IGs_Oblivion_Voices_-_Part_4

(from youtube description) - Voice acting can be no joke! It\'s not just a case of squeaking, screaming or growling into a microphone and there is a bigger drop-out rate for games-based voice actors than anything I\'ve ever seen. We get pilloried for bad work and laughed at purely because it can be pretty low-key e.g. can you imagine your claim to fame being the voice of the \'adoring fan\' of Oblivion? What are you going to tell your kids? I\'d love to do drama work or book readings but the openings generally only come for those with connections. Instead, games VAs are forced to do their work from a one-sided script about a mod they never heard of. 98% of my work comes from receiving only my own characters lines with no response, no context, no background story and no character detail provided...unless you bombard the modder with questions that they often can\'t answer even for themselves. My favourite stuff is always that which I can write myself...and writing was always my first love. Added to that are the physical and technical demands. Argonians make me feel dizzy, Khajiits destroy my throat, and even with careful preparation and care, you can end up \'out of action\' for days. Thankfully, the good Lord has given us Audacity software. I began with basic Microsoft stuff and went all the way up to professional software like Soundforge but nothing compares to the beautiful simplicity of Audacity. The rest of my kit is so basic that I\'m not even prepared to tell you about it. Suffice to say that Audacity, barring some bizarre \'sudden, stark onsets of noise\' on occasion, is the business. The worst symptom of voice acting addiction is the \'freak factor\'. Try explaining to your folks or housemates or partner that you\'re really not angry with them, that you\'re not upset and that you do not have multiple personality disorder and that you actually really enjoy uttering oddities at your computer for the sake of someone else\'s pleasure and creativity...and they\'ll never look at you the same way again. The whole thing is made tolerable by modders who are either a) passionate about the game, b) restlessly creative or c) like me, interested in seeing what \'interactive narrative\' might really mean. I can vouch for all of my modder friends that they\'re committed, highly technically-competent, organised, passionate and generally all-round good-eggs bobbing on a vast sea of \'orrible \'flamer\' sharks who have absolutely zero understanding of the work they put in and what they are each individually striving to achieve. But there is still fun to be had for those who commit. I love unusual voices. I love the different inflections that people from other places put on phrases. I love accents and textures and get really frustrated if I can\'t replicate something I\'ve heard as best as possible. I generally don\'t do impressions which I find boring and quite nerdy. It\'s in making characters and imagining what their th