Well, hello there.
What you’ve just stumbled upon is an ambitious little multimedia project I’m currently working on. It goes by the name of Dry Heat.
What is Dry Heat, you may ask? It’s a lot of things: a new webcomic and a series of shorts published on YouTube and TikTok. But Dry Heat is more than the sum of these parts.
It is a comedy satire about two Arizona radio hosts, Black Jack and Cactus Jack, who run the titular Dry Heat radio show. Accompanied by their many strange friends and allies, the hosts are dragged into the politics, conspiracies, controversies, and personalities that define Arizonan life.
The project primarily consists of animated shorts and a webcomic. The shorts are original, voice-acted stories published on YouTube Shorts and TikTok. These simplified, animatic-style videos are intended to give audiences a rough idea of the humor, characters, and situations that inhabit the world of Dry Heat.
The webcomic serves as the main course. It is where audiences can experience the full, heaping meal of Dry Heat. Issues of the webcomic will take longer to produce and will eventually be adapted into motion comics, which will also be published on YouTube and TikTok.
Because of the nature of the show’s production, we will be casting performers with the hope that they will remain available for long-term voice work as their respective characters. We may also ask performers to voice multiple characters. Performers will receive an additional $15 for each extra character they voice.
These roles range from main characters to smaller supporting characters who may only appear occasionally or may not be featured in this initial listing.
English is the primary language of the project, but some characters will also speak other languages, primarily Spanish, German, and Russian. These roles will include an additional language tag so applicants know which characters require multilingual performers. Being bilingual or multilingual is therefore a major plus.
Main roles will pay between $20 and $50 per hour. Payments will be made through PayPal.
Performers will be credited in the video description and in every social media
post featuring their work. Credits may also include links to any social media profiles or professional pages provided by the performer.
PROJECT OVERVIEW
Dry Heat is a comedy satire about two Arizona radio hosts, Black Jack and Cactus Jack, who are repeatedly dragged into the state’s strangest political controversies, conspiracies, and local personalities. The project will be produced as a webcomic, a series of short animatic-style videos, and longer motion-comic adaptations. Performers will voice recurring characters across these stories, with some actors occasionally being asked to portray additional supporting roles.
DEADLINES
This is an ongoing production, and selected performers should be comfortable returning to their roles on a long-term basis. Scripts will generally be distributed on a monthly basis, although how often a performer records will depend on how prominently their character appears in a given story. Auditions for this casting round will remain open until September 7th, 2026. After the deadline, finalists may be contacted for callbacks before casting decisions are made. Or will be offered different roles if needed.
COMMUNICATION
If you are selected to join the cast, you will be invited to the shared Dry Heat Discord server, where you’ll be able to communicate directly with me and the other artists involved in the production. Discord will be our primary platform for communication and recording coordination, although Zoom can also be used if you are more comfortable with it. Whenever possible, I also plan to provide live voice direction during recording sessions.
WHAT WE ASK OF YOU
Above all, enjoy the work. Dry Heat is a collaborative project built by writers, artists, actors, and other creative lunatics trying to make something worthwhile together. We want performers who are interested in their characters and comfortable being part of an ongoing production.
Please record in a quiet environment using a good-quality microphone. Air conditioners, fans, room echo, electrical hum, and other persistent background noise should be kept to an absolute minimum. Your recording space matters just as much as the microphone itself.
Submit your recordings clean and unprocessed. Please do not apply noise reduction, compression, EQ, normalization, reverb, voice effects, or other post-production unless we specifically ask for it. We would rather receive the original recording and handle the audio ourselves.
Unless directed otherwise, you are welcome to provide up to three takes of a line. Different readings are encouraged when you think there is more than one way the character could deliver something. Please remove obvious mistakes, false starts, and takes you do not want us to use before submitting your recording.
Recordings should be submitted as .WAV files, preferably mono at 48 kHz/24-bit. File delivery and organization will be handled through the Dry Heat Discord server after casting.
Because Dry Heat is an ongoing production, scripts will generally be distributed on a monthly basis. The amount of material you receive will depend on your character's involvement in that month's story, so not every performer will necessarily be needed for every production cycle.
Whenever scheduling allows, recording sessions may be directed live through Discord or Zoom. We want to work with you on the performance rather than simply hand you a script and disappear into the Arizona desert.
Occasionally, we may request a line re-recording because of performance, pronunciation, technical problems, or changes made during editing. We will try to keep these requests reasonable and respect the time you put into the project.
Finally, communication matters. If something comes up and you cannot meet a recording deadline, just let us know. We understand that everyone involved has lives, jobs, school, families, and other commitments outside of Dry Heat.
Each recording should be in ABCABCABC. You can do variants like AAABBBCCC but it gives me the widest range out of your performance.
