A Voiceover Coop?
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This is an idea I've had that I've decided to post. I'd like your opinion.
I like animated scenes with dialog. I use my own voice. I can alter my tone a bit, and I can change the speed or pitch in Audacity, but still, all the characters end up sounding like me. I'd like to have a couple of associates to work with. There would be no money involved at present. This would be done on a cooperative basis.
Has this been suggested before? Is it a decent idea? Does it already exist? Would you have any interest in it?
Tell me what you think.
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I don't have a ton of time at the moment, or the best set up, but I'm certainly interested in doing that next year. I'll be getting a better set up to record my first Midwest book in audiobook format. I'm currently working with a narrator in ACX to turn my first superhero book into an audiobook.
I'm a techie by day, writer by night (or early morning really) with a broadcast and theater background. So I've done voicework and acting before. I got into 3D art to do promo art and book covers, but at some point want to take it to the next level with animated book trailers. I have a lot to learn before I'm ready. Definitely interested. If you need an alto female with a slightly breathy voice, I've got that. LOL
Ah, good.
I hope to get something together during the coming year. I have in mind spoofing some 50s TV commercials (think: Betty White). If it works I'll consider a kind of 50s sitcom format.
People told me I had a good voice after they heard me over the store intercom, so I studied commercial voiceover. All I ever did with it, though, is a few cartoons. This is me a few years back.
Ooh, Betty White would be fun. I write comedy, so I'm all for funny stuff and spoofs.
Interesting video- the devil giving refunds, LOL. I don't think I have my voice anywhere online except on one of my blogs, where I was singing some goofy stuff with my kids and playing guitar. I'll dig some up or put some up after the holiday madness dies down.
The devil was lying of course. His aim was to make the woman look like a fool at the store. I may have been too subtle. Yes, Betty White is a classic. This is one of my faves. The product could change...
I think I've figured out how to operate this program. Soon I will have the courage to actually do it. I have two female characters made, and a third is in the works. Thank you for your interest.
when I really need voices I will sometimes post a flyer at the local school or college for volenteers or grab friends and family to do voices for me..lol I kknow voice actors you find online charge threw the butt. for their time.
Those are good suggestions Ivy, thanks. I've considered posting an ad on the board down at the senior center. Those people usually have time on their hands, and some have surprisingly good voices. If I had my druthers though, I'd work with other people who shared my interest in this - hobby? passtime? art form?
Although someday making money with these little clips is not my actual goal, it is not out of the question. Should that ever take place, I would be pleased to share with my associates. Until that might happen, having fun, meeting like-minded people, and maybe having a good laugh would make it worth my time. Sadly idealistic, I know.
Yeah kids have a blast doing voices. and I have have one old guy at the nursing home near me do some voices for me.
heres a film a while back ago I did using some kids from the local school and that old guy .lol
Depending on where you live you can easily find voice talent on Craigslist. Just post under Gigs. Some will work for free, some won't. Personally, I'm not in favor of asking someone to do a job for free if I'm going to profit from it, and twenty bucks for 15 minutes of work is pretty good for a student. But if it's open source or just for fun, some people are willing to exchange for credit and a stem they can use on their Web page.
Do bear in mind there are actor/voice over release forms you should use. No matter how you arrange the recording, every voice actor should sign the release. Your contact (doesn't have to be elaborate) will also stipulate the work is non-union, buyout (i.e. no per-use fee). These things aren't as onerous as they may seem. They're really to protect you, especially if the work goes viral.
The kids' voices were easy to spot. I couldn't put my finger on the old man's voice though. Was he the carriage driver?
You've done many things I have yet to do - the mirrors, the fire, other things. I would ask you many questions. Thanks.
It seems there is a lawyer behind every tree. It could easily discourage me. If only those TTS generators were a bit better. I hope I never regret going forward with this kind of work. How can I tell someone I want to do this for fun, then turn around and hand them a legal document to sign.
I have only made 3 films that were commissioned that I got paid for and I never need voice actors for them because they were music videos for different bands and artist.. So otehr than that I never made anything off my animations and i have many of them..lol even my Karate Girl animation series has not made me any money, I do it for the love of art and the challenge, so its hard to be willing to pay someone for voice acting when your not making any money your self. Other wise moe of my films would use voices them. Just the assets you need for a animated film alone are costly enough. But that is just me, I'm a cheapskate that way.
Yes the driver was a 78 year old guy that has a very deep voice. I have used him a few times for things. he has a great sense of humor so it a pleasure asking him.to do thing for me.
I'bve been doing animation with daz studio for about 8 years and I have a very large library of content and BVH motions files to work with. I started out with poser . but found I could make much more quailty animated films with daz studio. and with the on set of Iray and hopefully if Daz puts in a few new features in studio5 like physics, and bone pinning. better IK etc. it will only make it much better,
I'm not sure how much help I can be, there are so many people in these forum that know way more than I d about animation But you can ask me questions if you like & I'l;l do my best to try to answer them.
one thing i have learned with animation. is every new project presents new set of challenges , thats why I never made any tutorials because what may have worked on one film may not apply for the next one.
Hi the problem is that you are using a free basic pitch changing program ( audacity)
when you need an actual voice morphing application like the one I use called "Morph Vox Pro"
also study regional or even foreign dialects/accents to insert some variety as well
I am doing all of the voices for My animated feature length film using these techniques
Here is Me having conversations with " Myself"
using these techniques to alter my voice
https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B2TYEp536iB8WWNCRjd4TDd2NkE/view?usp=sharing
https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B2TYEp536iB8WHBPVUZKSG9qWGs/view?usp=sharing
https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B2TYEp536iB8aVBBdHJWRE9jODg/view?usp=sharing
Understood and agreed. I don't think it makes you a cheapskate either.
Asimov wrote, "The solution to the problems caused by technology is always, more technology." In that way, the Adobe Voco project might provide the balance for the DMCA - where voiceover is concerned, anyway. The potential of this tech astounds me, as it does a few other people. In time it will trickle down to us.
Actually working with animation with very few or no voice files at all has made me a better story teller. because if ou can convey your animation story with out dialogue then anyone in any part of the world can understand your story with out voice dub overs or close captions. so that why I try to make my Karate girl anime films with as little voices as possible. its not easy to do either..lol but it does make you a better story teller and animator learning to work with out voice files to get your story across
Thank you for giving me an opportunity to see some of your work. Your lighting and camera work are powerfully dramatic. I suspect that the sound system in your studio is a cut above what the average internet viewer is using, though.
I'm going to take a look at Morph Vox Pro and see what it does. Pitch and speed alone can be a bit limiting. And yes, my old woman will have a Missouri accent, as best as I can remember my grandmother. Doing a crabby old man is easy, I'll just be myself.
I've been working on doing a woman's voice. Anyone who hasn't tried it might think it's all a matter of pitch. In fact, inflection is at least as important as pitch.
Still, no matter what I do, I'm afraid they will all sound like me. Did you know that Moe, Krusty and Sideshow Bob were all voiced by the same actor? He gets away with it, maybe I can too.
I've noticed that you minimize the dialogue, and I see the reasoning as you explain it. Me, I'm in love with the language, and I want to use it. I'll work with the tools at hand, as we all do.
Still, and all legal concerns aside, it seems like it ought to be both easy and beneficial to collaborate with others so far as voice is concerned. It lends itself very well to working remotely. Remote does not need to mean isolated. I've been an ESL tutor for maybe five years. This morning I explained to a Japanese man that in America, Kentucky Fried Chicken was not a traditional Christmas meal. It would be just as easy to discuss a script or a scene. But then, I wonder about everything.
Well. if it is non-violent I will do a male voice for you for free when you are ready. However, my voice is my voice and I can't really control what it sounds like when I speak. Just PM me and give me instructions via PM. No need for pay or to be fancy, I'll just send you a link to the recorded dialogue on dropbox I guess would be easiest. I do know German to an intermediate level but it's more the sort of voice you'd want to use for a tourist visiting rather than a native speaker. English is the only language I am a native speaker of.
I use morph-vox-pro and have used audio4fun's "voice changer" to do all of my own voicings so far. Depending on where you want the voice to fall, both can sound synthesized, but both seem to sound good in certain ranges that differ from each other so having both has helped in my case (largely depends on input voice characteristics). I've also had luck starting out with my own voice being exaggerated toward the target voice so the vocoders don't have to do as much work. I feel a bit odd doing that at times, but it works well-enough.
To your original question, I bet a co-op would work. You'd probably need an 'exchange' gathering point (online) where you could post the characteristics of the actors you were looking for and and sample dialog, etc. so folks could get a feel for what you wanted.
cheers,
--ms
Thank you for stepping forward. No, I do not wish to present violence as entertainment. I suppose what I'd like to do, in a nutshell, is to resurrect some of the more agreeable aspects of 50s television.
Laughter, we are told, is an indication of mental health. 50s TV was packed with comedy shows. And people told jokes, too. We enjoyed laughing, including at ourselves. I think we could use a little bit of that. We are sometimes too serious for our own good.
Yes...a gathering point. I've thought about that. I would like to see DAZ create a branch for video in the forums, and allow videos to be posted in the gallery as well. However, I appreciate that animators are in the minority here. The next best thing might be the TMS site. However, I'd prefer to see something DAZ specific. IMO, the DAZ culture has a great dynamic. My last choice would be to actually create a small website devoted to this subject. I hope to avoid that.
For the time being, I think this thread will serve the purpose.
Thanks I do ALOT enhancment of both video & audio in post production.
Actually there used to be an animation forum here but Daz shuttered it due to "lack of activity"
It does not seem likely that they will be devoting any forum space specifically to animation going forward.
(sincere Apologies in advance, for the proceeding semi off topic rant).
The number people who use Daz Content for animation and actually frequent this site ,and have finished work to show, can literally be counted on one hand.
Back in my bygone days as a poser user we had a long running inside joke in the renderosity forums where we few referred to ourselves as "the 12 animators" with myself as the "founding member"
I doubt that You ,Myself, Ivy, BigH ,Kai ,kitakoredaz, zaz777&Arnold could honestly claim our ranks even reach 12.
Post an animation question and you see the same small set of respondents.
Start a thread about some exotic" new" single purpose canned character Morph ,that I could have Dialed in myself
with existing morph packs, and the thread is oozing with gleeful impulse buyers
and six pages deep within four hours.
And DAZ's sister site Morph3D is likely puzzled at the lukewarm reception of thier game content offeringsto the Unity developers.
Gamers are not excited by still images of well dressed males & Females like the ones on the morph3D site
But they lap up Beta game play footage and Hi Definition
Cinematic Game trailers that establish the Character profiles and Lore (See "Overwatch")
And what is happening in that Beta game play footage and
those Cinematics? ...CHARACTER ANIMATION.
And now I hear talk that Morph3D is planning some manner of DAZ studio style "Dressing room" so the gamers can play Dress up with the outfits like the loyal still render impulse buyers over here
More poorly researched idiocy!!
Gamers are largely Goal oriented single Males .....Not process oriented fashionistas.
Halo Fans only want to see "master Chief" in his iconic armor, Blasting aliens or whomever.
Many got quite upset when Microsofts 343 industries updated the armor design from the original design created by Bungie years earlier.
But back on topic,
Indeed Rottenham I would love to see a Dedicated online space for people who use Daz studio Genesis figures, aniMate2,Keymate,graphmate,mimic live to create visual storytelling.
Chohole and/or Richard said the animation forum was merged with the Art Studio forum. It was not getting much activity. When people fret about how long a single render can take, you can see that most here are not dedicated to a process that will really tie up their computer.
I do free lance voice over work for money, but just my voice for industrial narrations and commercials. I'm more of the announcer variety intead of a voice actor. I only do auditions for free. I'm a traffic reporter in real life.
Good luck with your projects!
This is a little older but fun film I did with some dialogued where I did the voices myself & my husband . and I recorded some back ground sounds at a local restaurant one day when were were out to dinner, for the bar scene. Though I really try to make my films so people can understand them with out dialogued .
If you're doing it for fun record all the voices yourself, or get family members. If you're getting others involved, undersand you're using someone else's talent that could in the end be for your benefit. Be explicit about how you plan to use and compensate that talent. It's not hard or unreasonable to ask what is basically a stranger to you to sign a stock model/actor release.
I see the same thing at TMS. A relatively small group of people, out of the mainstream, working with an art form that is not yet appreciated.
IMO, the emphasis on "gaming" is more a reflection of our marketing-dominated culture than anything else [spits]. Pardon me as I take a wide detour around this subject.
Putting such a place together would be easy. The thing is, it would require ongoing oversight. It jungle out there.
..............................
The entertainment industry is dead from self-inflicted wounds. The tech we could make use of is being held for ransom (I messed my shorts when I saw $1,100...). The marketing zombies have their hands in our pants pockets. And our audience has an attention span of 30 seconds. All I know to do is to say "shouganai" and keep walkin' down the road.
I've a bit more interested in the gaming world than you are, even if I have stopped playing violent games, and while I know of the the 'type' of gamers and game maker hobbyists you speak of, in fact the majority of gamers, gamer makers, animators, and DAZ Studio still renderers never come near the forums and the forums, like the newspapers, TV, and radio news and their reporters and editorialists responses that makes you shudder at the news are not a statistically relevant representation of the majority of the population. I also see nothing wrong with having a hobby of shopping, even if you don't even use what you shop for. It's a relaxed, pleasant socially friendly activity to shop when you can afford it even if you are just buying something for it's beauty when you see it. There are museums filled with shopper's past expeditions for beauty and even those museums house only a small fractions of the people's past expeditions for beauty with often the most beautiful works passed over for inclusion in a museum because they weren't found, were destroyed, or the museum curators mistakenly sought out current notariety as an indicator of importance and worth.
Indeed, there are quite a number of games where the goal is to put makeup and dress characters to your liking. Should I begrudge that girls be given game activities that they would enjoy also? What harm are they doing in putting makeup and clothing on characters? At any rate, most game makers now make building or collecting content the major reward theme of the game, for players of both sexes of all ages and the boys games that would require creating stories based on characters they create is a valuable academic and social learning activity and one that girls enjoy too. There are only so many times you want to play a rerun of pressing the same buttons to shoot the same characters in a game before the player say enough, it's boring by now.
It's a mistake to think that MCS creating a easily customizable in-game UI 'dressing room' and DAZ Studio pipeline to encourage the DAZ 3D products by game maker hobbyists and professionals both is idiocy when the animations you produce and the games made in Unity 3D and UE4 are dependant on playing 'dressup' in a dressing room called DAZ Studio or Carrara or Poser or Cinema 4D. The Unity Asset Store is doing basically what DAZ 3D does and often the modeled content in that store is not as good. Unity and UE4 have such a massive superiority as compared to DAZ Studio for animating and physics that it makes no sense for a new hobbyist wanting to learn animating to bother using DAZ Studio or Carrera (Cararra that hasn't been updated in 3 years) to animate so I think your small group of animators will remain stagnate and probably shrink. Even you don't use DAZ Studio or Cararra to do your animations.
I don't mind reading a bit of scripts occasionally for people that PM me but be warned I don't have a radio announcer voice and sing like a cat that has had it's tail stepped on.
Ha Ha Ha @ singing like a cat that some stepped on their tail
one thing about making animation and showing them on YouTube. there no shortage of trolls. so when I was first starting to make daz animations i got this Butt head that was trolling me hard and I made this video
Guaranteed to make you smile
I don't think that "gaming" is about games. Poker, checkers, these are games. GTA5, Fallout 4, these are not games. They are Interactive Video. They are little movies where you get to decide what happens in the next scene. Interactive video is on track to replace the traditional motion picture. Animation, games, VR, all will be one soon. Have you seen The Congress?
Marketing calls them games for a number of reasons. For one, a single syllable is easier to remember than a string of seven syllables. We favor short words. As a less sophisticated term, it's easier for us to understand. Remember that marketing is basically a non-technical field.
We should also keep in mind that the gaming "world" is the only thing driving what new hardware development is taking place. Except for gamers, PC hobbyists are pretty much extinct. The cell phone is advanced enough for most people, too much so for some.
Sure, I see the testosterone-driven sphere of guns, monsters and 44Ds. Hormones are a much stronger influence on our behavior than we wish to admit. We prefer to think of ourselves as "rational, thinking beings" whose actions are based on logical choices. In fact, hormones can be as powerful and as dangerous as heroine. Marketing sees this too.
I give gaming its due, without buying into the whole "kill all monsters" mentality.
Thanks for the warning. There'll be no singing for you. :-)