Voice-Actor Application - Miles B. Huff (Sweyn78)

[Sweyn78]

Position: Voice-Actor

Name: Miles Bradley Huff (Sweyn78)

Email: Sweyn78@Yahoo.com

MSN Messenger: MilesBHuff@LIVE.com (remember that Yahoo and MSN are compatible, so you should just add my yahoo address for IM)

Location: Naples, Florida, USA

Availability: I have no schedule besides going to school, so it would be difficult to give an exact time-estimate. Though, I should be able to put-in however much time is required -- without issue.

Age:17.5

Occupation: Student, Thinker, and others.

Skills and Experience: I love the subject of linguistics and have taken a year of Latin (I'm in my second at this moment). Not only can I pronounce any Latin word for you just as the Romans themselves would have back in the day, but using the International Phonetic Alphabet and a little research I should be able to pronounce anything else without issue (for example, I could teach myself the phonology of ancient Greek and you'd have ancient Greek recordings instead of easier to get modern Greek ones (Note: I already know how to read the Greek alphabet, so this would be rather easy)).

To prove how effective this is, I'm currently (once a week) hepling a native Urdu speaker to pronounce English like an American. He's really improving, having already learnt the voiced labio-velar approximant and the voiced labiodental fricative (originally, the two were in free variation with each other and the voiced labiodental approximate, as one would expect; the phonology of Urdu/Hindi naturally works in this way) and several other phonemes. He is currently working on English's interdental fricatives.

But I digress.

I can read/write in the Latin, Greek, Cyrillic, Runic (Anglo-Saxon, Elder, the one I invented), and Glyphic (the Glyphs from the video game Golden Sun: Dark Dawn (took a very long time; I had to figure them out myself because the key wasn't on the internet, lol)) alphabets, and -- to a limited degree -- the Hebrew abajid.

Besides inventing my own script, I have also invented a few languages.

I am fluent in English and reasonabnly so in Spanish. I can pronounce American/Scottish/British/Indian English, American Spanish, French, German, Old English, Classical/Ecclesiastical Latin, and some others very well.

I also like political science and history (especially post-Marius Rome through the end of the Middle Ages) quite a bit. I may be able to help-out in these areas (though, I'm sure everything you could possibly need to know is on Wikipedia or somewhere else on the Internet).

I have been modding games like Stonghold 2 and Oblivion for years (usually using others' mods for Oblivion and creating my own for Stronghold 2).

I can retexture things (and in some cases create my own; I happen to own many medieval arms and a suit of chainmail that I can photograph for the sake of making textures)

I know how to use GIMP and Photoshop.

I'm pretty good with Audactiy (been using it for many years)

The stuff I can do in Microsoft Paint is truly amazing...

I'm okay at Visual Basic (useless, right?) and quite good at the Wikia markup language.

In summary, I'm the one who can help you to get a bunch of nice things for the characters in 0 AD to say.

Motivation: I love linguistics and I also like modding games. A win-win, right? I have other commitments, though (especially since Skyrim's coming-out soon; I'll be busy modding it, lol), so my main focus for 0 AD would just be making sound-files, not making textures or anything like that.

Personality: I am eclectic, my Jung type is I/E-N-T/F-P (Technically INTP, but a 1 point difference in the first and third categories is negligible), my Kolbe Y MO is 5356, I am gifted, and am willing to provide other psychological information if necessary.

Short Essay: I was browsing Wikipedia, wondering what kinds of games there are avilable for Linux (I've never had much luck with WINE). I've played FreeCiv for years, so I imagined there'd be something good. Lo and behold, I came-accross 0 AD: a game that began as a mod istelf and which is designed to be easily moded -- AND it's open source! This is definitately being made in the true spirit of modding, and that is the sort of spirit that can immortalize games.

So, I downloaded 0ad from the repos, installed it, and ran it. I chose a map in single-player and started a game. After finding my legionaires, I began to move them around. They kept saying the same thing over and over again, and with imperfect pronunciation.

Needless to say, it bugged me.

What do I seek to gain? Nothing. I just want to help-out (and it is always fun to pronounce words in other languages), truly -- I enjoy this sort of thing.

Interests and Hobbies: Micronationalism, conlanging, modding, Facebooking, learning-about Linux, THINKING, innovating, and much else. My mind is a busy place.

Staff: Not that I know-of.

Community: TESNexus -- I often go on modding binges where I'll spend, like, three days downloading stuff off of it and then another two days somehow magically getting it all to work together. I have made my own mods, though; search TESNexus for "Armour of the Grey Wolf"

I have also modded Stronghold 2 extensively, but I have unfortunately not uploaded most of my work, as I was working on a graphics and realism overhaul (I never finished it because when I heard Stronghold 3 was soon to come-out, I realized there was no need to make such an overhaul. I have since been procrastinating uploading the many little bits and pieces of it)

Favorite Game: Oblivion (but ONLY once I've finished modding the heck out of it; else, Medieval II: Total War (the Stainless Steel mod for it is incredible, if you've never tried it)). Golden Sun (the first two; the third kinda failed in comparison) is hands-down my favourite game on portable platforms.

Work Examples: Well, as I am applying to pronounce things in other languages, I would need to provide you with a bunch of weird-looking IPA symbols and a bunch of other non-ANSII characters, as well as recordings of me speaking -- something most easily done in a YouTube video. In the meantime, I can, however, easily give you an example of the language I made:

Din Slajwit Ajn Mej. (I am sleepy (Do Sleepy Am I (It makes more sense in Theodian. I can explain, if necessary, of course)))

I have some YouTube videos of me speaking Old English, Spanish, and French (my username on YouTube is, of course, Sweyn78 like on everything else), but my French has improved since then. If you wish, I will create a video in which I properly pronounce many different languages and write in many different scripts.

I have attached my resume: Miles_B_Huff_-_Resume_for_Employment (Wildfire Games).pdf

Edited October 29, 2011 by Sweyn78

[feneur]

Hello Miles, and thank you for your application. Would you please like to record a couple of Latin words/sentences for us to review?

If so please create a separate WAV file for each of the below lines and attach them to this topic (preferably put in a zip file):

Quid?

Domine?

Ad Victoriam!

[Sweyn78]

Here you are!

WFG_Latin_0.zip

I've included an extra one in addition to the three you've requested; it is much longer. The three short ones you requested I repeated twice: once at normal speed, once slowly.

In the recordings, I used tones that help me to pronounce them. I can avoid doing this, if you wish. Also, if you are going for something a bit more fearsome, I can lower my pitch; it is not a problem to do so.

Edited October 30, 2011 by Sweyn78

[Mythos_Ruler]

You have good pronunciation. I'm just worried about the background noise and artifacts.

[Sweyn78]

I can remove the background noise (and obviously I would do this for something that's actually going-into the game).

I only didn't do it on the ones I sent you because I presumed they were just going to give a mere example of the pronunciation. I'll go and cut-out the background noise from them or completely redo them, thus making them more realistically implementable in-game.

The improved versions:

WFG_Latin_1.zip

| They're finally all done!

The following is the ReadMe:

This .zip file contains three folders:

0 Remastered

These are cleaned-up versions of the ones I originally sent.

1 Emphatic

These are more emphatic versions of the files

2 Serious

These are the ones I would use in an environment similar to Medieval II: Total War's strat_map.

Enjoy!

Note that although I describe the contents of the "Emphatic" and the "Serious" folders as plural' date=' they are actually singular. Also, I did not include the long recording that was in my first .zip.

Which version(s) do you all prefer most? [/font']

Edited November 1, 2011 by Sweyn78

[Sweyn78]

Bump.

Sorry to double-post; I just didn't know how else to let you all know I had finished (I finished yesterday, but no downloads implies no-one's checked this...).

Anyway, everything is done.

[fcxSanya]

Sorry to double-post; I just didn't know how else to let you all know I had finished (I finished yesterday, but no downloads implies no-one's checked this...).

It is better to post new message in such cases because when you edit old one it don't appear in 'New Content' feed. So it's good that you posted this 'bump'.

I can't say much about your work, because I'm programmer, not artist and I don't know Latin, so I will leave this for more relevant people; but new files sounds definitely more clear than previous

[Pureon]

I'll check those out when I return home tonight

[Jeru]

I haven't heard the files but it seems that 0 A.D. is right up your alley.

I'm sure Ryan and perhaps Omri can provide guidance for better recordings.

[Pureon]

Indeed, it does seem like 0AD is right up your alley

My main worry with your audio samples is that they are clearly recorded in an indoor environment, despite the pronunciation of the phrases being perfect in my opinion. The reverberation frequency would need to be professionally EQed out, or phrases re-recorded in a controled environment (recording studio) before we could use them in the game. I'm not saying the voices we have at the moment are perfect, just that you should look into ways of recording clearer audio.

[Sweyn78]

I added a very small echo (0.1 second delay for 0.1 seconds) to them and I exported them as mono 16-bit PCM's.

If I were to export them as stereo 32-bit floats and not add echo, do you think that would help?

The microphone I'm using to record this is the one on my webcam. It might help if I were to get closer to it.

Alternatively, I could conduct the recordings outside with my Blackberry Curve (the microphone isn't as good, though).

Come to think of it, I could probably attach my webcam to one of my parents' laptops and take that outside to conduct the recordings.

Also, in the game, do you use .wav, .ogg, or something else entirely?

Edited November 1, 2011 by Sweyn78

[feneur]

I added a very small echo (0.1 second delay for 0.1 seconds) to them and I exported them as mono 16-bit PCM's.

If I were to export them as stereo 32-bit floats and not add echo, do you think that would help?

The microphone I'm using to record this is the one on my webcam. It might help if I were to get closer to it.

Also, in the game, do you use .wav, .ogg, or something else entirely?

Ogg is used in the game, but wav is preferred as source files as they're lossless. That's especially convenient as we can then convert all sound files to OGGs using the same settings to ensure a more coherent sound.

[Sweyn78]

Ah, okay. I'd figured you'd be using the open source format.

Would you prefer that I do the recordings outside and re-upload?

[Sweyn78]

My main worry with your audio samples is that they are clearly recorded in an indoor environment, despite the pronunciation of the phrases being perfect in my opinion. The reverberation frequency would need to be professionally EQed out, or phrases re-recorded in a controled environment (recording studio) before we could use them in the game. I'm not saying the voices we have at the moment are perfect, just that you should look into ways of recording clearer audio.

I've just loaded-up 0ad and played the (0 Serious) sound-file with the campaign-music in the background. -13db is where my sound files will need to be to work well with the background music. The echoey-ness of the (0 Serious) sound-file wasn't apparent when played with the game's music.

Are others experiencing the same?

Edited November 1, 2011 by Sweyn78

[Pureon]

Would you prefer that I do the recordings outside and re-upload?

That's up to you. Do whatever you think will produce the most suitable acoustic.

[feneur]

The best way to be assured of the best results would be if you'd be able to buy a real microphone, but we can hardly require you to buy an expensive microphone just to record some sounds for us Just to be sure we get the best chance to evaluate your ability to produce usable sound files, would you care to try and record at least one of the phrases outdoor? Perhaps it's not possible to get a clean recording without noise there, or perhaps it doesn't work practically for you, but in that case we'll at least know you've tried your best to get the best possible files for us to use. You should know that we do want to try and get this working though, you seem like you know what you do when it comes to pronunciation etc I asked our history lead to listen through your recordings and he said they were very nicely done. So it's just the technical side we need to figure out. You wouldn't happen to have a friend with a recording studio or something? (You never know nowadays when so much is done digitally, even a kid with reasonably rich parents and/or a part-time job could get a basic setup together )

[Sweyn78]

You know, I hadn't thought of that. One of my best friends is a budding musician and I believe has the technology you would like, but if I were to use it, I'd only be able to get recordings to you once or twice a month (if then), and he and I would be largely intellectually distracted.

I'll give them a go outside. School's been a bit demanding this week; 4,000 words over three essays (plus revising each of them -- especially the 2,000 word one). I've got to write a 4+ page essay this weekend and catch-up in Latin II, but I should be able to begin recordings on Monday if I cannot do so this weekend.

Edited November 4, 2011 by Sweyn78

[feneur]

You know, I hadn't thought of that. One of my best friends is a budding musician and I believe has the technology you would like, but if I were to use it, I'd only be able to get recordings to you once or twice a month (if then), and he and I would be largely intellectually distracted.

I'll give them a go outside. School's been a bit demanding this week; 4,000 words over three essays (plus revising each of them -- especially the 2,000 word one). I've got to write a 4+ page essay this weekend and catch-up in Latin II, but I should be able to begin recordings on Monday if I cannot do so this weekend.

Well, considering the number of phrases isn't all that large I don't think that would be a problem, so it would probably be worth a shot. Try recording outside first though, I have no idea if it will be better (as I'm not working with sound, I do have a feeling it might capture as much noise as indoors if not more though, but I could be wrong ) but it will at least be easier to try than to have you go bug your friend

[Sweyn78]

I don't think we'll have to worry too much; I just showed this to my mom and now she's obsessed with getting me a better microphone (I'm using the one built-into my webcam right now). When I get it, I'll record once indoors at my computer, once outdoors on one of my parents' laptops, and once in the small office my dad made (it could potentially give good acoustics) and upload the results in a .zip.

Edited November 6, 2011 by Sweyn78

[feneur]

Cool Looking forward to hearing the results

[fcxSanya]

I just showed this to my mom and now she's obsessed with getting me a better microphone (I'm using the one built-into my webcam right now).

I don't know anything about voice recording, but built-in webcam mic definitely sound like not best thing for recording. You probably can look at devices like Zoom H2 Handy Recorder, there is whole class of devices like this, I just remembered this one, because I heard it's name before. Maybe they are too expensive, or don't suit for your needs, but it is just something related what I remembered so I decided to post this here

[Sweyn78]

Thanks! I'll check it out.

[feneur]

Thanks! I'll check it out.

I'll see if I can get Ryan and perhaps Omri and Paul to offer some more suggestions (Hopefully not too many, so you never will be able to choose due to the number of choices =) , but at least they might give you some advice on what to look for and what to avoid )

[Sweyn78]

Okay, sure. Thanks!

[ryan827]

A USB Micrphone like the Samson co1U or the Audio Technica AT2020 are great places to start if you are looking for microphones (the AT2020 is better and comes with the stand but is slightly more expensive)

I would recommend either of those or a Zoom H2 as was mentioned earlier