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.
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| 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.
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| 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:
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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.
