL, created by Naomi Iwata
The show was a relative success in Japan and many other countries around the world, unfortunately they were able find a market to sell the show to here in the U.S.A. So we were never able see our episodes broadcast in English.
I would have really been nice to show them to people, especially to help promote our animation careers for other series.
Maybe it’s not too late.
Hikky and his school friends are objects that human students loose during the school day. Such as a pencil that falls off your desk. At night the school becomes magical and all these lost objects become alive and go to their own school. There they learn to do amazing things and to one day graduate and become one of the Wonders of The World.
It was a fun series to work on. It got me my first animation writing credit and membership into the Animation Writers Caucus of the Writers Guild of America West.
Today I was sitting in the lobby of a television studio’s office building, drinking my Starbucks iced tea, and reading about a live action movie that was being made from an animated TV series from the self-same studio.
I thought that there was a young actor from one of the other TV shows this studio has produced would have been perfect for one of the leads of this movie if he was a bit younger. (Turns out I wasn’t the only one who had this thought.)
While this was going through my head an even younger boy sat across the lobby from me, he had a couple script pages of ‘sides’ and he was practicing his lines. He was preparing to audition for something. He was putting himself completely in to the role, ignoring all the people walking around him.
It was fascinating to watch.
I don’t know if he was there to audition for the young teenage lead of the movie mentioned above, but looking at him, watching him perform, I knew he would be perfect for the role.
I love living in the Burbank area and witnessing things like this. Going to pay attention to the casting of this film.
If you know anything, “Call me, Beep me.”
What’s the sitch?
Kevin Paul Shaw Broden
Four Names of Professional Creativity
While at last weeks Sister’s in Crime meeting it was mentioned how this was National Library Week, and it got me to thinking of the Libraries in my life.
I suppose the first library I knew was the one in Elementary School, it was a side room to the Multi-Purpose room, and didn’t have a lot of books, but enough for what was needed for the school.
The second Library was when our town opened up a brand new city library. There had been a previous library, going way back to when it was shelves in a corner store. The main library is now a museum, but when the new library was opened my mother made certain that I was the first one there when the doors opened and I was the first to get a library card in the new library.
I was never a great reader growing up. Having to take special course to help improve my reading. Thank goodness for those instructors because they let me know that it was okay to read comic books. “If he’s reading, let him read.”
Later, in Junior High and High School, I spent a lot of time at the school libraries. Mostly it was to get away from the bullies of the school. I didn’t have a lot of friends then, but I did have books. I probably read more books during those lunch hours than I had anytime previously. I’m very thankful for those times.
I would continue to go back to our city library, renewing my library card every few years.
Now I live in another city with a great big library dedicated to the arts. I know I’m going to be spending a lot of time there.
And perhaps one day, one of my books will be in a library near you. Would you check me out please?
As a little child I usually attended Sunday School while my parents went to church and their own adult classes. For our group of kids we were taught through colorful Bible stories in ways that were understandable for little ones. Hearing about the animals on ‘Noah’s Arc’ comes to mind.
As fun as those stories were, they were the simple beginnings of my understanding of the Bible. This period of my young church life I look back on as the ‘Jesus loves me’ time; for we sang that song over and over. I was only starting to know what that truly meant.
My first Bible lesson that struck deep with true meaning probably came to me one Sunday while I was sitting on a pew with my family in church. I was probably no older than 7 years of age.
Our pastor was giving a sermon on Mathew 7:3-5/Luke 6:41-42
Luke (NIV)
“Why do you look at the speck of sawdust in your brother’s eye and pay no attention to the plank in your own eye? How can you say to your brother, ‘Brother, let me take the speck out of your eye,’ when you yourself fail to see the plank in your own eye? You hypocrite, first take the plank out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to remove the speck from your brother’s eye.”
The visual image of a plank (or ‘beam’ as used in the King James version) was something my young mind and vivid imagination could see.
Every child by that age has gotten dust or dirt in their eyes and knows just how uncomfortable that is. So to imagine what it must be to have this massive plank of wood stuck in ones eye is a horrifying thought. Then to think trying to get a dust out of another’s eye with this thing stuck in my own is equally horrifying.
This imagery embedded itself into my mind.
It was my earliest lesson in not to judge others and it has stayed with me ever since.
It seems like an easy lesson to learn; don’t make such a deal out of pointing out the flaw in someone else’s life and act like you are the only one who can fix them, while completely ignoring the major problem within your own life. Yet we do it all the time.
Though I try not to judge others, I would be an equal hypocrite if I said I never judge other people. It’s far too easy to do so. But I try very hard not to. I have to stop and realize that I could end up going through the same thing they are and if others point out my faults with such an attitude, would only make my situation worse.
If you can help me, great, but don’t treat me as a flawed and only you can help me. I won’t do the same thing to you.
However, in an attempt to not judge people, sometimes I imagine my plank is much larger than it truly is, or imagine it is there even when it is not. It can be too easy make your own flaws greater than they actually are. So in your attempt to not judge others too harshly, don’t judge yourself too harshly either.
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