Connor “CDawgVA” Colquhoun is a busy guy.
His humble beginnings started with the creation of his YouTube account back in 2014 with a dream of voice acting while still living in London. Prior to and early on in the creation of his YouTube channel, Connor’s voice acting in London consisted mainly of amateur work with a few commercial, narrative and corporate voice-acting gigs to pay the bills. However, his success on YouTube came from his anime voice-acting impersonations on YouTube.
Fast forward to today, and Connor’s been living in Japan since 2019, has almost 3 million subscribers on his Japan-life-centric YouTube channel, is part of a successful podcast with friends and fellow content creators Joey “The Anime Man” Bizinger and Garnt “Gigguk” Maneetapho, and has recently signed exclusively with Twitch as a streamer. Speaking of Twitch, he also just streamed himself cycling almost 900km and raised a whopping $555,146 USD in his second rendition of ‘Connor’s Cyclethon’. Pretty good stuff!
We got the chance to chat with Connor about how he’s feeling post-Cyclethon 2.0, whether he has plans to do it again, and what his career’s been like in terms of signing to Twitch and voice acting in anime and video games.
How were you feeling going into Cyclethon 2.0? Were you expecting it to exceed the success of the first charity marathon stream?
CDawgVA: I certainly hoped so. I think that’s like the goal, right? Is that if, you know, obviously, when you do something for charity, you don’t really consider, “Is it going to get good numbers? Am I going to fall off?”. It’s more so that I don’t want to be all like, “Okay, I’ve done this event, and people are less interested”.
I just wanted it to be a success so I could raise a ton of money for charity. And also, I wanted to exercise for nine days straight. And I think I kind of hit all of them. But yeah, it was tough. It was very tough. It’s a lot harder than I expected.
Well, speaking of exercising for nine days straight. Was there any sort of physical prep, or like a Rocky-style montage sequence that you went into before the Cyclethon? Or did you just wing it?
CDawgVA: Everyone asks that! Everyone asks, “You must have had to prepare pretty rigorously for it.” But not really. You know, I generally like to stay healthy, like to exercise, which I try to tell everyone to do, too. And, you know, riding a bike for about 100 kilometres a day is not something that is superhuman, it’s completely within reach of anyone. It’s just, you know, are you willing to get some kind of ass pain that will make you question everything because the seat is hurting your butt and your legs?
It’s just about powering through the pain. But I firmly believe anyone can cycle 100 kilometres a day. It’s really not that tough. I think anyone that spends a whole day at a gym did it, you would be able to do it. I think you just wouldn’t be able to walk the next day. And that’s the hard part is just overcoming that and just being like, alright, it’s for good cause, it’s for a good cause. I hate this, but I’ll do it.
What made you want to do it again?
CDawgVA: I think the first one was like lightning in a bottle where it just blew up, I think to the surprise of everyone. So me and Chris kind of planned it all, I offhandedly was like, “Let’s just go and cycle for eight days.” And it was three weeks before we started doing it. And I didn’t really have a good plan about how I was going to do it.
So I spent three weeks planning the technology behind it, trying to get fitter to do it. And I didn’t really tell people because I wasn’t even sure if the connection would work. I was kind of shy about it. I didn’t really say anything. And then I just kind of told people a week before it was happening. And people were a bit confused. They’re like, “Wha? You’re just gonna cycle all day for eight days. That seems really bizarre.”
I was like, okay, but then the first day, you know, the turnout was really impressive and really crazy. And a lot of people I think immediately got hooked on the story and the journey and a lot of the stuff I added to the stream to make it a lot easier to follow for the average person without needing to be informed. Because the main goal is to make sure you can join and follow along.
Will you do it again?
CDawgVA: I don’t know if we’ll do it again, but I think there’s a good chance we will at some point, just because I think I’ll get to the point where I feel too unhealthy. And I’m like, I gotta do it again. I think me and Chris have said that we do want to do it again. We just want to make sure that there’s another element to it, or an idea that enhances it and makes it a reason to do it again.
Obviously, charity is a good enough reason. I think anyone would say that. But I think for us creatively, we want to find something to enhance it and add something to the story. Yeah. And we have a few ideas. Maybe? I’m not sure yet. I don’t wanna say anything.
No spoilers! And so this whole thing was, of course, streamed live on Twitch, where you’ve recently decided to exclusively stream. What sparked the move? How’s it been so far?
CDawgVA: Yeah, it’s been great. I mean, being signed to Twitch is awesome. I have something that I have wanted for a while. I think there’s this kind of mystique around it, but it’s also just for a bit more stability. I work with a lot of people, I have some staff full-time. And so being able to have some form of consistency that you can say, “Hey, I have this much to work with every month that I can put towards hiring really talented people”, that was kind of the goal the whole time.
Obviously, I do a lot of other creative stuff as well, I’m a YouTuber and podcaster, but it’s nice to have a lot of the Twitch stuff be able to make sense financially. Twitch has been great for me. I feel like it’s so corporate when I say that, but they’ve genuinely been great.
When we had the conversation, I just told them straight off. I was like, Hey, I’d love to sign because I mean, it kind of feels like the right platform. Obviously, I’m a YouTuber, but for me, it kind of felt like Twitch was where it was at for me. So it’s great to be signed with them.
Yeah, absolutely. And I mean, you’ve also come pretty far in terms of your voice-acting career. Did you expect voicing a minor character in Dragon Ball Z Abridged would take you as far as doing voice acting work in a variety of anime and video games? I was a huge Dragon Ball Z Abridged fan.
CDawgVA: Oh really? Me too. When I was growing up, I think everyone who was an up-and-coming voice actor really aspired to be in that because it was crazy how popular it was back in the day. It was kinda crazy how ubiquitous it was. When I got in there, I worked with some really talented people who, you know, they’re still doing YouTube today and they’re really, really impressive.
But I didn’t expect to ever be voicing in actual anime. It was a long-shot dream when I started ages ago. And yeah, that’s been a weird journey as well. I think it’s just what happens when you do voice acting on YouTube, you just have to go with the opportunities that present themselves and hopefully, you did the right call and you’re in the right things and it all turns out well.
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