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So. Nick and I have been working on the second version of the Parallax pitch bible for a while. I’m pretty happy with these versions of the cast, and will probably be using this as the art for each of them.
One thing constantly in the back of my mind is that I’d like to make it more representative of modern audiences than the straight white people most TV shows are aimed at. Gender and queerness is easy to do. One of these characters is trans. One of them is pansexual. Two of them are in a homosexual relationship. None of this is presented as a big deal in the show; it just is.
But ethnicity? The fact that they’re all cartoon animals makes that a little more oblique.
So I ask you, o Internet: Do any of these characters look like they should be voiced by someone of a particular ethnicity?
And then, a further question: would it be neat if the various characters were voiced by people whose ethnicities deliberately do not match the ones the characters look like they “should” have? With a distinct attempt to have a broad mix of voices, the US has more than enough cartoons with an entirely white voice cast.
I think that shuffling ethnic codes like this sounds like a good idea, but I also recognize that I am a middle-class white lady from a former Confederate state. If this idea is the hottest garbage fire you’ve heard of this week, then let me know so I can change it before I persuade someone to make a season’s worth of Garbage Fire: The Series.
(Also, if you are wondering, due to their Weird Names: Vaxenchalowroth is a lady; the Baron and Atber are guys.)
I don’t see any specific races in there, and Steven Universe is a great example of a voice cast which is incredibly diverse where many of the characters’ voices are against “type” for their actors’ ethnicities (Garnet and Sardonyx being the only gems I can think of who are distinctly visually coded for their actors’ races, although most of the human characters do have a character-actor ethnicity concordance – the Maheshwaran family being a notable exception).