Methods to My Madness: The Inspirations for a Writer, Filmmaker and Voice Actor

Inspiration is the driving force amongst any creative. It can range from a good book to a line from an obscure piece of media. Without inspiration, it would be hard to create. The most popular pieces of media have their own inspirations behind it. Their artists get inspired from other artists. It’s all part of the artistic process.

My inspiration started out as parody. I was a reader as a small child. By Kindergarten, I was the best reader in my class at a 5th grade level. I held that pride for years. The way they measured reading in Pennsylvanian elementary schools at the time was with letters. A was basic, while Z was adult level. By the time I got to 5th grade, I quickly ended up at Z. After I got to middle school, I stopped liking reading. I didn’t like stories if they didn’t come from the media I liked. That’s when I became truly invested in writing. I made my own characters, inserting them into media I enjoyed. Then, I started writing my own stories. None of them were ever truly finished. Even my longest project is unfinished at 15 chapters, each one just over a thousand words that I need to rewrite. I’m here to talk about some of my inspirations and maybe discuss one of my own projects and my process behind finding its inspirations. But first, we must discuss examples of inspirations of other artists.

Before I go into any examples, I must give a spoiler alert warning. I may drop important pieces of lore, so if you are a fan and don’t want spoilers, scroll down to where I talk about my own inspiration!

An example I personally enjoy is The Amazing Digital Circus, an indie series created by Gooseworx and Glitch Productions. The series is a psychological horror disguised as a color circus wonderland in an early digital world. The characters became trapped in the circus after putting on a VR headset, seemingly to test it out. Goose themselves had said that their main inspiration behind this series is primarily the psychological horror I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream. The host Caine is inspired by the sentient AI in IHNMAIMS called AM. The Amazing Digital Circus is still producing new episodes, with episode nine coming out in June as I write this and episode 8 being recently released. Episode 8 shows Caine on the verge of abstraction as he slowly goes insane over the possibility that he may not be good at his job of keeping everyone in the circus happy with his adventures. Bubble, his little AI friend (and also potentially a virus), is seen as Caine’s intrusive thoughts. He even goes as far as saying that he was always “the lesser of the two,” referencing that there was another AI or creator of the circus. He is accidentally deleted after torturing everyone in the circus for ‘airing their grievances’ as a ploy for one of their fellow circus members Kinger (a semi-crazy chess piece that only remembers memories in the dark and the supposed creator of Caine before he ended up in the circus) to put Caine to sleep. Instead, he accidentally deletes Caine. Caine’s meltdown is highly reminiscent of AM’s torturous ways in I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream. Caine even says the following during the song before his meltdown in which he tortures everyone: “Don't need to scream if ya ain't got a mouth; Why bite the hand that feeds when it's the only hand you're getting?” This is a direct reference to its primary inspiration, a love song to the horror that came before. TADC encapsulates the fear of being trapped in a place in which you can’t escape with a host that, intentionally or not, can bend the world at their will to their own benefit. 

As a creative that likes working with multiple mediums, each one requires different kinds of inspiration. My mind enjoys spontaneity, yet also some kind of organization. For filmmaking and writing, my inspiration can come from something as simple as a song. For any project I attempt, I make a playlist for it whether for the whole story or just the characters. I often develop character personalities through the songs that I associate with them. To demonstrate, I’ll take my original character Ryder as an example. Sometimes, characters that I stick with for a long time will either get updated or completely new playlists. Ryder has gotten at least one new playlists as I’ve developed his personality and backstory. One playlist made him out to be a flirtatious rockstar with familial issues. The current playlist I have of his goes deeper into why he’s this way. It goes into very sensitive themes, such as sexual violence, abuse, hypersexuality, and intense struggles with mental health and gender identity. 

Moodboards are something that are less common for me to use. These are primarily used to get inspiration for my Dungeons and Dragons characters. A recent board I made was for my most recent character Dr. Pippin. He is a kenku (a raven-like creature) cleric with a lot of mystique about him. The only known information about this creature is that he has a PhD in voodoo, hoodoo, and tomfoolery, which is where he also inherits his clerical abilities. When people ask him about himself, no one truly knows whether or not he's lying, not even me. This is because when I made Pippin, I wanted him to be an improv-based character. No set backstory except for minimal details, no true idea on what he is. For all anyone knows, he could be a cryptid or even a god walking amongst the mortal realm. This is why I like to look around Pinterest and find images that I think fit him. This can be anything from landscape shots to outfits to song lyrics and even aesthetic-looking pictures. However, even the moodboard wasn’t how I got my main inspiration for Pippin. I used the inspiration I use for voice acting: people.

As a beginner voice actor, I haven’t gotten much work. Between school and my own contradiction of the organ I call my brain, I find that I don’t get a lot of time to really voice act. When I do, I am sure to make the most of the roles I get. Like mentioned, I do not have many roles on my plate. Everything I am in is still in progress. My longest role is my first and current voice role on an audiobook series called Equestria Undead: Rising by PastellePallet! I auditioned for three roles, since Pastelle was a good friend of a My Little Pony animator I knew, and I needed to take a break from theatre to focus on work. The roles consisted of Discord (a dragon who befriends Fluttershy in his redemption arc), Big Mac (Applejack’s older brother), and Cheese Sandwich (voiced by ‘Weird’ Al Yankovich and is canonically married to Pinkie Pie). I was called back for the role of Cheese Sandwich and eventually casted! I hadn’t watched My Little Pony in years up to this point, so I had to get familiar with the pony’s voice. Don’t do what I do, but I watched three hours straight of every single time Cheese Sandwich spoke in the TV show to figure out his inflection, dialect, and the range of his voice. He’s decently high for me, which is a shocker considering I’m a baritone whose voice accidentally goes higher when talking to strangers. My inspiration for voicing him also came from Weird Al’s silly parodies. Translating a singing voice into a speaking voice is hard, but it can be done. 

The other project I have done was surprisingly connected to Equestria Undead: Rising but not in the same way. One of the artists was looking for voice actors to voice over a scene for a Warrior Cats animation they planned on doing. I immediately jumped at the opportunity, sending over any Bandlab one-man voice acted scenarios that I thought would fit. Surprisingly, he believed that I would fit the charming and cunning Sleekstride. However, unlike Cheese Sandwich, this character was original. No previous source material except drawings, the written scene, and a voice claim. Voice claims are headcanons used to approximate what an original character’s voice sounds like. For Sleekstride, Gaston from Beauty and the Beast was the claim I was given. However, I took that and spiced it up. I added a very subtle British accent like Dio Brando from the anime JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure. Using the voices of characters also contends for inspiration because you know your character best. Based on what you already have, it’s easy to explore the internet. People have even made social media accounts that collect voices to use as voice claims. 

I’m often asked if I would voice act my own characters if I end up doing a project that requires the use of voice actors. The answer? Yes! If I can’t find someone that fits a voice for a certain character, I am willing to step in. I tend to have an idea of a character’s voice based on my own vocal range before I even think about voice claims. I often use Bandlab to voice out scenes I think about in my head. 

Going back to writing, a source of inspiration I’ve been using much more lately is the Fandom Wiki page for aesthetics. This page lists every single aesthetic from periods of art, design, the Internet, and even aesthetics based on character tropes. It has been a tremendous resource that I wish I found sooner. I’ve been writing down my inspirations for any ideas for writing lately either on a document or on paper. My most recent idea was heavily inspired by multiple different horror aesthetics, such as analog horror, dreamcore, and weirdcore. In addition, I found inspiration from more bright and trippy aesthetics like arcadecore, glitch art, vaporwave, decora, scene, avantropop, clowncore, lunar punk, and whimsicraft. However, a lot of my inspiration came from either horror or certain songs. 

This idea goes as follows: “Studies have shown that satisfaction in peoples’ ways of living are at an all time low. To fix this, big drink companies tried to find ways to appeal to the public. However, after looking over the findings, Dr. Dylan Aperture finds that this dissatisfaction comes from creative folks. To combat this, he creates Apercola. However, the formula was stolen by a massive soda company called HC Soda Company and released under an altered formula, which was deemed Digidrink. Aperture had been testing Apercola’s formula when Digidrink released. What HC didn’t know was that Aperture was still developing a neutralizing agent to add into the drink to make its effects temporary and not severely impact peoples’ lives. Digidrink trapped people into a fictional world in which its consumers have no way to return to real life and no limits except their imaginations. Aperture is now forced to race against the clock to create the neutralizing agent before it takes control of the consumers. Yet, in order to do that, he is forced to drink his own design’s ripoff.” The concept is initially supposed to be made for Dungeons and Dragons homebrew, but it may become a story or film of its own. It is thanks to these aesthetics that I was able to come up with character concepts and the ideas for these drinks. It’s even more special since Dr. Aperture is also partially my partner Hayden’s creation. He was supposed to be part of a D&D campaign I never got to truly start. Now, I’m using him for something I hope to go through with making. The concept is inspired by existing pieces of media as well. These include The Amazing Digital Circus, I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream, Mouthwashing, The Backrooms, Hawaii Part ii (Miracle Musical), Jack Stauber, Creepypasta, among other songs. Inspiration knows no bounds, especially with horror.

I always joke that creating was part of me from birth. Even though I’m no Edgar Allan Poe or Harlan Ellison, I pride myself in creating something for everyone. From the diverse cast of characters in my stories to the different genres that I write with, I always try to keep in mind that an audience may read my writings. This does hold me back a little sometimes. It puts me in a mindset that my writing will never truly be mine. It will always be put under the scope of someone else who may not share my interests or may not understand my world. Yet, I also try to create for myself. Whether it be voice acting scenes in Bandlab, writing au’s using some of my original characters, or continuing a script I’m working on, creativity is all I know. Inspiration is like gasoline in a car: without gas, the car can’t go. Without inspiration, my creativity cannot flow.