Voice acting needs voice actors. Who's down?

[Anton]

I think this would never fly for the official game, for the reasons Anton gave. But also because it would be too fragmented to narrate in style and artistic quality. I work with film myself, and I know that good acting doesn't come naturally sitting alone somewhere, you need a good director to inspire and guide you. I actually think voice acting is just as hard as any other type of acting, you can really tell from the voice acting in most computer games that they aren't very well directed.

But it's a pretty nice idea to save for a larger mod campaign. I'm really looking forward to when we can think more seriously about forming teams for mod projects, I'm hoping to provide some concept art and storylines for such projects in the future.

I'm totally excited about this idea too... Always happy to help out with mods in the future! I think a good user campaign could be amazing...

[TheConKing]

Hello! I'm here to say that i too am interested in voice acting! if there is a child or something small!

[underthedeep]

or maybe recruit some jokers from http://www.newgrounds.com that site is chock full of em....

[confused]

I also think that this could be a really cool and fun approach for a community mod. The problems with credible voice acting have already been mentioned and the point is that it really sticks out like a sore thumb if it is just a little off. I have recently seen the show Batman Live and they performed to a "professionally" pre-recorded translation in my native language . . . it was so bad that it totally ruined the whole show experience for me.

So i think the way to go for a community voice acting mod would be that nobody "owns" a role, but that everyone can send in recordings for any role they like and the best ones get picked in the end.

Maybe that could also work for the orchestra project, instead of secretly negotiating who is allowed to play which instrument, you could show all the tracks and sheets that are required, and the available recordings for each track. If my instrument is already covered but i think i can do a better job, i just give it a try and upload my result. Instead of running after one careless person and begging for delivery you could get 4 submissions without any hassle. Also if i see that a violin track is missing and i know someone who rocks the violin, i could grab the sheets and ask the person to record it for me.

Either way, we need a way to keep the community aware of ongoing projects that need contributors, as blog posts and forum threads easily vanish in the archives and get covered with dust.

[Fabian]

i would love to do voice acting for anyone i can sort of manipulate my vocal cords to get different accents and levels.

[SteelRaven7]

Either way, we need a way to keep the community aware of ongoing projects that need contributors, as blog posts and forum threads easily vanish in the archives and get covered with dust.

Good point! Shouldn't there be an "ongoing projects"-thread where the community is able to append a list of community projects going on? Like stickied? Also, I got the impression that the characters in overgrowth communicate through some image-hybrid way from one of the more recent art asset overviews?

[Jacktheawesome]

This kind of topic has been addressed before, and I always think it's an interesting idea, but sadly not very practical. There are serious issues with most amateur home recordings that really make it difficult to create a consistent story when listening to voice acting. If it were me, and I were trying to create a sound, having these inconsistencies would make it very difficult to then release the quality product I'm working on. Also, community members working for free are very unreliable. It's not that I think this is a bad idea, it's that I think it will end up being more work, and take longer than it should, and will end up costing the team more in time than it would to hire professionals. Then, afterwards, you will still end up with a lower quality product as well.

As a side note, we were trying to do something similar with a piece of music, which ultimately we're still working on. The problem is, the quality of recordings varied from really terrific, to absolutely awful and unusable. (Performance issues aside, just recording quality.) Our biggest problem has been getting the people who agreed to record for us, to actually deliver.
Here was our first blog post on the topic: Call for Orchestra
And two years later, it was still sounding like this: Orchestra Demo - and while I think this is cool... the sound suffers a lot compared to doing a real recording session...
I can tell you that we will not be doing this for the full game, as it would never be done...

Do you need any more violin parts? Or is this even still active?

[Anton]

Do you need any more violin parts? Or is this even still active?

Anything still listed at http://orchestra.antonriehl.com is a part that needs to be filled, or could use more players. Mikko and I have both been really busy, so neither of us have had time to move the project forward, but we are still planning on finishing it. If you want to add more violin, we'd be happy

[Jacktheawesome]

I know what you mean with the business, but I'll see what I can do

[confused]

...Anything still listed at http://orchestra.antonriehl.com is a part that needs to be filled, or could use more players....

So it turns out you have already been doing it that way all the time ? I'm sorry for pointless suggestion, i totally missed that link in the last blog post
Well then, lets try to get as many people as we can to submit some recordings!
Don't let us down Jack, i'm counting on you