www.reddit.com/r/skyrimactors has been created, and a launching thread posted.



No problem, Quanta. Note though that exposure is never promised in any realm of entertainment. Generally speaking, all projects tend to have a rather optimistic atmosphere. Visit a movie set, and you'll never really hear anyone say, "Well, I don't think this movie will make it," whether the movie ends up succeeding at the box office or not. The same applies in music, radio, television, and even in voice acting for major titles. The goal for an aspiring actor is to get work done that they can cite, and not necessarily to create amazing resume entries right off the bat.

That being said, exposure comes when a mod is well-received by the community and reception comes when the community recognizes superb voicing. Aspiring professionals who are recognized by the community certainly have accomplished something resume-worthy. In fact, that recognition is not a necessity for their work to be worth citing. It's possible for a mod to get zero attention even though it has amazing voice acting, so the work becomes what all entries in art portfolios are: An example of a creative product. If you want people to know that you can draw, then you draw and show it to people. If you want people to know you can voice, then you voice and share it.

Furthermore, this initiative offers something new for current voicing professionals: A way to interact with the community to promote themselves. Imagine if the talent behind, say, Sheogorath sees a mod he likes, gets permission, and offers to throw his weight behind it. That's a public-relations goldmine that could build his fanbase and lead to more work. When people start asking for particular talent in any form of entertainment, producers tend to listen.

That being said, it's entirely possible that the opposite could happen, but this too is true in all forms of art. An aspiring painter may include works in their portfolio that are simply horrendous and detract from their career, but it's their work and their choice if they include it. Similarly, there may be instances of terrible voice acting being cited, but that lends to the possibility of constructive criticism and expansion of a developing actor's or actress' skills, and it's a natural part of the process of developing a marketable style. You might be surprised how long, tedious, and unforgiving that process can be for some art forms. Authors in particular face years of rejection and harsh criticism prior to any career-building recognition, but you can bet that their contest entries, columns, and other such bits of work are still cited as examples of their abilities.

Important Edit:


Why should anyone use the Creation Kit if they can't reproduce other titles by Bethesda, free of copyright restrictions? Why should someone buy a video camera if they can't use it to record in the movie theater? Why should someone comment on YouTube if they can't just repost the successful work of others for their own gain? Why should anyone buy a shirt if they can't counterfeit brand names? I think you see why. We can't stop people from revoicing, and I wouldn't even want to try. However, that does not mean that we have to promote it nor does it mean that revoicing is the ONLY kind of voicing that can happen. If talent privately decides with a modder to do this, then it's their business, but we can't allow the creation of this initiative to become lawsuit fodder. That wouldn't be helpful to anyone. Furthermore, I think it's in the interest of the community to be on the good side of both Bethesda and current voice talent. So, it's a matter of ethics, legalities, and common courtesy.

There's also: http://z4.invisionfree.com/wayhouse/index.php?act=SC&c=5

Thanks! I added them to the sidebar on the subreddit, and I'll go register to invite their collaboration. There's a thread awaiting moderation at the Voice Actors Project now.

Speaking as a modder, a student of ethics, and an amateur student of copyright law and copyright ethics, this is an unfounded concern. Imitating voices has never been an unethical practice. Replacing voice acting is also not unethical, and is no different than making a texture replacer. Do you feel the same about texture mods?

Speaking as a potential voice actor for Skyrim, I wouldn't join a group with that kind of unnecessary restriction. There are plenty of other VA guilds for Skyrim and modding in general to put up with misguided moralising.

I don't see how this could be lawsuit fodder at all, though. These are private, not-for-profit mods that are optional to download, and Bethesda has given their full consent for us to revoice their characters if we want to. If someone doesn't want a voice changed, they don't use the mod. Simple.

I guess my point is this: Individual mods do not reflect on the modding community as a whole. An actor that did a voice in the vanilla game isn't going to be mad at or refuse to work with the whole modding community in the future just because one mod revoiced their lines. For them to even get mad at that one modder who recast their role would be ridiculous, since said modder is not profiting off of his mod and the voice actor isn't losing any money.

This ^^

tl;dr: Doing voice acting for mods won't help your resume. Having a voice acting team is a good thing.

And speaking as a semi-professional voice actor that has worked in the field numerous times, doing voices for something like this will not do anything for your resume, when going for a job/audition, they want to see that you have studied it, taken course, worked for other high profile clients and most of all can do the voices that they want you to do which can only be done in an audition environment.

Now I am not saying we should have something like this, I had already posted a topic about getting a group of people together to do just this. It's something that would definitely be really helpful when making mods to be able to have a place to get voice acting for your mods, especially seeing as having good quality voice acting really helps with immersion and making your mod actually feel like part of the game rather then something that was just chucked in there.

Well, the community has spoken so that restriction can be lifted. However, in the event that a voice actor objects I might encourage mod creators to talk with them. That can be handled between them if and when that time comes.

EggDropSoap's point about texture packs is pretty persuasive.

As for whether any of this continues on my end, I've stated my case and made an offer to the community. Already the "Voice Actors Project" has rejected an offer to collaborate based on a "tenure" in the community, though from the lack of voice acting in the majority of Oblivion mods I question the effectiveness of their efforts. What I am for here is to create a large, inclusive player organization with no requirements to join. So, if there is an interest then I'll continue work. Since there seems to be much catty in-fighting in the modding community, if interest is little to nil I will lay this to rest. There is no point in offering my time and labor to a community that will hate me for it.

So, it's up to you, modding community. If you're interested, please let me know.

I think it is a great idea.

I'm a voice actor, and honestly I never download or use voice-acted mods because a lot of them make me cringe
There is already an established Voice Acting Guild, with a website, so I think that starting a new one would just be doubling work that's already been done.

One other reason that there aren't a lot of voice-acted mods is because of how difficult it is to generate the necessary files and the hoops you have to jump through with the
Editor in order to get it all to work.

Fallout had something like 40 steps you had to do in order to bring in a voice file, generate a lip sync and assign it to a character etc, it was just too much of a pain,
I don't know if was as difficult to do voices with Oblivion.

Also, some modders start off with an idea, and announce that they're holding auditions for parts in their mod, write all of the dialog, people spend hours recording it and sending it to the modder,
and the modder quits the mod, because they found out they can't do scripting or some other aspect of the mod, or just bit off more than they could chew.

Also, from what I've seen on the forums, usually when a poll about a modder making a voice-acted mod is posted, people tend to vote for the non-voice acted mod option over the voice-acted option.

First off, we're the Voice Actors Project, if you're gonna have a go at us at least get our name right. Second off, why don't you report the facts correctly if you're going to drag it over here? Tell them how you offered us nothing in this proposed partnership except for your hypothetical traffic and expected us to just sign up and bring along all the hard work we've invested for 4 years while getting nothing from you in return save a notch on your wall and whatever attention your threads garner? How about you tell them how when your request was politely declined because we already have a similar and functional operation in place with a lot of time invested, which you were invited to join, you started throwing insults about how we care about tenure and personal glory over the community.

Uh by the way to whom it concerns, I had no idea all this hard work was supposed to result in personal glory so could you forward me some?

As for our effectiveness, we voice what the community asks of us, we don't arbitrarily go voicing mods that existed long before our time without permission from their authors. To set the record straight, I declined your offer on behalf of the Voice Actors Project, because a partnership by every definition of the word should be mutually beneficial and you have nothing to offer. I'd say take the time to build it up and then come calling, but it seems you're already prepared to bin the idea.

I personally think it's a great idea, but I think taking a more hands-off approach would work well. Just having a thread here for voice actors to display their talents and for modders to find people to help with their mods would be great. People could post samples of their work in the thread, and you could add those samples to the OP so modders could easily find people that would work well with their projects. Modders could also use the thread to make requests for voice actors.

I didn't realize the Voice Actors Project was already doing all this. I say just let this die and let them organize Skyrim's voice actors. Seems like they've gotten quite a bit done already.

Why? http://i.imgur.com/WJY66.png

I made an offer of collaboration and offered moderation rights to a member of your project, and it was rejected on the premise of policy not yet written in stone and a willingness to allow private conversation between modders and talent (as if I could stop it). Nothing is being dragged anywhere. You see me as stepping into your territory, so rather than share the yard you marked that territory. In fact, you snubbed my efforts to the point that you demanded I remove a link to your site because "we're not affiliated," as if the interest in your organization that could be generated would somehow be dirty because it came from this initiative. There's nothing to defend. It's what happened. My apologies on getting your guild's (what it was called on your site) name wrong, though. I'll edit to correct that.


These observations are genuine as can be. It's entirely possible that people may voice lines for projects that never come to fruition, and you're right that it amounts to disappointment among fans at best, and wasted labor at worst. This is why clips should be considered the joint property of modders and the artists, unless they discuss differently privately. In the event that somebody records some audio and the project dies, then they have a set of lines they can offer the community to adapt. Modders who don't like that can come to an agreement with talent that it won't happen, so what I describe is a default only for what happens in the open. Mind, any system set up through this initiative can always be circumvented by interpersonal agreement reached through other channels.

As for the tools being difficult to use, we don't know they will be. I would anticipate improvements, in fact. However, my remark about the lack of voiced mods in Oblivion stands. A strong organization could assist with importing audio. It's a community, after all, right? The difference between teamwork and a quest for notoriety...

I could do some voice acting. Gotta admit I've never done any real acting besides my own projects, but I have friends who keep telling me I should take up an acting career. I have no portfolio. I can say however, without boasting, I can do a good job.
My english accent is good. I am scandinavian too so I might be able to do a good nordic accent as well.

Posting that conversation isn't going to help your case. You were new to our site, not knowing you from Adam, I simply offered a basic breakdown of who we are and what we do, and then told you in polite friendly terms the reasons (plural) we were not interested in a partnership: because we have A, B, C, and D and you have nothing, there's nothing in it for us. Moderation over what? You say I made a call based on false information, well bud, it's the information you provided for my consideration. This community belongs to everyone, it's not my territory, there are blokes in this thread alone who deserve way more grass than me. What I am defending, what is my right to defend, is what we have worked hard for in the face of your cross site defamation, but again you can't accept a "no" without defaulting to making false accusations about my character.

If you just stop talking about me and mine then we won't have a problem.

Yes, the VAP is well known from Oblivion, and the least the OP of this thread could have done before waltzing in was to research if something already existed to fill his needs. It seems more like the OP is interested in a "hostile takeover" than actually doing something for the community, so I have no sympathy in that regard. If you can voice act, great, join VAP! If you want to muscle your way in to administrate voice acting for the entire community, you are about 4 years too late and you would probably not do half as good a job of it, no offense.

Yeah so am I, but Bethesda probably couldn't tell Scandinavian from Japanese, seeing as all their Nords speak "Arnold-speak" and are nothing like Norwegian/ Swedish accents

DarkRider, The Darkest Hours, you only back up what I've said about you with talk such as


Or


I don't have a "case". See, you take this far too seriously. You're territorial, and you think I'm disrespecting you by moving in to perform a "hostile takeover". Were that the case, then rather than offer you moderation rights and thereby include you in the management of this initiative through collaborative cooperation while promoting your site, I would never have approached or involved you at all and certainly would never have promoted your organization. See, you're interested in protecting a perceived property of your organization whereas I'm only interested in helping people to be productive, have fun, and work together. I get it. You don't like sharing your toys. You don't play well with others. Understood. So, if you don't want to play with us then realize that we can still create our own playground.

Offering you a position of direct authority over this proposed community is no more a takeover than McDonalds hiring the CEO of Burger King to write their advertisemants would be, except it is not my aim for us to be competitors and that is why I invited you to begin with. But you're too good to participate. This is not about ego for me. I'm not looking for recognition. I just want to be able to log into a website to see a community enjoying themselves and having fun by creating what they imagine. I'd like to see some voice actors get a chance for exposure. I'd like to see some mod creators have a better chance at voicing their characters. I've already said that once the ball is rolling, I am willing to completely surrender whatever control or position I have. What I have offered is my labor and time, and I have asked nothing in return. For that, I find your defensive, insecure, and territorial reaction silly. This is a video game. Unless you're making some serious money doing what you do, there is no reason to be antisocial about it.

So, if you can't play with us then realize you can't stop us from playing. I hope you have a wonderful night. Although I will add that seeing someone who is willing to invest their time and money in design and promotion of a community solely to benefit the enjoyment of others while asking nothing in return, and reacting the way that you have is somewhat like seeing an altruistic stranger and spitting in their face because they dare help people in your neighborhood. I hope you reconsider your silly reaction.

Right. Thing is, you just seem to be missing the point. The point being, that your initiative is not needed. Now, those are two words I never take unto my lips when it comes to modding, for good reason, as one should not turn away potential assets and future "stars", but in this case, you simply aren't needed. That's not because:

A) VAP wants a monopoly
or
They are making money from it (of course not)

It's because

C) Two different initiatives doing the exact same thing is superfluous, and will potentially either hurt the community by dividing the resources at hand, or you are wasting your time because everyone know VAP already and would naturally go there for these things.

I don't see how that's being territorial at all, you just don't want to realize you are wasting time and could hurt the community with this when all you had to do in the first place was signing up with VAP.

That's all there is to it, and I'm simply not going to entertain your bickering any longer if you wish to be in denial here.

Since I didn't say that quoted material, everything you say about me after is pointless.


I believe in my first response to you here I said, if you weren't quitting my advice would have been build it up and then come calling, ie maybe we can work together when you have more on offer, Yeah that's so immature of me to offer a reconsidered future partnership in the face of the magnanimous courtesy you've shown here. I will have a wonderful night thanks, hope you have the same, it's always a pleasure having open debate with a gentleman.

So, if you don't wish to participate then don't bicker. I started this thread. I updated it with the results when I approached your forums. The conversation could have ended there. You came here to continue. If you expect that I'll sheepishly say, "Yes sir," as you misrepresent what I'm about then I must humbly apologize because it seems that my efforts and life would amount to rather little should I passively allow myself to be defined by others.

As for this "dividing the community," the funny thing is that the bulk of Elder Scrolls fans have never heard of your community. This is not bickering. It's rational discourse. It's your ego versus my motivation. There is absolutely no reason why both what I propose for purposes of a centralized hub and exposure of organizations and facilitator of networking and your forums could not coexist except that you perceive any second community as divisive whereas I see collaboration as productive. So, we play at your house and only your house or nobody gets to play? I don't think that's fair. I think there should be several houses people can play at just in case they don't mix well with people in one house or another, and then a playground where everyone from all the houses can get together.

We apparently have diametrically opposed perspectives. That's a shame because we could accomplish so much more by combining our efforts.

As for your bit about the quote, read the thread. If you do that then you might discover that it's actually possible to quote more than one person in a reply. I know it's far-fetched, but trust me, it can be done.

I think you're just imaging them voice acting for poorly made mods about on-edge subjects. Take a look at my mods page for Deimos on the New Vegas Nexus. It's very well made, and I put a huge amount of time into it. Everyone has loved it, and says it's very well done. Now, that certainly looks like something, where if one of the voice actors that worked for me on that showed it to a potential employer, it would look great.

They would see a professionally done project with high ratings and a fairly large audience. What looks bad about that?

I'm sorry I missed that edit. If there's not another reply from you tonight, then I'll conclude by saying that you certainly have conducted yourself in a gentlemanly fashion, and it is refreshing to disagree with someone yet have the conversation play out thoughtfully, with the less pleasant perspectives delivered at least with an attempt at tact. That such is appreciated is a major understatement.

I can understand that as the new kid on the block, I have some proving to do. I'll approach your forums again perhaps when (and, since it's still early-on, IF) this gains some traction and builds a following. Until then, I wish your organization the best of luck.

voice acting is something i would like to get into, maybe one day when i have the money for a mic i can get into it... I'll certainly be looking here on the forums when im ready. My biggest problem (i think) is my voice sounds completely different than what i hear so i is hard for me to judge it... i guess i need to start the exercise where i record my self and listen and repeat until i get the effect i want.

I spend almost the entire day with headphones and a microphone on, because I'm usually recording vocal or guitar parts.
At first it's very strange to 'hear' yourself' through mechanical means, but after a while it becomes second nature.

University students that major in theatre may like the extra credit.