NEWGROUNDS! IT IS TIME!

This is the bell for round 1 of #VAC14, so you better get in there and land some blows!

Did I miss anything?

Maybe. Here's the announcement which may contain useful information. You might still miss something if you don't read the information below carefully, so please do so.

Who can enter?

Anyone who's not involved in this contest as a judge! Whether you're brand new to voice acting or have done this lots of times before, you're welcome to join in the battle. No need to register, just make sure you:

• Upload your audio only submission to NG as a voice format audio project
• Publish it before the deadline
• Include your team members (if any) in the project and make sure they are all visible in the credits
• Tag your submission with 'VAC14' besides whatever other tags you want to use

Feel free to share your creation in this topic for extra exposure, but it's not required to be judged.

What do we submit?

Each round will have a theme and a genre to work with: for round 1 the theme is 'The Heist' and the genre is 'Action'. Your entry will deal with some kinda of heist that is going to be/is being/has been pulled off. It could be set during the preparation, the execution or the aftermath. This is an action oriented skit - it may of course contain elements of drama, comedy or other styles, but the focus should be on action style production, so bring out your action movie tropes and cliches!

How long do we have?

Submissions will be registered on Friday April 15th 12:00am EDT - late submissions will not be taken into consideration, no exceptions, so make sure you meet the criteria mentioned above before the deadline!

Judging will start shortly afterwards, and depending on the amount of entries, we'll try and give a forecast on when it should be ready.

How will the judging go?

All entries will be judged by a panel of judges consisting of most of the NG VA Collab management - being @VoicesByCorey, @JoshDytonVO, @Bro-son and myself. Each entry will be scored against the criteria in this table:

This means you can earn a total of 205 points:

• Up to 100 for acting
• Up to 50 for writing
• Up to 25 for basic production

Besides that, you can add music, sound effects and/or sound processing if you want. If you don't, you won't get any bonus points. But if you do it badly, it may end up costing you points - so beware! Also, not sticking to the length requirements will cost you points.

Technically speaking, you can hand in a submission that has nothing to do with the genre or the theme and it will only cost you 20 points. Please be advised that if you do so, your entry will not be taken into consideration.

The final score for each entry will be the average of all judges' scores.

IMPORTANT NOTE FOR PEOPLE WORKING IN TEAMS: if you make it past this round, make sure you have the same team lined up to participate in the next, or you will be disqualified. If you make it to one of the prize-winning places, the prize money will be split among your team members as evenly as possible unless you come up with a different approach that is agreed on by the entire team.

And theeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeen?

After the judges are done, the scores will be presented and the selection for round 2 will be announced, and you'll get another of these posts with useful information.

In the meantime, if you have any questions, reply below or reach out to one of the judges. Now go out there and act!

IMPORTANT NOTE:

Although it's explicitly mentioned in the picture with the criteria, it appears the text about it got eaten - all entries will need to be at least 1:00 minute in length, and 3:00 minutes at most. As indicated in the criteria, points will be deducted for entries that do not comply with this requirement.

Are the judges going to be the same for every round or will they vary?

I have reason to believe they'll be the same for each round. But even if they aren't, all we need to make sure is that all entries in the same round are judged by the same people - by using the average score as the final result, any effect from changes in the judging team between rounds is nullified.

Maybe im blind but what is the theme?

Please see below!

Does stealing one's heart count?

If you can make it sound like a heist, why not. But it'll most likely cost you points for straying from the genre - it's gonna be hard to play that idea straight.

Developments! @SuperJeffoMan made a variation on the banner which I hamfistedly slapped a Round 1 tag on to draw your attention.

Besides that, @GrantTheHierophant is adding a whopping $100 to the prize money, possibly allowing us to save some for 4th or even 5th place! Plus @Pingu and @Sardinky have a couple of special prizes lined up in terms of recording hardware and software, of which we are now pondering who would be deserving of such a prize and how we would go about potentially shipping actual goods across the world. Excitement!

Good luck to the participants!

The theme is "The Heist".

It's in the "What do we submit?"section lol

Great. I may assemble a small group of people, not from NG most likely, so if there's any other way I can credit them, tell me now

Or....

If anyone on NG wants to recruit me for this project, feel free to check out what I have for reels and/or DM me either through Discord or NG

Thank you very much!!!

Can we record part by part and put it together when we post?

I'm not sure I understand what you mean, but as long as your entry consists of a single audio file with all your parts in it, you can go about the production process however you see fit. If this doesn't answer your question, please lemme know.

Last question (probably)

You probably have answered this already but i am secretly blonde and probably just not understanding because i am also very old and tired

Do we lose points if we DO NOT put in any music and/or sound effects and its litterally just our voice(s) in the void?

For the music, sound effects and other added creativity, you don't lose any points for not including any. They can land you some bonus points if you include them and do it right - they can also cost you points if you include them and do it poorly.

Dab

I am a bit confused. Is the deadline for round one submissions the 1st of april? Or the 15th? Did i miss this years? Thanks for your time and reply.

April 1st was the launch date - deadline for round 1 is April 15th.

I have a quick question regarding music and sounds—What's the policy on third-party music/sounds? For instance, would we be allowed to include music/sounds from a video game or the like? I'm only asking on the competition front, because this project would fulfil the game's policy on using their music.

Use of third party material falls under the same rules as for any other project - it has to be royalty-free/uncopyrighted/unlicensed, correct attribution needs to be given where applicable, etc. Does that answer your question?

It does indeed. Thanks for the quick response!

Maybe I'm an idiot, but how do we submit this? Do we just reply with the full thing or upload it to the audio portal with a hashtag?

The latter, indeed: just upload the audio project and slap the VAC14 tag on it.

Fellow people also have computers and are connected to the Internet. I Have worked tirelessly to damage my own eardrums and hardware. Body, soul, family relations. Tips in the commentary!

To present to you sounds which I with my mouth and sounds which I didn't

!70 HOURS LEFT TO SUMBIT!

The list of entries is swiftly growing and I'm really looking forward to going through them all (:

Remember: if you want to use music and/or sounds, use royalty free stuff! There's plenty of musicians here who'd be willing to provide you with a pre-fab track - thus putting them outside of your contest team - or make music for you - becoming part of your team. And there's plenty of websites like Freesound where you can get CC0 or attribution licensed sound effects to include in your work.

And of course, there's only 1 entry per contestant, regardless of whether you are competing as an individual or as a team. I know this wasn't specifically stated in the published rules, but I think it's more than fair to assume you could and should have seen that one coming...

Now bring it on! Hit me with your best vocal shots! YOU CAN DO THIS!

Where do we submit our files?

Just publish them as an audio project and make sure the tag 'vac14' is on it.