So, I may or may not get any positions, but I've spent all morning working on voices for another mod. Not only did I work on these voices, I also have a shiny new video for all of you!
What is this video you may ask? Ponies.
I've been having enormous difficulties getting a good recording for the music I've been working on. Since it may have to hit the back burner for a while, I'll let you know what I was working on instead of being evasive. I had planned to record and upload Frank Sinatra's Strangers in the Night and the Grateful Dead's Friend of the Devil. It's been difficult getting rid of the original vocals and even worse getting a solid, single recording of a song. It's good practice, but it's taken up a lot of time.
What about Cave Johnson, you may ask. Well, to be honest, there's so much needed to get the voice perfect, that I'm not ready to record yet. I've worked on it for about an hour every day for the past five, but it's rough on my throat and progress is hard won. Thaaat reminds me, soon I plan to do an advice column about taking care of your voice which will include vocal warm ups. It's important for every VO specialist or VA.
Also, as promised long ago, here's a link to that ever-interesting torrent of arguably the world's worst fanfic. http://thepiratebay.org/torrent/6139788 Unfortunately, I need to poke one of my friends (Vonix) to start uploading them again, but I'll get to work on that. Hint: Later on, there's even a chapter where we base the reading on DBZ Abriged and I'm transitioning between about 10 voices. EDIT: Listen up, folks! If and when this goes back up, realize, it is NSFW and probably would be rated 18+ no matter where you live. There's dirty jokes, cursing, and drinking during the recordings, so... ya know. Listener discretion is advised.
As for the Dr. Kleiner video... ugh. It makes me want to buy intricate glass work to shatter. The MP3 files are beautiful, but they don't import well. A friend says he's fair with video editing, so I'm hoping to see if another program will handle it better. We shall see.
Now, what about this mystical pony video?
Well, it includes one of the first original characters I've ever created. Saw the concept art without knowing anything about the character and crafted a voice I thought would fit from there. The character is from MLP Gen 1 and named Arabus, but the art has been revamped. As for my voicing, I took a pseudo Middle Eastern acccent and crossed it with what eventually became Barbados Slim (from Futurama) for the base voice. After that, I made it deep and rumble-y, like thunder, since he's a cloud creature. Finally, I added a lot of extra air and hissing to convey the cloud-like air/wind quality I thought his voice should have. As a result, the voice ended up being very soft. To counter this, I used Audacity's amplification feature because I felt his voice should be booming. Unfortunately, I needed the computer's help on that voice because amplifying my own voice lost that airy quality I was striving for.
Next were actually established characters. I recorded Big Macintosh (though the mod already has one) because it was honestly a piece of cake. His voice is super close to mine if I make it a bit quieter, more thoughtful, and replace a bit of the Southern accent I lost.
Then there was Hoity-Toity. Man, that took forever. I swear it started off sounding like Sean Connery, not what I wanted at all. I basically had to speak from my nose with a constant air of disapproval and a physical frown. The inflections came pretty quickly after that.
Finally, we have Braeburn... Goodness. That was a difficult one. His voice is between two of the vocal ranges I can do and getting there was a real challenge. I still don't quite have it spot on. Still, it's coming along. As for the accent, it required some very interesting mouth movements that I can't really describe. It needed to be a combination of a young prospector and a Southern accent without really being either.
DEAR GREAT SKY MONSTER! Ugh, the audio quality in the video turned out terrible again. I hate Ubuntu so much right now. I wish Windows would properly install. It's not even the loudest recordings any more. Why is it that the MP3s sound amazing, but the videos are terrible?! Honestly, I don't know what to do about this. I guess I'll be trying a new video editing program. I'm tired of this happening. I'm not a video editor, I don't care about the video quality. I need good AUDIO.
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After much screaming, I appear to have located a better set of video editing software. It's more user-friendly and has tons of audio / video quality and compression options. However, it doesn't like saving in any format but what it wants, so I guess I'll have to find something to change file formats if YouTube doesn't like it. Hooopefully, the audio works properly on this one, though...
WAAAAHOOOO!!! Oh man, I'm so stoked! So, I sacrificed a bit of the video quality, but the .dvd format uploads to YouTube no problem and the audio is CRYSTAL clear. That means I can upload the Dr. Kleiner video as soon as I get the chance. In the meantime, here's more video-y goodness.
As always, if you can't see it, check out the YouTube channel here.
Thanks for checking me out everypony!
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