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Underwear Ninja comes with Space Suit
to blog or not to blog, which is the path a true underwear ninja must take? whichever path it be, it will surely be a rough-hewn one. argyle, possibly. |
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Saturday, September 09, 2006
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the thing about..
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the thing about not having enough money from atari to get a lot of SAG talent is that miscellaneous characters will have to be recorded for free or at the studio's cost. misc. characters are people that appear in the game once and then you don't see them again. like a thug that is picking on someone that you're supposed rescue or something.
so all the money goes to the "important" characters. real actors that we have to pay for to voice characters that travel with the player. and they sound great.
but what about the miscellaneous characters? there's like 50 of them! ok, not sure EXACTLY how many, but a very large amount. and they could have anywhere between 1 and 25 lines of dialogue. and these fall on our heads to make them "believable" and good and everything that it needs to be..... like that line from the movie "wayne's world" when he says "i know its a small part, but c'mon! we can do better than that!"
it's like that, but without the money to get an actor that can do it right.
so to start, how do you get people to read lines for free?
friends? acquaintances? ourselves? you know, there's only soo many characters that 1 person can do before he/she starts sounding like the same person.
i think i've reached the point where i've expended all my friends, people i know (or heard about), and finally, myself. friends are good for a different voice i guess, but most people (i've found out) can only be 1 person. as in, they can't transform their voice or be creative or maybe they're too shy or something. and then there's the question of whether or not they can act... or be able to take direction and coaching in how to read a line since the slightest inflection on a word can change the entire meaning!
the thing about me doing voices is that as it turns out, i'm not the world's worst actor for this kinda thing. or maybe i'm just getting the hang of it because i'm around pro VO people a lot. my problem has mostly to do with me sounding pretty much like i'm 18 or so. with some post-processing lowering my pitch, i can probably sound like a 25 y/o if i etch out a gruff voice.
the thing about doing VO is that 1 person might be able to get away with voicing for 3 different people depending on post processing, changing the way lines are read, or changing the voice. after that, it gets to be like "that guy sounds like that other guy but with a deeper voice"
bottom line: it stops being believable that it's a different character after 4 different voices. tops!
so why don't i tell you how this played out.
now i'm pierson (a deserter coward that the player tries to convince back into the militia), inn_attacker1 (a bladeling that bursts into an inn demanding to seize the player), a githyanki sergeant (reports to the evil lich queen of the player's whereabouts), evil druid 2 (one of three mages that gets maniacly corrupted), sun soldier (alerts the gaurds that the undead are unaffected by the light), lizardman shaman (rallies the lizardfolk against the player when he stumbles upon their ritual to the "stone god"), and a captain of the guards (rallies the troops together to defend the fort)
and i'm all out of voices.
in fact, you're gonna hear me and be like "hey i know that voice, that's mark!"
ok ok true, the world doesn't know what "mark" sounds like, but they ARE going to notice that druid 2 sounds a lot like that coward back in west harbor.
and there's little i can do about that now because this whole NWN2 thing has to be wrapped up by friday next week. all audio delivered. that's right, it gets shipped out for printing! any changes that happen now will occur as a downloaded update when you install the game. so they're gonna get x amount of misc. characters that are voiced by me and the others i work with at heavy melody. |
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posted by underwear ninja
12:24 AM
 
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TGIF will mean more after next week. It's been a learning experience for all of you, I think. HM, Atari, you and the pro VO's. Next game will perhaps be a little clearer to design sounds and budget for better. --Deorwin says Happy Birthday to Druid 2.
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TGIF will mean more after next week. It's been a learning experience for all of you, I think. HM, Atari, you and the pro VO's. Next game will perhaps be a little clearer to design sounds and budget for better. --Deorwin says Happy Birthday to Druid 2.