Voice directing (20/3/2014)

* Our lecturer wasn't in today, so we cracked on and presented our ideas for game and company names.

People loved the company name 'Gorilla Milkshake' and the game name '3, 2, 1... TOWER DEFENCE GAME!'.

In the end we decided to vote by each ticking our favourite options on a piece of paper. However, no one had any ideas for game names and it became a draw between my company name and Jon's which was 'Insert Game Name Here'. Therefore, we will think more about this next week.

* I also took on my role of voice director for the others who have to perform today. I did this by directing, recording, telling people when to be silent and showing when to speak by putting my thumb up. I also encouraged them and gave advice when a line needed repeating or spoken in a certain way.

* For next week, I will continue to look at other descriptions for the cards and further monetisation options. I will also be presenting, along with the audio department and the other voice actors what we have been doing during the last two weeks to our lecturer.  

Company and Game names (14/3/2014)

* Having come up with company and game names yesterday, today I decided to make art assets for them in order to better display my ideas.

Coming up with some very quick rough designs, I just wanted to show visually the type of idea I had. The art department would clearly take these further (as in the industry).

Company Logos:

Gorilla Milkshake :

I honestly don't know where this idea came from, but I just thought the name was so weird and wacky that I had to make a fun logo for it. Thus, have a gorilla bathing in a milkshake because... why not?

H.O.G (Heroes Of Gaming) :

Like the last name, I didn't know where it came from, but I really like the anagram. Therefore, for the second design I decided to go for a traditional fantasy design.
I imagine if this design were ever animated it would have just the title and background before the hog with the dwarf rider jumping over it.

Phoenix Games :

In my head I knew exactly what I wanted, but I struggled to get it down. Therefore, please excuse this average design and try and visualise a beautiful flaming phoenix flying towards the heavens..

Game Names:

3, 2, 1... TOWER DEFENCE GAME! :

Unable to decide between the two colour schemes, I decided to present both.
The first one is brighter and almost cartoon like. Whereas the second one matches the theme of the game far better.

Stop, Duck and PUT OUT THE FIRE! :

Wanting to come up with a cool looking name, I came up with the following dark colour palette with the flames behind it so as to make it stand out.

Blazing Tower Defence :

Finally, taking inspiration from the above game name, I decided for obvious reasons, to put the flames on a tower.

Credit Avatars: 

Thinking of including avatars of ourselves in the credit section, I decided to combine elements of the Mii's on the Wii, South Park characters and the characters from the Snoopy cartoon. Thus making the characters very cartoony and appealing to our younger audience. 

Good and Bad news... (13/3/2014)

Bad News:

* We found out today that for some reason our clients no longer want a tower defence game, despite them initially agreeing to that concept. Therefore, after much debating we have decided to leave them as their new demands would make our current existing build of the game pointless.

Good News:

* As we no longer have a client, we are no longer restricted to a young audience and can expand our ideas even further. We will instead produce our game for the online games site http://www.kongregate.com/ and will be evaluated by the college.
 
So, I will now have to research the website in order to see how their games function for future reference.

* Adam, and I were also able to record our lines today which went great! Despite getting a bit of a sore throat, I am told my performance was hilarious and worth watching.
I'm glad I did some research in advance however, otherwise I feel that I would have had a even worse throat.  

Group Chat:

Was asked to think about monetisation options for our game which I will do for next week.

No longer having a client means we can add what we wanted to the game, our own 'seal of approval' as it were. Therefore, I came up with the following ideas...

• As we haven't worked on it yet, I would really like to see the beginning and ending cut scenes included. Partly because I want to include more of my narrative, but also because I feel that it would make the game unique and differ from other tower defence games. I wouldn't mind hearing some voice acting in it as well. 
• Flashy and impressive interface and game play e.g. 'Borderlands' esk explosions and visible health being chipped off enemies. Maybe even a commentator or text saying things like "Wow!", "Fantastic!", "Amazing!" and "Cool!".
• A merchant of some sort who sells the player buffs in between levels. Could then be an option for making us money in the form of micro transactions. It would also be cool if talking to the salesman revealed hints on the next level's encounters. 
• A credit section for all the wonderful people that worked on the project. We could even look like Mii like avatars from the Nintendo Wii, inside a fire station perhaps? Maybe we would also squeak if clicked by the player. 
• Maybe link real fire fighter websites to the game in order to push our safety message.

We were also asked to come up with possible company and game names, therefore I decided to write down anything and everything in order to come up with some fun and creative ideas.

Possible Company Names:

• Defiant 
• Phoenix Games
• Innovative
• H.O.G (Heroes of Gaming)
• Gorilla Milkshake 
• Rising Superstars 

Possible Game Names:

• Blazing Tower Defence 
• Fighting Fire
• Put out the fire because reasons...
• 3, 2, 1, Tower Defence Game!
• A game of extinguishers and fire
• Stop, Duck and PUT OUT THE FIRE!!!

Harvard Referencing: 

• Kongregate (Unknown) Kongregate. Available at: http://www.kongregate.com/ (Accessed on: 13/3/2014).

Important notes for Thursday's voice recording (9/3/2014)

* As Adam, Jim and I will be doing voice recording on Thursday, I decided to make some notes in order to prepare us.
The following notes include information I have found over the years, as well as personal advice from existing voice actors I have managed to contact recently.

• Do vocal warm ups before recording. Thus relaxing the muscles and making it easier to record lines. 
• If you open your mouth wide when you speak you make what sort of emotion you are trying to project clearer. After all, there are more muscles in the human face than anywhere else on the body.
• Acting slightly whilst performing can help you get into character. 
• Standing up gives you more energy when performing and allows you to breathe better.
• You should try and look at a visual image of the character you are representing. That way you can use the previous two statements in order to bring that character to life. 
• If you're using a voice that hurts your throat, then stop immediately! You don't want you to lose or damage your throat after all.
• Avoid drinking very hot or very cold water as it can damage the throat. Instead only drink room temperature water.
• Don't eat chocolate before recording, as it builds up saliva in your mouth and can slur your words. 
• Remove jewelery so as to not make any other noise. 
• Make sure to get multiple takes, even if your using a filter, as other factors can get in the way e.g. you were too close to the mike, you accidentally slurred a line or the audio team simple needs a variety of takes to choose from.
• Record at least a couple seconds of silence for each piece as that will allow the audio team to better edit the voices since they can remove any ambient noise. 
• If you mess up a recording you can stop, give yourself five seconds for ambient noise and then start again.
• If you do the above then try and mark the take on a piece of paper. This makes the editing process ten times quicker when editors know which audio starts later or needs to be cut. 
• Start low, then get higher. Otherwise if you yell straight away it can be off putting for a listener (similar to a jump scare). 

Also, one last thing that I hope everyone does know already, but I must emphasise is that EVERYONE should be RESPECTFUL to one another and SILENT during recording. After all, talking, laughing or other off putting things can drain a voice actor's confidence and weaken their performance. Plus it would then take twice as long to record what should only take a single session.

Voice Auditions (6/3/2014)

* As usual I watched ever ones' weekly presentation before showing mine and receiving the following feedback.

• Liked the design for the folder.
• Although my achievements were very "pun-y", they liked them and Adam was more than happy to change / edit them in order to fit the game's art style. 

* Jim and I were also able to run auditions for the game with Adam (the only volunteer), treating it professionally by asking him the following questions.  

Q: Have you ever done voice work or drama before?
A: GCSE in Drama (2 years) and did voice work for a project last year.

Q: What range would you say you have?
A: Can't do low, but can do high.

Q: Can you do accents?
A: Transylvania and Mexican. 

* As only Adam volunteered for the project, we decided to take the initiative and decided that the three of us will do the voices as we are all confident and have done voice work before.

We then went over all the bosses one by one and did our rendition of what we each thought the character should sound like, making the following choices.

• Oven: Clearly Adam, thanks to his Mexican luchador accent.
• Chainsaw: Jim with his Skeletor impersonation, as it sounded incredibly close to the 'He-man' character.
• Oil Spill: Straight away my ugly fat man's / 'Puss King's voice was chosen for this character as it fitted the burning oil's large fat design. 
• Computer: Struggled to find a voice for this boss. Therefore, we settled on using Microsoft Sam's voice in order to make it sound authentic.
• Fire Place: Knowing full well that the final boss needed to be intimidating, we decided to mix all three of us recording lines together. I will use my bass voice whilst Adam will be raspy and Jim mid. 

As for the minions, we will all do random gibbering with the odd line of dialogue, deciding later which voices will belong to which enemy minions.   

Refined card folder for the achievements (4/3/2014)

* As the folder design from the trophy cabinet I showed last week were well received, I was asked this week to come up with one that included a section not only for fires and extinguishers, but also for fire safety.

I started with a folder layout that would introduce players to the concept of looking at their cards and how to do so as seen below, with the only extra feature being the 'Menu' button to clearly take players back there.
The folded page corner would also allow the user to go through the folder rather like a regular book.

With the contents page done, I moved onto the 'Fires' page, taking inspiration from the layout the team leader originally wanted as inspired by 'Risk of Rain'.

Continuing from Jon's example, I decided to have it so that what you selected took up a whole page, so making it eye catching and the text big enough to read. I also decided to remove the folder page corners and have a big 'X' in the bottom corner to clearly show how to remove the on-screen card.

 

I also came up with the other pages for the extinguishers and safety. Granted, the safety page looks very simple. but this is so that the art department can come up with something visually cool for the player to unlock.

During this time I also found some information for the safety cards that you can see on basic templates below. I decided to use green despite its sickly colour as it is commonly associated with safety.

Harvard Referencing: 

• Wikipedia (2014) Stop, drop and roll. Available at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stop,_drop_and_roll (Accessed on: 4/3/2014).

Preparing for auditions (4/3/2014)

As Jim and I are planning to run auditions for voice acting in the game, I decided to look in advance for the questions and things we need to look out for by doing some research online. After all, we want to make sure that the voices are suitable for the final product and appear some what professional.

We will keep things casual, and ask them to read a couple of lines for each character as well as show us any silly voices they can do in case they are picked for an enemy instead. If they feel they can add anything or if they have a voice better suited for the role, then we will hear them out.

Questions:

• Have you ever done voice work or drama before?
• What range would you say you have?
• Can you do accents?

 
Performance:

• Do they appear confident?
• How strong is their voice? 
• Can their voice convey emotions?
• Did they physically perform during their read?

Despite writing the above and posting them on my blog, I will not upload each individual's comments as I feel this would be negative, although those who are successful will obviously be informed.

Also, since I am acting as both a judge and director I will not personally accept a big role in spite of my love for voice acting as this may come across as pompous. Instead, I will perhaps provide a voice for one of the minions since I recognise my high pitch voice would suit one.

Harvard Referencing:

• Yahoo Answers (2008) What do judges look for in a Actor auditioning? Available at:  http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20080420235224AAgdMGe (Accessed on: 4/3/2014)

More achievements (2/3/2014)

* Having come up with some more achievements a while back, today I designed what they would look like.

 

 

Dialogue for the Bosses (27/2/2014)

* As our clients didn't come in today, we discussed ideas for the game by sharing what we had come up with over the last week.

During my presentation I got the following responses.

• Felt that the boss cards should look different to the others, which is fine, but that would be something for the art department. 
• Really liked the idea of the card folder due to the memory of Pokemon cards. However, the team leader would like another design where selecting a sprite from the game leads you to their information, similar to the 'Risk of Rain' book layout I was shown before.   
• I need to try and think of any possible achievements for players that play the game for longer e.g. cards not relating to fires or turrets. Perhaps I could make these the cut fires.
• Lecturer would like me to create a flow chart for the menus.

* Thanks to today, I was able to find out which enemies are confirmed for the game. Thus I was able to work with Jim on the bosses dialogue that we had started a while back.

Flame-bob Oven: Will sound like a masked wrestler with an inferno and door banging sound over the voice actor. So in short, Macho Man Randy Savage.

• Enter the scene: "Prepare for 200 degrees... of pain, brother!"
• When defeated: "No! I wasn't hot enough!"
• When the boss beats the player: "Looks like I was too hot for you! Oh yeaaa!"

Mechanical Chainsaw: Nasily voice due to the saw being an extension of its nose.

• Enter the scene: "I'm going Beeeerrrrserk!"
• When defeated: "No! You're such a buzz kill!"
• When the boss beats the player: "SAW what I did there... HA HA HA!"

Oil Spill: Deep, imposing voice that gets higher when it gets weaker / smaller.

• Enter the scene: "Ho, ho, ho! I'm coming to get you!"
• When defeated: "No! I'm evaporating! Evaporating! What a world! What a world!"
• When the boss beats the player: "Hmm... this place looks delicious! I can't wait to swallow it whole! MA HA HA HA HA!"

Computer: High voice with a televised /static quality to it.

• Enter the scene: "Control, Alt... Delete!"
• When defeated: "Error! Error! Error!" (fades to nothing like a computer being switched off)
• When the boss beats the player: "Game over man! Game over!" 

Fire Place (Final Boss): Is basically M.Bison from the bad 'Street Fighter' cartoon.

• Enter the scene: "I tire of your game, prepare to feel... the heat!!!"
• When defeated: "NO! This is impossible!"
• When the boss beats the player: "What is a house!? A miserable pile of ashes?"

Granted, all of the above is still a work in progress and is up for change, especially if next week someone auditions with a voice that we believe better suits a particular boss.

* I will come up with designs for the achievements over the weekend and hopefully next week Jim and I will hold auditions for anyone interested in voice acting.