Slitherine

So I'm currently making a video Let's Play that includes the Grand Campaign scenarios and I needed a voice for the briefings. Instead of doing a crappy job myself I hired an affordable voice actor for one of them.



Please tell me what you think and whether I should keep hiring him for more and if anybody would be willing to donate to help me finance this. I'll release the resulting wave files so you can use them in your games as well.

Alternative take:

http://media.wcsaga.net/keldorkatarn/po ... ef_alt.mp3

Anyone? I could really use some feedback on this pls.

Well, I like it.
But I don't think it's really worthwhile to spend money on this.
I wouldn't!!

Sorry, but you asked for opinions, and this is mine.

Yes and that's fine, I just want to get opinions.

I am not sure about this actor tbh. Something strikes me wrong in his voice acting ... i can't really nail it down to something specific but he sounds too artificial, kind of. His voice acting is to "overdone". The only comparison i can come with is the acting of actors in the movies from the 60's. They seems to express the emotions with way to much emphasis which reminds me more of being in a theater.

I asked him for a different take:

http://media.wcsaga.net/keldorkatarn/po ... ef_alt.mp3

Hi, I just listened to the two takes, and the first is spoken a bit more like someone delivering a speech, the second take is much more subdued (Long version: more like a person-to-person talk in an official setting, where the addressee is there personally but at the same not well-known to the speaker).

Both flavours are OK in my point of view, some people could like a blend of the two. The accent might be a little bit overdone at times, for example I did notice some pronunciation differences between the takes, such as the words 'occupy' and 'airforce', which are very different to my ears between the takes. This might be the 'artificial' impression Tarrak gets? Also, in the first take some microphone issue is present with the 'P' sometimes giving the dreaded 'pop' sound through my headphones, especially with the first time 'Poland' is spoken.

Actually, the real criticism I have is not the voice, but the briefing text itself. Some PzC briefings have sentences that just don't lend themselves to being spoken out loud in a natural way. In my opinion, the sentence structure often does not 'flow' very nicely, especially bits like "I will keep you informed of your objectives and share intelligence with you as it becomes available during these briefings." It just doesn't flow when being read out loud, and a voice actor cannot be much better than the source material he has to work with. So it might actually be a good idea to rewrite some briefings as well?

EDIT: after re-reading my post it comes of as very critical, I hope I don't come across as overly harsh/negative? Just trying to give honest and critical input.

Not at all, I was thinking about telling him to blend the two takes for the next briefing as well. Oh and btw, the accent cannot be artificial since this guy is actually German I asked a German actor to speak it to get the most natural accent possible. Ok the guy is from Turkish descent but German is his mother language so it is still a very natural German accent. I will also try to tell him to use a pop filter next time.

ThvN wrote:So it might actually be a good idea to rewrite some briefings as well?

Well I can just let him record what I have. I can't rewrite all briefings for all of the scenarios in time to do my videos Especially since my English is alright but I'm not a native speaker either.
So I'll just let him record what we have right now.

I like the second version personally a lot better. They only thing i didn't like here is the fact that he imho overemphasize the punctuation marks. Yes commas are there to indicate a break but he makes it really long which almost breaks the flow of the speech. While in the first version was a bit to emotional and acted the second is maybe even a bit to "calm". Tho this is nitpicking on a quite high level. If he does a blend between the two versions, imho a bit closer to the second then the first, i think this will be pretty fine.

Frankly I think I'll forget about this :/ Just got the Danzig take from the actor and it's beyond terrible... sigh. At the cheap rates these guys don't do many retakes so I cannot really give any directions. Too bad I can't afford the original voice actor, especially since I know who it is :/

To bad but it was worth trying. For your playthrough you can just read the briefings yourself i guess. It may not have the quality you would like to make a mod out of it but it will certainly suffice.

Out of curiosity: Can you tell how much is the original actor asking for? Considering tho Slitherine said they can't afford to voice over the GC briefings and sell it at acceptable prices i am afraid it's a lot.

I don't know what he's asking for but he's listed on http://voice123.com/bodohenkel . Voice123 isn't exactly for cheap actors, most of these do it very professionally. Most professionals don't do it under 100-200 $ per minute for sold games. That I remember as the usual rating. I don't know if he'd do it for less for a private person but considering the GC briefings are A LOT of stuff... that could only be done with a kickstarter, I really don't think I can afford this guy.

I know it will not be the same than a real person with german accent as vanilla voices but I am using this AI service to create free voiceover for mods than I am playing
https://readloud.net/english/british/1- ... brian.html
removing html tags and Pauses(497) the result is like
https://www.dropbox.com/s/4fb51ehjzdwr1 ... A.mp3?dl=0

if someone likes it, maybe we could do a group to make/create all voiceovers by DLC for all community, it is very easy(5 min including check audio) but a long process due to number of briefings to do.