ive noticed that a lot of people are remaking (updating?) some old mods for fs1/2 and a lot of them do not have voice overs.
**if you dont want to read my rambling shennannigans, just read paragraphs starting with
and you can skip the rest of my craziness**
ive actually done a little VO work for a local studio, on some crappy cartoon that used to play on public access here.
i only worked for a few weeks though, as i did happen to have one problem that i just couldnt resolve. it was very hard for me to maintain the accents at the same time as matching up with the lip flaps on screen. and the cartoonists were not that talented, i think the show maybe had half as many frames per second as most cartoons, so the lip movements were even more jumpy than normal. (thankfully, that wont be a problem here) the show was about a brother and sister, who met and helped a bunch of crazy looney tune types on their walk to school. they would use what they learned in school the previous day to help out their cartoon friends. (well the kids were cartoons too, but human. the critters were definately more like looney tunes) it could delve into some serious issues, such as drug abuse, crime, and even pedophiles. i think the show had the right intentions, but they didnt deliver the message quite the right way, and were taken off the air 2 months later due to parent request. they found a lot of stuff in there to be innapropriate for children. i think the pedophile episode was the final nail in the coffin. (i had already left by then).
i think i voiced 3 or 4 (cant remember if i EVER did the 4th, or were SUPPOSED to do the 4th) different characters.
1. A drug addicted rabbit (think bugs bunny , strung out on meth, crack or whatever life altering addictive drug they had him on, they never said) who used a nervous, high pitched ebonic language with many twitches, like someone with tourettes syndrome.
2. A police officer (no, not a pig, lol! .... he was a chimpanzee) who used a southern accent, texas flavoured, with an authoratative voice, like what you would expect from a texas sherrif.
3. the doorman. (this butler guy would pop up while the kids were on the way to school, with a magic door, tell them what the cartoony world needed help with, and then take them through the "oh so overused cliche of a door leading to another world ***Cough... Narnia....Cough***" door. he was an older monacle using, suit with coattails wearing, polished gentleman cane twirling, top hat wearing cliche of the turn of the century british gentleman, mixed liberally with the monopoly man. i used a british accent, while aging my voice, made the voice a slight bit scratchy, and did a bit of the country bumpkin british accent inflections to round him out, so that he would sound just like he looked. you would know how he sounded if you read this line. "by jove! come, children, ive a wee nip of tea waiting for you once you finish helping that bloody blatherscythe of a hare!"
4. thank god this one never came to be. they always laughed at my bill clinton voice, and were going to work it in. the clinton character was going to be a pig in a suit, running for mayor.of course they werent gonna call him clinton, so i was VERY surprised when i got the script only to see that they had named him Bill Lewinsky. i mean, come on! the writers really felt that was gonna fly?
anyway, i can do any age, any race or accent, and do them fairly well. my only limitations are than i have a deep voice, so its hard for me to do any female leads (us guys can pull off cartoonish sounding ones, sometimes.) i also have problems making voices sound younger, but seeing as how most games wont need many females, and NO one is gonna let a 5 year old fly a ship, then i dont see a problem there.
i can do several specific voices, in case anyone would like to make a humorous non canonical mod.
some examples of specific imitations are:
bill clinton
the croc hunter
Mr Mackey (from south park, MMmmm'kay?)
i can also do many non human, demonic and alien voices, though i ask for patience doing these voices, as they are very hard on the throat, and just 10 minutes of the demonic voice can leave me with near voice loss for almost the whole day.
i work from home, designing game frameworks and pen and paper combat engines (ie dungeons and dragons/shadowrun types) as well as selling collectibles and card games/minifig war games, so i am almost ALWAYS available for VO work.
im not cheap however. i demand to be paid 500$ (monopoly money ONLY, dont try to slip me any bills from those other games!) a day, and i demand to be paid bi-weekly, only on the 7th month of years ending in 2, 6, and 9. the said money can be placed in an imaginary evnvelope and given to the easter bunny, who will deliver it to me via telepathic osmosis. I also require full medical and dental insurance that exclusively covers ingrown toenails of the right big toe ONLY, and the dental should cover ONLY wisdom teeth that have been previously removed, bronzed and polished. these insurance policies must not be redeemable at any state, public, or private hospital anywhere on earth. i only trust
Dr. Tu' Kleep'da"Ranja, DDS, who has a pleasant little clinic located in the subterranean confines of asteroid XJ-793, currently in orbit around the moon Europa (he loves to ice fish, so who could blame the guy for moving there?).
if for any reason you cannot meet my very reasonable demands, well then, sir or madam, you may still have my work, but you will forever live with the guilt and shame of not paying me.
so if you feel you can live with the guilt, gnawing at your heart for all eternity, or happen to have some spare monopoly cash (from the 1965 release of monopoly only! none of that newer crap, or i will know!)
then please either reply here, or Message me, or email me at
[email protected].
you guys do great work here, and all joking and silliness aside, i would be honored to work with the modders here to help them flesh out their ideas and visions for what they want to create. if my voice can help you in any way, then consider it yours. i am happy to provide samples to anyone, simply message me the lines to read, and the age/accent you wish the character to have, as well as any notes on specifics (like the character having a lisp, a gravelly voice, stutters, etc.) mayble let me know as well the situation the char is in, so that i know the context of the lines.
despite my goofing around with the post, i assure you i have a professional attitude towards my work, and wont require any babysitting or badgering to finish my workload. if you need help writing either the story or the lines, i am happy to help with those as well, as ive been writing for most of my life, focusing mainly on fiction novels and short stories.
if you care to see a sample of my writing, i can provide the prologue for my novel which i am writing. it describes the character whose name i use online. please enjoy, but do not spread it around. i have a tentative deal with ballantine press for publishing, and the material is copyrighted by me.
i will post said prologue by tomorrow, as i have to format it from .doc to .txt and i want to clear that this is ok, and does not compromise my contracts with my publisher. i will email my editor about it as soon as im done posting this. im sure it will be fine, i just want to make sure that i cover all the bases so that they cant try and screw me out of any of my money, or royalties, because i warn all of you who might want to publish something some day, hire a lawyer to read the contract, because they have ways of sticking it to you left and right. also, please note that the character volyren nightsong is an assassin, and while deep down, he may be a good guy, his work is still dark and gruesome, and may be innapropriate for younger readers, or people who might me offended or bothered by the subject matter entailed. ( i will work on getting that link up ASAP, though i would ask any moderators if it would be better to post a link to an outside upload of the file, attach it here, or simply place the block of text either in this post or a seperate one. i can easily do any of those, but would prefer not to block text it, as then search engines tend to grab it and i dont want too much getting out until its published and the check is cashed, if you catch my meaning.)
thank you for reading my hideously long post. (i really must try to cut down on the ammount of text, its just hard for me to do. being a writer, you have to describe everything in detail, and its a habit that is hard to suppress)
i hope to work with you soon.
may your graphics be crisp, your sound bright, and your bugs few.
-Josh
