Voice Acting Tips - Request

[Drathamus]

Okay, a few months ago, I attempted to do a little voice acting...

Obviously, I have absolutely no experience with the such, and my equipment is rather lacking. I have a G35 headset, and can remove all background noise.

Are there any sites that can give free training, or any particular aspect of voice acting that can be repetitively practiced to gain the ability to perform certain dialects well?

Thank you in advance for anyone who has experience with this;

-Drath

 

[Sabre]

Two things:

1. Set the microphone out of the path of your 'speaking breath' which will help reduce pops.
2. Speak from your diaphragm. Usually you just kinda speak with your throat somewhat, but if you push your air out from the base of your lungs you'll find your voice will just seem a little more powerful. Practice makes perfect!

 

[Drathamus]

Yea, I still gotta get into practice of it.

Been at my girlfriend's house for the past week, so I haven't had a chance to try and do any more attempts.

Thanks for the assist, Sabre. I found a tutorial on ModDB's site on how to voice act a bit better, too.

Thanks,
-Drath

 

[Thothie]

Should add that the final recording has to be REALLY LOUD... It'll be downsampled to a 20.05khz mono 16-bit wave, and Half-Life audio is *very* weak, so it has to be insanely loud to come out right in the game.

Noise filters, and the like, tend to help, but remember you can't depend on a high sampling rate to help it sound clean and clear.

Compare your samples to the amature ones in the game, such as those in the msc/sound/voices (/the_wall/*wav or /sc_convo*.wav) and msc/sound/npc or the profesional and semi-profesional ones therein. Keep in mind, also that your wave files are going to have to be broken down sentence-by-sentence, in the end.