One day last year, I had the goal of acting while I did cooking in college so I could not only have an alternative career path but also mainly focus on things I cared about. I instead chose VA over acting and decided to have that as my alternate career path and something I could do while I learned about cooking in college. I decided to start my VA journey by making my second Newgrounds account. I had a first account (still do) but I didn't like the name of it anymore. I started my journey with a headset mic that wasn't at all viable but it was the only thing I had. I decided to first upload improv I wrote for my high school drama class so I could do something to show off my voice. It's not that great looking back but you have to start somewhere. Fast forward and I'm auditioning for VA jobs on NG and CCC, I never landed any roles, but one late night I get an email about an announcer job and to make things short that person paid me $155.09 to do announcer voices (this was with a headset mic btw). This heavily excited me so much that I went far and bought a dynamic microphone for about $50. At this point in time I decided to start doing daily improv skits/sketches since I wasn't getting training anywhere and realized that I liked VA so much to the point that I'd much rather just do it then watch videos telling me to do it or how I should do it so with my imagination and me constantly talking to myself, I devoted myself to doing an improvisational skit/sketch daily and wanted to originally do it for very long; it was with this that I started to grow a little bit everyday and when I started interacting with Newgrounds more, that's when I really started to get familiar with the place and when people started to kinda know who I was.

Fast forward to today where I've uploaded more than 300 improvisational audio recordings, started making audio sketches (as a result of the spooktacular last year), gained 61 fans (as of writing this) , and landed roles in some animations. Overall, things are small but good where I am right now and I'm deeply thankful to everyone who's followed and has been cool to me so far in my journey of being a creative fellow and voice actor. Seriously you're all awesome and I'm glad to still be kicking on this awesome website.

Now to get into updates:

I'm going to stop doing daily improv skits/sketches at some point because as fun as they are, my original plan of doing them for years until I found viable work just sounds like a terrible idea in hindsight that sounds like it'll just drain me of the love I've always had for Improv. I'll still be doing them but only until september 6th, the date I started them. On that specific date you will no longer see any daily uploads to this channel and the only thing you will see are sketches I make and a new show I've been conceptualizing for sometime, which I'll get into in the next paragraph.

I've been planning a variety show which is purely improvisational and drops on a weekly basis for just a year, which means I'll only be making approximately 53 episodes of it. It's not going to be high production but what I plan on doing is a spin on the improv I've been doing so far as instead of improvised sketches/skits where I'm 1-2 people in a specific scenario, I will now be playing 1 character who has the burden of running a variety show that he was given but in exchange has total freedom to do whatever he pleases with the show. The character of this show is a disgraced clown who is a lowly but happy degenerate. I will be running this series starting September 13, 2025 and will be running it weekly as I've mentioned before.

Until this series comes I'll keep thinking of this series, making entertaining audio sketches, try to dip my hand into animation, and always making sure to keep my VA spirit and motivation alive.

The only other news I have is that I'm making a sketch and the writing phase is done, all I have to do is gather everything together which will take a while, but even if it takes a year I'll make sure to drop the sketch because I cooked up a REAALL good one.

To end this off, here's a face reveal of me, the one behind all the madness made so far:

That's me nicolistheguy, nicolis for short, and nico for shorter.

What a glorious website, so glorious I was able to use it as a bounce pad for creative ideas I had which I've been able to express through my voice acting and writing.

I seriously am grateful for this and to be able to be on this website during its 30th birthday and be able to celebrate among everyone else who is posting art or animations is a marvelous thing to witness.

Godspeed to this website and may live for decades and centuries to come.

Here's my celebratory sketch I made for the occasion.

I adore improvisation because of how it makes me engage with my imagination in a fun way; so with the tutorial jam opening up I thought I'd use this as an opportunity to teach the bare basics of improv to everyone that clicks on this, which I hope opens more people up to this beautifully dramatic art. (Just so you know, I’ll be focussing on a solo improv rather than group improv, but plenty of what i say can apply to group improv as well)

ALLLLLLLLRRRIGHT THEN!!! TIME TO DO A BRAIN BLAST AND JUMP IN AAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!

Improv basics index:

What is improv

What’s the depth 

How to do improv

What are the rules to improv

Improv tutorial example

Conclusion

What is improv?

Improvisation is the creation of characters and scenarios on the spot without the preparation of a planned or written script. That’s all there is to it definition wise, but in terms of depth, there’s a lot more to improv itself beyond the basic definition , which is what I’ll elaborate on in the next section.

What makes improv deep?

Improv can either be simple or complicated (or both, but I'm keeping this simple):

• It can be simple because if you understand how to utilize your imagination it's as basic as linking words together in a detailed fashion and putting pure emotion and passion into what you spew from your mouth, putting on a colorful performance while doing so. 

• But it's also complicated because to get to a point where improv feels simple you need not just an active imagination and an understanding of improv fundamentals but also an abstract way of thinking about yourself, your environment, and the world around you as a whole; in other words, you need a unique kind of mindset to fully grasp improv as a craft.

With that out of the way, let’s start getting into how improv works.

What are the basics of improv?

You know all those ideas floating inside your head at this current moment? That's technically all you need to do Improv since at the end of the day improv is all about thinking of a prompt and running as far as you can with it taking it to whatever place you can whether it be emotional, comedic, or both. There’s obviously more to doing improv than what I just laid out, which is why I’ll now speak about some fundamentals so you can have a basic idea of what goes into improvisation as a craft.

What are the fundamentals of improv?

To make an improv work successfully requires you to understand the fundamentals of it

• Extensive imagination 

(to keep coming up with new material and adding on to a prompt in a detailed manner, an extensive imagination will be your dearest friend)

• Quick thinking 

(Adding new information to the situation in a smooth and well paced manner is a great skill to have and makes you think adaptively with what you add next to your scenario)

• Storytelling skills

(this is more for solo stuff, but to understand where to start and end an improv is a good skill to have)

• Confidence 

(You need to be able to act like what you’re imagining is actually happening to you and act accordingly, so be very confident and love yourself, SERIOUSLY)

• Be colorful and add detail 

(adding color and detail to your improvisations make them not only easy to understand, but also easy to immerse oneself into on both sides, the improver and the person listening/watching)

• Avoid asking questions 

(unless you’re trying to integrate it, you should overall avoid questioning where the situation goes and embrace what happens to you in whatever scenario you’re in)

• Understand and adapt to the genre you’re aiming for 

(If you’re trying to be funny, make your scenario goofy and absurd, try to up the stakes of comedy in an entertaining fashion that is humorous to both you and the audience. If you’re being more dramatic, focus on emotion and development of character(s) to add to the impact of the drama)

• Do not say um or uh

(self explanatory, but unless it adds to the scenario, avoid having ums or uhs in any improv you do)

This is all pretty basic stuff but it can still be a lot to take in, so with that, here’s an example of what can be done when these rules are taken into mind while also having fun in the process:

Conclusion:

Just so you know I’m not an expert on improvisation, this is just my basic understanding of how it works, people’s minds are different so some people will understand this very easily and others won’t, and that’s okay because we all work differently and even people who don’t understand will grasp how to do improv if they keep trying. What truly matters at the end of the day however, regardless of skill level or even understanding of what improv is at its core, is that you have fun with it and play with it, whether solo or not, and I recommend it because improv can actually help quite a bit with stuff like public speaking and school/work presentations, and coming up with innovative ideas. I’m now just ranting so with everything in mind, have a good day and I hope you absorb something useful from what I wrote here, peace.

Unrelated, but still kinda important:

If you're recording improv with mics and all that, I recommend using Audacity as it's free to everyone and very understandable to use.

https://www.audacityteam.org/

https://paygamez.newgrounds.com/news/post/1546663

I found my old account some time back and I made a post about on what will happen to the improvisations in the future.

I've made 300 audio posts, a majority of them being Improv. You're probably thinking if I still have ideas and the answer is hell yes.

This post is now another one of those beautiful ideas and you can keep expecting more weird and unexpected stuff. Until then Ta-Ta.

(edit: counting specifically improvisation audios, this is not the 300th audio, but actually the 285th)

I've finally finished and released the sketch I brought up in my last post. Give it a proper go and I hope you all enjoy it.

Also I'll be participating in the tutorial jam so watch out for that because I'll be giving a veeerrrrry interesting lesson.

See you soon.

I've been working on a new sketch and to update you all on it, its going swimmingly well and now starting to go into production.

Onto growth now:

I announced 9 days ago that i was grateful for 30 fans and mentioned that that post was gonna be outdated as soon as I made the post public. Lo and behold I was right as 9 days later I received 10 more fans, an unprecedented rate at this point of me being a Newgrounder since In the past I just received drops and bits, which was great, and now this.

All of this is to say that my voice acting (also improv) journey has been very fun so far and I just want to say how grateful I am that more and more people are starting to notice that.

I bid you all adieu for the time being. Expect to hear from me again when the sketch drops and in the meantime, stay groovy.

I got 5 new fans in about less than to about 24 hours, i think this probably has to do with the Gamecube Collab and the beauty of it, or just people finding my stuff. Regardless, and no matter if this is dated immediately or not, I thank you all from the bottom of heart for getting me to 30 fans, can't wait to get bigger from here lol.

Finding a peanut butter jar in the stairway of my apartment was pretty unexpected. This is actually pretty similar to the Unexpected nature of this sketch right here: https://www.newgrounds.com/audio/listen/1422885

I love rewinding a lot when watching stuff to catch all the neat details like delivery of a line, or to simply understand the scene more. The rewind is a truly powerful function because of this.