Tales From The Gameverse! (A very small youtube project)
alahnarchy for The Pixelnomicon
A living(?) repository of knowledge for all of the gameverse. The pixelnomicon is as mysterious as it is powerful, being able to absorb a limitless amount of data that is permanently stored, able to be recalled at anytime. It is a an abstract being of sentience, possessing a few forms, but mainly appearing as a diabolical storage (memory card or other) gaming unit.
This character hasn't appeared in the story as of this time, so sit tight if you are cast for it!
[Slow-paced, mostly monotonous speech. Lacking much emotion, spoken matter of factually] "A feast of scattered files...a craving. In a paradox, cast abreast the hungry and the banished; exiles.
[Feral, with a hint of pain in your voice. Each word is thoroughly stressed] "Reserves are...depleted; final throes fast approaching. Agony. With haste...data must. be....found; critical.
[Computer-like, relaying/explaining information] "Species is vagrant. Primitive, single focus; benign. Presence is low...infantile. Assimilation unnecessary.
Part1- Greetings! Pleasure to make your acquaintance! I've listened to this a few times to try to narrow down how I feel about it, so I'll try to explain. Overall, I really like your delivery on lines 1 and 3. Your portrayal of this character is definitely one I'm interested it. Only 2 things really detract me here. You come in a bit low on lines 1 and 3, and I get why you did it. It adds to the performance, HOWEVER, it's coupled with a bit of constant static I'm hearing from your mic. What this means is, when I go to edit these lines, if I don't reduce the hissing myself (which I admittedly don't know how to do well), when I go to turn your audio up to a level to match the other VAs, the hissing will also become more prominent.
Part 2- Basically, I'd like you to keep that same tone for 1 and 3, but in a louder voice/turn your mic up. The final thing is, your line 2 was not bad by any means, I'm just not sure if it's exactly what I'm going for. If you're interested, I'd love you to retry, maybe toning down the fierceness and hissing a notch? Combined with your voice, this may work better for the character. Sorry for writing your ear off! Wouldn't do it if I wasn't interested in working with you, though. Take care!
Hey - thank you! Currently suffering from some major allergies out here in Houston TX so I can't record anything anytime soon. (Even went to the doctor & got a shot for it - on two rounds of meds, still stuffy with a sore throat - augh). I'd love to re-record these for you - can you give me a little bit of time to heal? (Also - HELP! I'm rather new to this & will need to figure out what to do about that static). For the time being, here's my Sound Cloud, if you're interested. Maybe there's a comparable voice there we can use as a reference.
Of course, you have my word that I will not cast the pixelnomicon until I've received your follow-up audition. Take the time that you need! Also, go ahead and send me a message with your soundcloud, doesn't look like it went through here
As for your microphone (I don't do a lot of voice work myself, admittedly, so others may be more helpful) it could be a number of things. If your microphone doesn't plug in through a usb and instead uses cables, it could just be an underlying static in the device itself
If I were to take a guess, the static sound is just background noise. Things like fans, air conditioning, cars outside, the rustling of your clothes, and even your computer can be picked up by your mic. There are a few ways to fix this, the first thing I recommend is to make sure your recording space is as quiet as possible. I used to record from my attic because I liked the acoustics, but the floor noise was too much of a problem, so now I record from my closet (VoiceFromTheCloset doesn't have the same ring though...), where my clothes dampen a lot of the sound, though this means I have cut my bass a little to get rid of any reverb. I've heard of some people recording in a separate room from their computer to avoid the sound of their fan, but I'm sure there are easier ways around that. The second thing you can do is in your editing. The easiest treatment is noise reduction. There are a metric ton of tutorials on this one. Basically you sample your room tone and use that to cut out the unwanted noise. The effect I prefer over noise reduction is noise gate. This one is a little trickier to figure out, and if you use audacity (yeah free!) you'd have to download a plugin. If you are using something better than audacity, odds are that you can apply the noise gate before you even start recording, which means less editing.
As far as the sharp S's, it was only really a problem in line 2, which means that it was more of a result of stressing your mouth (going for that pained sound). Just practice speaking in different voices and emotions, while being aware of where your tongue is (don't be too concerned when you get too recording though, as over-thinking how you sound can screw up your performance, just listen and re-record when necessary). If you find that your S's are consistently a problem (and they are for me!), it might just be mouth noise. Keeping your mouth clean is essential for this, so brushing your teeth before recording (or even taking a break during) can change quality dramatically. Also, I've noticed that putting my mic at a 45 degree angle from my face cuts down on some of the more plosive sounds. Also stepping back from the mic a little can help. I struggled with finding the right spot for my mic, especially since I'm naturally very soft spoken, but I realized that we are voice actors, and we need to have our voices heard, so I practiced until I could project better, without losing the sound I wanted.
Finally (I know I've droned on far too long!) here are some YouTube channels I found useful for bettering my VO: Bill DeWees gives good VO technique, though, he is more from a commercial angle and is frequently selling his services, so be aware of that https://youtu.be/vUqzNe-a5dM. Booth Junkie is good for the technical side, but I'll admit he loses me sometimes https://youtu.be/F05RKFjyvbs. JelloApocalypse started a podcast this year that is informative and entertaining https://youtu.be/wiwnM8lvEfc. The last one is soulbrothanumbah3, he only has a few videos on voice acting, but they are all very good and educational https://youtu.be/_sjZJ9i_mH0. I hope I've been helpful, I'm still pretty new at this myself, so take everything I say with a grain of salt.