Well, well, well. What have we here? It's not Santa Clause, but ooooh - I'm pretty scared.
While I adore chronicling the ups and downs of this weird little world I share with you guys, I felt it was time to have a more organized, professional place to showcase my work to potential clients. And thus with a flatulent burst of templates and sheer will of the heart (and lots of mochaccinos), the official page of DustyOldRoses pooped into existence! Happy Birthday, little dude!
That's right! The big girl pants come on (or off, depending on your preference). My own domain name and e'rr thang. So while not much will be going on over there, I invite you to check it out and have a listen to the demos and such. I'll still be posting at my other haunts regularly. And if you have any friends in the film/animation/games market or even just students looking for voice overs, this'll be a good place to start.
Beyond the new site, I'm also working on a new (very small) soundpack that should be done before the weekend's out. Nothing fancy, but if you've been aching to use my voice in tandem with Source Filmmaker keep a look out.
Oh, and Otakon? WHAT. A. BLAST.
Dropped this puppies like bombs ALL over the con. Like puppy bombs!
Relaxation and partying had a baby, and that baby was OTAKON 2012. Nothing else quite like it. I got to mingle with some awesome cosplayers, chat it up with the vendors, grab so sick swag, and of course pepper my name around to the public for any animation enthusiasts. My postcards were gorgeous and done just in time, thank goodness. No water cooler station was safe from my self-promoting carpet bombing.
I'll be back with updates about some new videos and other news, blogspot-faithful. See you soon.
More Otakon swag. I wonder who these two cuties are...? :D
I try to be better about maintaining the blog, but I totally crashed after Femgineer was complete. Oh, by the way, Femgineer got complete!
Delayed reaction much? Why announce the release on my own blog first, right? The truth is the release was sudden and not so sudden at the same time. Then Resonance happened. But I'll get to that in a moment; for now I'll discuss the unspoken bits of Femgineer.
Story time, sugar...
Several things kept tripping up my end of the project. If you've been following the blog, you may have heard a family member of mine fell ill for quite some time and was hospitalized because of it. This left me to tend to their household affairs while they were getting better and left me a very small window in which to record female engineer when I returned from my job.
Once things balanced out back home, I now had a completed sound pack with no edits. IanSuffix sent me his edited pack and it was then passed onto Mr.Dude20652 for lip syncing.
LIP SINK! GET IT?! HAR!
The pack proved to be too quite in game though. Ian had to go back and bump up the amplitude. Thankfully, Mr.Dude found a way to export his work so the sync data could just be imported to whatever newly edited pack Ian sent back. This is important because and edits to the lip synced sound files, such as making the volume louder, would wipe out the hard work MrDude did.
I couldn't be happier with both of them and they have my everlasting thanks.
I will need to update this pack, however, as it slipped my mind to export the female heavy alternate lines. As it can't be more than two or three lines, I'll put it off for now.
For anyone wondering if there will be any more female TF2 soundpacks from me, here's what I have to say about it:
I will not actively seek to do any more full female TF2 soundpacks unless I am approached by a modeler with such a request and if I have the time in my schedule between work and family. Presently, the shortest possible class soundpacks that could be produced would be Pyro (redundant), followed by Medic. I have been toying with the idea of a second iteration of the Female Medic since ChemicalAlia's major update of the model's appearance sometime ago. She approached me asking if it would take much time to do a replacement soundpack as people were requesting a new voice. This was before female engineer had begun. I was fine with the idea, but it was then decided it could wait, if it even needed to be done at all, as Femgineer came into development.
Now that I have voiced two of ChemicalAlia's four female class models for tf2, I don't think it wise to take up a third, considering I have also done a pack for the female scout model by AyesDyef, my own independent project.
The short story is I've not closed my mind to the idea, but I don't think it's best for me to pursue any more packs. I doubt if even the majority of the community who uses the packs would want that. Though it seems there are many mix sentiments about this:
Top comments
But whether good or bad, one thing is for sure:
There was one option I was mulling over, one to be explored in the maybe-distant future:
Female Engineer and Spy's soundpacks were done in collaboration with the model creator, ChemicalAlia. We agreed to create and ship the two together when the project was released to the community. In other words, I worked together with ChemicalAlia (and you all) to develop what most everyone involved felt was the best voice for the character.
Female Scout, on the other hand, was an independent project I chose to undertake on my own - that is to say with no input or permission needed from the model creator AyesDyef (not independent of people like MaxofS2D, MrDude, and IanSuffix). This soundpack was NOT shipped with the original model and the model appearance was in no way affected by my choices or vice versa (though I did keep the youthfulness of her appearance in mind). Also, I made minimal changes with use of community feedback in order to speed up the release.
If there were people who wanted it bad enough and I had the time and will, I could do another "independent" soundpack as with Female Scout - something not intended specifically for any one particular model. But that will depend on the public demand for such a thing from the same voice over talent who did three female classes already. Some people don't want to use all female models and will have no problem with this, but for others the novelty will come in having an entire team comprised of females. I respect that and, frankly, am part of the latter group.
My opinion is that regardless of what soundpack is shipped with whatever female model might be out there, anyone who wants to assume the task of creating an original soundpack should do so and with gusto. Don't throw away the idea simply because "there's already a" ____ model or soundpack. Community content is from the community, and the beauty of that lies in that there is a whole spectrum of different takes on the same idea.
I'm more than happy to assist others seeking to take on such a project. No doubt you'll be hearing more of my current voices in my silly shorts YouTube, as well as my idea of what some other female classes would sound like if I were portraying them. But no in-game stuff for a while. (Hey look! It's the short answer!)
That's all for now, space cadets. Sorry for the wall-o-text. I'll make it up to you one day.
So what's really weird is that I started planning this last year around this time. The scout's mom pack was so well received I figured - after having watched a few scenes from Disney's Tangled and falling desperately in love with Donna Murphy - that this parody would be fun to write and perform. Of course I could think of none other better suited to the task of playing Scout than my super talented co-worker on EBF2 and all around great guy Raikujo.
Then life, femscout, and femgineer happened. Leaving me with one month to write and record the song before Mother's Day 2012. The best laid plans, as they say...
At any rate, this was a blast and I hope to do at least on more parody relatively soon.
Sometime in the middle of March, I was approached by indie game developer Dave Gilbert of Wadjet Eye Games (the same people who brought you Gemini Rue) to do fill a little role in his newest game - Resonance.
A payinglittle role.
... Geeeeeeeehhh...!
It's been almost two months since it happened and I STILL can't get over it. My first PAID role. And it's in a GAME. I couldn't be more happy with the way this year started for me. Resonance is a beautifully crafted point-and-click adventure featuring a fully voiced cast of four playable characters and and a story that looks juicier than prime rib fresh off the bone. And achievements!
I play the mother of one of the four playable characters, Anna. There isn't much dialogue, so watch out for me and don't blink your ears. There are many more details to give beyond that. From what I've been able to see of the development it should be great fun.
I'm super grateful to Dave Gilbert, Devon Mack, and Kimlinh Tran for opening this door for me. And of course the same gratitude goes to all of you who support me, aid me, wish me well, and enjoy the work I do. A year ago this was a distant dream. I never believed it could be here at my feet in so short a time. Most especially my thanks goes to:
ChemicalAlia (Shaylyn Hamm)
MaxofS2D
Minifett
Raikujo
IanSuffix
MrDude20652
SourceMachinimaMaker(Dr.Hooves)
The fellows at Kritzkast (Agro, Tempest, Ruskeydoo, & Chronos)
and the love of my life, my fiance Shane (psychoshinobi17) for being relentless in their support. These special people chose to give me that little extra kick here or there that made pushed all my work into the next level. You're all phenomenal and no amount of blogging can attest to this.
In other news, promo icons! Neat, huh?
So what else... shoot. What else, what else...
There's a tumblr now. Which basically means no one will ever read this thing anymore. Aaand...
Oh! Mother's day is coming. I'd look out for something if I was you guys. I swear, I'm gonna be the next Kath Soucie if this keeps up: playing everyone's mom. ... and I'm GREATwith that! ^_^
Things are starting to cool down on the home front as far as my ill family member is concerned, but it's still a steaming semi-molten mess.
Toasty...
As I keep saying, I don't want to get into details, but some people have expressed genuine concern and this touches me greatly. So I'll just update on the basics:
1.) Said family member is doing well and is stable, but I am still in charge of their affairs that can't be handled from the confines of a hospital room (bills, business calls, their share of the rent, paper mail, etc.). As such I'm traveling an extra 2 hours after work, so time's super tight. Not to mention I loose all this sweet wi-fi access at work once my high up gets back from vay-cay.
All of these will be completed in due time, but I will try to stay as close to the order as when they were accepted as possible.
3.) I don't go above and beyond to record during/immediately
after the time I'm sorting this family member's affairs out with them.
In short, I'm not looking to burnout, so no worries there. Those who know me on Steam, I'll see you again one day... one day...
Neat, huh? I kinda want to do something special in honor of that, but I can barely get the stuff I have to do done. I have all these crazy stupid fillers in mind and another fun contest, but it's tough with all this Murphy's Law in my face.
That's more writing than I'm used to these days, so we'll do lunch about all this some time. Maybe grab some gelato.
I don't like to get into personal matters... wait, didn't I already write something like this? In theory I could go back and read the old posts. But many things are better left in theory. Like the Big Crunch theory where the universe is predicted to revert to its former state of milk chocolate and rice puffs.
...What was I talking about?
Oh. Right. Illness. Someone's been hit pretty hard with the bad luck stick in my family. Lots of things are falling back on me to organize now so I'm going to be even more scarce than I typically am. Stuff is still being worked on, most notably Femgineer (but everyone else who's waiting on my Glados contribution and some other tiny projects are getting wrapped up).
I'm a bit ashamed it's taken me this long, but I'll do my best to make things run smoothly.
Not like the Big Crunch. Those aren't smooth at all.
