Talking to Myself - Having fun practicing VO Part 1
- Jon Bolitho-Jones
- Mar 22, 2021
- 4 min read
Hello again,
It's been a while since I last posted. As you're probably aware I moved up north in December so I've been a bit busy. Lockdown returned properly, and we're just kinda escaping it now. I have been trying to keep myself busy, not only with writing but also fiddling around with Voice Over stuff. As such I thought I would share some of what I've recorded. Be advised this is all work in progress and exists just as some practice and a bit of fun.
I have been looking to get into VO work for some time now and at Christmas my in-laws gifted me a fancy microphone and stand. As such I have taken up residence in their upstairs box room, making it my office. There is even a very handy Mac computer already there. My current plan is to focus on Audio books, as I love story telling, and there are always new books that need to be read. Nonetheless I have been having great fun messing around with different types of VO, and my videogame characters are probably my favourite. As such for a laugh I thought I would share them with you today. So here goes...
The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim
Let's begin with Skyrim. This game is a fantasy RPG set in a medieval world with dragons. Its developer Bethesda are known for, amongst other things, their entertaining voice acting. In Fallout 3 they may have had Liam Neeson playing your dad, but it seems like everyone else in a post apocolytic New York is voiced by 4 people. Skyrim tried to improve on this, and though it isn't perfect I must say it is certainly better. Anyway have a listen. One of them is a cat person!
My sister-in-law said I should aim for villains, hence the two nastier chaps. Not that I would argue with such a sentiment. I do rather enjoy playing them. As you can see I like putting on silly voices. Well get ready for the next round...
Age of Empires 2: The Age of Kings
Now this second game is an old favourite of mine. It was a big part of my childhood this - I even still play it now. It's a classic RTS (real time strategy). The graphics might be a bit dated but it's got brilliant gameplay. So good in fact that a remastered version was even produced as recently as 2020. One of the things I remember was the hilarious voice acting in the campaign missions. This bordered on Monty Pythonesque at points. I recorded quite a few but here are my least insane ones...
All Medieval characters that of course includes another English sounding villain. With a William Wallace and Joan of Arc campaign they tended to be the baddies. The French Sociopath, aka Le Hire, almost destroyed my voice. I did have others, but yeah they were a bit mental so let's head on...
Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic
Onto Star Wars! The interesting thing is I have never actually played this game. I was going in blind and creating characters using what clues I had from the text. A little challenge I set myself...
Another English villain of course, plus a droid, a "Obi-Wan" style chap and my favourite "Old Sci-Fi Pervert". I can't remember his name, but he ended up as a sleazier, more decrepit version of my Mark Hamil Scientist Skesis voice. Anyway let's move on to my final batch...
Dawn of War
You're all very aware by now that I love my Warhammer 40,000 and all my little plastic soldiers. Well in the 2000s they made a RTS game for it, and it was brilliant! Loved it! Plus it had quite a lot of fun voice acting. I really enjoyed doing these, so let me begin with Orks and their runty servants Gretchin...
I got to be proper loud and shouty with these guys. So much in fact my generic Ork voice shouting made my wife worry so much that she rushed in to check if I was alright. She thought there was an argument going on. My favourite is the Mad Dok but I guess I like my characters a bit crazy. Anyway let's move onto to some "saner" Imperial characters...
Maybe not saner - quieter maybe, I guess everyone is a bit mad in Warhammer 40,000. Let's finish off with a couple of miscellaneous characters...
Anyway I hope you enjoyed listening to my collection of characters. I do like making funny voices. Let me know if you had any favourites, or if you'd like to hear more. You might have noticed that it says "Part 1", well Part 2 will be coming up in the near future. This one will be a bit more serious with Spike Milligan poems, a bit of audio book reading, and maybe even a little preview of the sequel to When the World Falls Down. You'll just have to wait and see...
Oh and talking of my book, there's a link below as always - just in case you want to give it a little look!
With that it's bye for now, I'll be back soon.
Jon
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