DragonNOR
Stig joined
I am a 33 year old male classical singer/ Voice Actor. I have worked with mods and indie games such as Cry of Fear, Portal Stories: Mel and Consortium, all published on steam. I also have experience with E-learning, audioguide reads, stage acting, on camera acting and concert performance both solo, ensemble and choir. As I'm always on the lookout for more experience and material for my portfolio, I'm hunting for roles here on moddb. If you're a developer or development team looking for a voice actor, give me a beep and I'll provide material for your evaluation if I'm not already occupied.
My Blogs
Heya everybody!
If you read my last blog, you might remember that I talked about the room echo in my apartment and that I had no space where I could realistically make good recordings.
I made plans of how to make something custom in the hopes that it would turn out cheap, but buying the materials needed would eventually cost almost as much as just buying a collapsable echo dampener screen of about 2 metres in height and 5 in length with angles.
I could practically hear my wallet scream in agony from my pocket as it envisioned having its guts of 500 and 1000 NOK bills get torn out of it.
In truth I would probably have used a card, but it wouldn't make for such a hilarious mental image.
It was as I was doing housework, that the solution practically fell into my lap.
It was so simple, and so straight in front of my nose, I almost dropped the towels I had been stacking and just peered into the walk in closet with mindless disbelief.
Meet my new recording studio:
Why you so shy recording rig! >:D
There is practically NO reverb in that space. None. Zip.
And if that for some reason becomes a problem, I can slide the door slightly open to compensate.
Ladies and gentlemen.
Let the recording begin >:D
After a great vacation at Gotland Island in Sweden, I am back with a few updates!
First and foremost it was insanely entertaining to come back and check what had gone on in cyberspace after not checking for little over a week. I logged in to Moddb to see if the projects I keep track of had been as idle as I had been while on vacation and had fun picturing I might see as many as ten updates cued, which would be normal for a week or so.
And boy was I surprised!
My email was in a similar condition, and I literally spent a whole day just checking this, my email and responding to stuff in other channels D:
On a different note, the Echo dampener I wrote about in the previous blog didn't really do much at all to remove the room echo I was really worried about, so it seems like I have to get creative on that one. I got some plans to create a small shelter that would leave Bob the builder green with envy, but failing that (if my gf doesn't like the idea of carpentry on our wood floor) I'll settle for using one of those fabric walls you usually see pretty women changing behind in movies. No not that kind of movies.
Sexeh!
So I might be doing that and just drape some thick-ass blankets over each wall to muffle out any echo I haven't killed off already.
On second thought that shit's going to get warm! It's gonna be like a friggin sauna in that booth with wool or something thick like that surrounding me. Better get a soundless fan while I'm at it if there's such a thing. And whats a sauna without some chicks?
Close enough.
A few months ago, me and my girlfriend decided that we needed a change of scenery. There were several reasons why we wanted to leave the old apartment, but the biggest reason why was because we were tempted into renting a new apartment a ways outside of the capital for basically the same rent, but twice as large and twice as new!
The moving out of the old and into the new process was all bliss until I started wondering where I would place my recording gear. The obvious choice would be the 'Office', a room about as large as my first apartment (12 m^2 wooo) and the only room with a direct internet connection outlet.
As I walked around the apartment, testing the accoustics however, it turned out there was a very noticable 'room echo' in all of the rooms. And no matter how many layers of cloth I piled on top of whatever I could in the office did anything to dampen the echo and give me the nice dry sound that I wanted.
After recording clips for two different projects and listening to them afterwards, I found that the buzz I recieved on the recordings was too big of a deal to simply ignore.
Because of this I decided to invest in some new recording gear. Meet the sE Reflexion Filter:
Damn it popfilter you tard! Stop hogging the attention!
This image is not of my own rig, but it was the closest I could find online to my own, after my computer started treating my smartphone as a foreign object. The large screen in the background is the filter, not the one in front.
Looking forward to getting me some crisp nice recordings with this new baby :D
Dragon out.
People ususally go out of their way to celebrate even the smallest things. Mostly for the cake.
So today, since I was particularily craving me some cake, I found out that I have something that needs celebrating!
And boy do we Norwegians know how to celebrate!
Pictured: Norwegian Celebration
As of today, I have voice characters in 11, ELEVEN, mods that have succesfully run their development cycles and released, many of them recieving great feedback and mostly benevolent reviews.
As if that wasn't enough reason to celebrate I realised after being queried about how many projects I've been in (and doing some counting on my fingers) that I have participated in or am currently engaged in over 50 projects during my little under five years on this site (Not all of them are listed, but these are the ones I could remember the name for).
Of those fifty projects, twentysix of them are currently active, as in still being made.
"What?!" I hear you say.
"Twentysix fucking projects? Are you both insane and retarded?!"
After the echoing sound of thousands of monocles being popped recedes, I can calmly explain that as a voice actor, there's on a regular basis huge gaps in between getting anything to do from an active project.
Of those twentysix projects, I've currently got work from seven of them. two of which lack only a few lines before being completely finished up and will be done by tonight, and one being a slow burner (no deadline).
To finish off this article I'll list the eleven projects that I've done :D
1. Cube Experimental
Youtu.be
2. Cry of Fear
3. Cry of Fear: Custom Stories
4. Grey
I know this isn't out yet, but its so close it's practically done.
5. CnC Generals: Rise of the Reds
Same with this one as with Grey.
6. CnC: The Forgotten
7. 1187: Rogue Train
8. Pirates, Vikings and Knights 2
9. TItan XCIX
10. Underhell: Prologue
11. It hurts a bit
I'd post the 50 projects too to give you an idea of how large a list that actually is when down on paper, but I'd have to write it in html it seems, and I don't have neither the skill, knowledge or patience to write it out in that language.
Now, on to the cake!
DragonNOR, signing off.
Hello and welcome to my page and my second blog!
This piece will elaborate on what I consider my 'proffession', meaning one of the things I'll be trained to work as both directly through my own initiative on moddb and jobs in dubbing should I recieve one through the dubbing agencies I've registered on, and indirectly through my acting classes at school.
I first decided to try out modding just before starting my first term in acting school. I'd just recently bought an H4 handy recorder for the purpose of recording myself when singing and then listening to it, trying to hear what I did wrong so that I could better understand the how's and why's.
It was during a particularly dry gaming season that modding came into play. I remembered having played the goldsource mod 'Azure Sheep' and thought that there had to be more mods like it out there, even if they hadn't been featured in the pc-magazine where I'd first spotted 'Azure Sheep'.
It didn't take long for me to discover moddb and I registered as a member, trying out all the Half Life mods I could get my hands on.
My first discovery was that the quality on the mods were varying. A distinct few were so great that I would gladly have paid money for them, like 'Afraid of Monsters' and 'Paranoia', but what I noticed in the majority of other mods was that the voice acting usually consisted of either the stock sound files from the Half Life generation pack or had been done by voice actors with little or no training and that lacked the basic equipment to do decent recording and editing.
Thinking that, with my new equipment and at the time basic acting training, I'd easily find work where I could hone my abilities, I started looking for interesting projects to join.
The first project I discovered was, ironically considering my inexperience, Black Mesa Source.
Not being familiar with the structure and nature of news on moddb, I instantly applied as a voice actor, only to realise the news 'update' was by then, in november 2007, somewhere between 6 and 7 months old. In addition I had no past work or experience to point to, so in retrospection I realise I'd made a poor case even if they had still been recruiting voice actors. I then realised that I had to somehow build my portfolio on the subject in order to strengthen my chances.
After my botched application for BMS, I continued to hang around their site for a while, listened to their music (I practically worshipped the first track on their main page) and browsed their forums. It was then that I first heard of Operation Black Mesa. A group of people had started a thread where they were openly bashing the mod for some past wrongdoing that had evidently killed it somewhere around 2006.
Now though the mod had been reborn and was under new management, and even though there were no lack of people expressing their dislike of the mod for its past, there were enough posters wanting to give the new management the benefit of doubt and a fresh start for me to seek the mod out.
Ironically though, while BM was past its voice recruitment period, OpBM at that time was too early in its startup phase to take on voice actors. We still are at this time if you were wondering at the choice of phrase, but if things continue to go like they are, we might be getting some openings soon, but I digress.
My first optimism for getting to work on the HL2 version of what I considered the best installment in the Half Life series, dabbed when I was told of the project not looking for voice, but I decided to hang in there and do other kinds of work that would speed up the mods progress while I waited for the mod to reach the point where they'd be needing voice.
And so I took up writing, but that is for another day, another week and a completely different blog.
Realising I still had lots of spare time and no voice work forthcoming, I decided to look for smaller mods where I could do some work and hone my skills. In this article I'm going to take up and dissect my past projects and in hindsight look at what I've learned from them.
The first project I came across was a one man project called «One must fall: Destiny», which was a mod for a sidescrolling mechfighter game, and I was to give voice to the journalist reporting on the results after the dust settled and one mech stood victorious.
I jumped at the assignment with gusto and was quickly made intimately aware of my hardwares moods and delicacies. At the same time I started working on two HL2 mods, «Lost Hope» and Logistique. I started on all three mods somewhere around late April, early May and of all three only Logistique is still in the works. Logistique is also the mod I've felt I've done the best work for of the three. The following 'lessons learned' are all things I can think of that I did wrong in the example soundclips. Listen to the clip and then read the 'Lesson' and see if you agree with my statement:
Lessons learned:
Technical:
* A handheld recorder should be treated as a microphone, same rules apply. You need to be up close for everything to sound clear while at the same time being careful not to slip on breath and sharp consonants like 'P's and 'T's which easily resound in the clip with an «air explosion». It also helps to hold the microphone at an angle above your head and speak slightly down from the mic, the sound will register and you'll dodge those pesky airpops.
Speaking loudly will NOT make up for distance to the recorder.
* Learn basic sound editing software. Trust me, its easier than you think. Apart from saving someone else the effort of doing a minor job you should be able to do yourself (And I'm not talking anything fancy, just learning how to remove the start and stop record 'tap' of your equipment, muting breath and so forth) it also enables you to create good showreel clips that you can send in for both trial and professional work.
Acting:
* Learn your lines by heart. I can't stress this enough. A line you don't know by heart will always be halfassed until you've repeated it over and over and over again so that you know it up and down.
* Be clear with your lines. Unless you're voicing a role thats a mumbling maniac the players will want to actually hear what you're saying.
* Find the lines purpose and setting. This might sound self explanatory, but the majority of actors I've heard in mods I've played seem to forget this. Why is your character saying the line? What is his agenda? How does he feel? What is he doing? Is he wounded? Also avoid using descriptive and labeling words like «Afraid», «Angry» or «Sad» as these labels tend to make you sound false because you 'act'.
Instead, if you take «Angry», why is your character angry? What does it feel like to be angry? What do you do when you're angry? How do you talk? How serious is the situation etc.
Now compare those two with this second clip (December 2008) I did for the HL2 mod Logistique:
Still not perfect, but a clip I'd have no problems with encountering in a game. The volume is sound (no pun intended), its pretty clear whats happening and the characters feelings about this shines through.
One month later I also applied to the swedish HL2 mod «Halvt Liv 2» and «A Combines life», both dead mods at the time of this articles writing. Since most who read this won't understand a word Norwegian, (Colonel Cubbage was to be Norwegian instead of swedish) I'll rather post a few clips from «A combines life».
Lesson Learned
Acting:
* In some cases it pays off to repeat a line and 'search' for the style or dialect you feel fits, which you can hear in this clip. It also helps you overcome your 'microphobia', which some might feel when they start recording. Turn on your recorder and repeat the line over and over until you're comfortable with it, unless you've stumbled across a version that you feel actually works, THATS when you really start working...
Lesson Learned
Acting:
o ...And in some cases saying the line over and over will end in a tongue roll, which gives you something to laugh about later.
The last bit I want to take up as relevant for this blog is one of the two mods so far I've worked on thats gotten released, a mod for Fallout 3 called «Cube Experimental».
In this mod I voiced the 'Hacker' and what I feel is special about this mod is that it pushed my limits. The mod was already finished, but was voiced and written in german only, and the team behind it was working on an English version. The German version of the mod, I realised after looking it up, had gotten some very heavy praise for its voice work, and after hearing all the clips done by my German counterpart, I realised that I had one big challenge ahead of me.
First of all since the team had finished a mod already, there would perhaps be opportunities for continued work if I made good clips. In addition I could practically hear the future critics spell out that the mod was okay IF you played the German version because the English voice actor had fallen on his face and delivered subpar work if I screwed it up. I've read too many examples of just that in other games both commercial and hobbyist to know it doesn't present a good image.
And as such I had to push my limits. I'm very happy with how the end result turned out. Echo and static filter applied by SureAI, 'Cube Experimental' project lead:
Or you can watch my first showreel and skip to approximately halfway in where there's a "Cube Experimental" segment.
Working with all the projects I've been part of has been a learning curve both in acting and in the use of technical equipment and I'm sure that what I've learned so far and hopefully will learn in the future will help me pursue a career within the game industry as well as in any other acting endavour I'll pick up. At the moment I've got a lot of projects in the works a few among them being:
* OpBM (of course ^^)
* Cry of Fear (from the makers of Afraid of Monsters)
* Grey
* Project Reality; Norwegian Forces mod
And a few Indie games:
* Omega Warfare
* World of Mandana
In any case, thats all for this times blog, I hope you had as much fun reading it as I had writing it, and if you managed to pick up a trick or two from what I've learned, so much the better :)
DragonNOR, out.
This space has been empty for quite some time and to be frank I've never offered it much thought since I haven't had any particular subject to talk about. Besides, the standard text that was sitting here from before was slightly amusing the first times I read it so I decided it could stay this way for the time being.
Now however, the opportunity to mark an occasion revealed itself in the form of me posting my first showreel video! In one way its a marker of my progress since I joined here on moddb and started modding and at the same time its going to make applying for new projects a lot easier.
The vid has been posted on my profile as well on youtube :)
Well thats about it I guess, short but hopefully somewhat informative.
Stay tuned for more VA updates ^^
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