 Hello everyone and welcome back to enter the ether of the podcast all about the upcoming third person mobile The real clash of souls I'm your host the man goose and if you enjoy pink sweatshirts and Pidgeotto haircuts, then I've I got the man for you It's jelly knees. How you doing jelly? I Guess better now that I have that intro that I'm a Pidgeotto haircut wearing or pink sweater wearing Pidgeotto I'm doing great man goose. How are you doing? I'm doing well because we have Dan the man Daniel hodge the voice actor that has been doing the amazing myth spotlights cold sharp and focused the beasts of grin aren't the only things tyrants must fear Because this huntress is known as Malaya the remorseless With us today to talk to us all about voice acting how you know a day in I'm doing good. Thank you guys for having me on God, it's our pleasure. Yeah, absolutely. You're you're just normal voice. We were talking before we started recording You're just normal voices awesome. Thank you. I I had to work on it for nine years to get it to this point because before I sounded a lot more high-pitched and nasally Yeah, he's not like me. I get it I Over time if you actually use your voice on a day-to-day basis You start to realize it starts to open up and you can now have a more accessible range Which I mean you guys talk all the time on your show So you've probably noticed maybe even your voice has changed over time from just using it every day I do get a little bit more of an anelotary voice whatever I'm doing these I guess I'm not sure man goose wants me to talk any more than I already do. So I Always interrupt you and talk over you and then I feel bad Good somebody has to So this week we're gonna talk about the Malaya spotlight that was revealed Of course, and then after that we're gonna talk to Dan about voice acting and then we got it Just a whole list of questions for him. We'll get into that. But first let's start off with this myth spotlight Jelly you and I have already done our videos talking about what we thought of everything Dan, what did you think of the myth spotlight? I Was really surprised by it because after I saw it it almost sounded different from how I recorded it because it sounded Way more cut together really well edited really well and when I was doing it before you know You make mistakes you stumble sometimes while you're kind of going through the flow of getting it recorded And then after hearing it all was like wow did I really make it sound that good? It sounds a lot better than I remember it sounding so I was actually really impressed by it I was like wow man, that sounds good So I was really happy to see how it all turned out And I was really excited to see the new footage of the map and everything that was going to be shown because I Only get to see that stuff pretty much as often as you guys do Yeah, they just tell you what they need said and you say it you don't get Text document was words Direction and then I get to find out like everybody else what it looks like and what kind of new you know what the size comparison between the characters The different types of animations and abilities and how they look so reading it all it all sounds really cool But then I also want to see how it all turns out right The whole spotlight I thought was really good the Dante one was done really well I think this one was an improvement over the Dante spotlight. They had a little bit more footage of Malaya running through the map than they did with Dante and She her her model looks incredible. She was the first one I think to get the rework to the upgraded models So I think they'll probably improve over time but with Malaya as a base like how can you get like how can you get better than that? She's she looks so good the only The only thing is her hands like like when she holds her hands up like her hand is twice the size of her head But she has huge hands. She could she could slap on Kim Kardashian on the ass and hit both cheeks with one swipe I Like it because it is a characteristic that automatically makes her stand out when you see her first thing You see is those giant claw-like hands and you can immediately identify. It's Malaya, right? Yeah, you just see a shadow over and know who it is. Yeah, I tell you what I completely agree with you man goose that I think this was a improvement over the Dante spotlight and Injust how it was presented and the shots that we got we got Easter eggs involved at the same time between seeing like jungle minions and Atropos in the atropos cave There was a lot of little details that were included that didn't have to be but just add to the overall experience of viewing that spotlight And this time, you know, we didn't think it was a it was Dante's voice actor Recording the lines because you know, we knew that this was all happening this time Yeah, that was something I was surprised about too and I was like wait I heard people commenting about that and then after I saw the video again looked back at the voice lines I was like, oh, I guess it does That's a compliment. I mean I like Dante's voice lines. So thinking you were the same thing 100% a compliment What people when I saw other videos thinking the same thing people said the exact same thing Oh, really thinking that it was Dante talking Wouldn't that be a wild idea if they had like DD the voice actors were Malaya like do the voice ever before like they had each one do their own voice ever That'd be pretty wild. I Want to put you out of a job Dan We've you're you're gonna become iconic like I can see it right now like your voice in these are it's gonna be So tied to a theory over going forward. Mm-hmm. I hope so. I mean Theory was really cool looking MOBA and I really loved the design and the uniqueness of it over all the different ones that I've seen come out So that was one of the things I wanted to bring when I was doing the voice recording Was trying to sound unique and make it sound different from all those other type of spotlights you normally see So hopefully it does good and I can say like at least for me personally, right? I've been a league player for a long time when I watch the league spotlights and I hear the voice that's talking I'm like, oh, that's this person like I recognize them and it kind of gives this tie to the spotlight Even if I don't care about the character just the voice itself is a big tie So I think having you be the voice and and being able to talk to you and all of those things Creates that same kind of connection to it all which I love. I think that's a great thing Thank you One thing I will say about spotlight something a lot of people have been pointing out is that Malaya's kit is similar to other kits and like I smite legal legends or whatever That's gonna happen. Like everything can't be completely Original and I imagine as the game progresses. They'll probably come up with more original ideas But especially for these starting heroes, you're gonna want something that you're kind of comfortable with so you're not just Coming into this new game Picking up a new hero and having no idea how to play them whatsoever At least with this where the the kits mirror some stuff that you're already kind of used to I think that's kind. That's a bit of the gold I was talking to Kai about that a little bit. He said he's not to put off by people Comparing Malaya to I think it's Kali in smite or something like that. Yeah, that's that's the name I've heard thrown around a lot in comparison. So because if somebody familiar Warwick, yeah, that's legal legends. All right. Yes. Yeah You can tell how much I played smite But I think that's absolutely right mangers at least these initial myths whether it be just the pre alpha 7 or the first 14 that we know about being Something similar to other feeling games right helps you connect to the character more initially that you can be like Oh, I like playing Kali from smite. So I'll probably enjoy playing Malaya Or it helps you just pick up the character and be more comfortable with the game and Move forward into the more complex ones that get released down the line, right Exactly. Well put Yeah, it's really important that you have a Game that is user-friendly in the beginning so that you create that player base that wants to keep coming back to it It doesn't get frustrated by over complexity And then after a time once they've gotten used to how the base ones work and you introduce new ones And you go back and you rework the old ones You add more uniqueness to them to separate them from all the other ones that come out You follow that kind of process of the evolution of the game to building the player base up to refining and Executing it so that everybody wants to keep playing that's been there since the beginning because it keeps refreshing itself becomes more interesting again Absolutely, and I think something that has been really good as a reference is League of Legends Being around for ten years and being able to keep players like me who've been around from the beginning Still engaged in the game and still excited for new things and changes Because they did it that exact concept in is just refreshing things and keeping it feeling new even for people that have been around But also for new players at the same time. I think that's about all I had to say about myths The myth spotlight for Malaya. Do you guys have any final thoughts on that? Go watch it if you haven't And then watch man goose and my breakdowns of it I Probably jelly's breakdowns might tend to be more funny than actually informative So Okay, so let's get into talking to Daniel Hodge about just voice acting in general first question right off the bat Are you a gamer? Do you play do you play a lot of games? I do play a lot of games of the games that I play I'm normally kind of about RPGs and tactical kind of strategy games so when it comes to that I tend to spend a lot of my time kind of just learning the mechanics of a game diving into it learning about the lore of the world and Kind of immersing myself in it as much as possible. So I play games like back in the day like command and conquer I of course play Skyrim the Dragon Age games any kind of those games that has the really super high kind of world Where everything you can just dive into it and read about it and get into it? And I love my games to be kind of group focused So if it's a co-op or multiplayer game that I can play with cooperatively with my friends That for me is so much more fun because I love to play a game where I can fight along sign people that I know and Compete with them against other people and kind of refined that kind of team energy with them And Moba's was one of the things that I liked just recently after Paragon came out because I was so interested in League of Legends and Dota and smite But the controls were never really that friendly to me because I grew up playing console games So when it came for me I had the chance to play something like a Paragon game I got so immersed in that because it all clicked for me And I finally understood what Moba's were and it was exactly that type of game experience that I wanted that I always looked For in games So it was something I really easily fell into and became obsessed with because I like the design of how Moba works so much jelly anything I mean, I think that that's the perfect explanation for what Paragon was to a lot of people and And Moba and it's it's part in the Moba space Right that you play the League of Legends Dota and smite and it just didn't quite click But then Paragon was the one that that it kind of brought everything together It worked out and I think this is a progression of that for a lot of people Which is exciting we've talked about in the past. It's exciting for us to be a part of that But I think that that's great to hear from even the voice actors that are voicing for this project that they have that similar feeling Yeah, it's really nice to see like I feel that you're one of us now One of us one of us Paragon a little bit and now you you've transitioned into the ethereal scene. So that's really cool to hear What's our next question jelly So how did you start in voice acting like did you do any other performance arts musical theater or anything like that? Or did it was it just voice acting for you all the way through? Well, I never received any proper training. I was always interested in trying out for Stage or theater back in high school But in my school those were the weird kids. It was kind of the thing where the band geeks were the popular guys They were the ones strutting around their stuff and they were really popular band was a really big deal in my school and It got a lot of attention for school a lot of people went to you know go into Professional scenes from our school. So when it came to acting in theater, we didn't have much of a budget It was one small room kind of at the back of one of our gymnasiums and the people who did go and try out there Were kind of both the theater group and the choir group. They did kind of two things at once So I was really excited to try out for it, but I kind of got Really really nervous about judgment because I didn't I didn't look like you know any sort of I Didn't look like any sort of TV star or anything like that back then as a kid And I was worried both about my physical parents and my social awkwardness. I was very shy I didn't normally like to speak in front of people and When I got the opportunity to I would mostly just keep to myself and my small group of friends And I would spend a lot more time doing artwork rather than acting work, even though I always wanted to try so There came a time when I moved up to North Dakota for a couple years back in 2011 I was stuck in apartment to one bedroom apartment in the middle of nowhere in Wapiton, North Dakota and I saw people on YouTube making content and watching people who were making things like fan dubs for anime or dubbing over video game characters So I got really excited because I thought this was really cool And I started watching lots of videos and then I saw people trying to impersonate and do impressions of Existing voice actors or characters and they weren't really hitting the mark for me So I was trying to tell people in comments about it. Eventually one of them was like, oh, well, why don't you do it yourself? So I was just kind of like, you know, they didn't take criticism very well So I went I bought a $20 Logitech headset plugged it into my computer and did and sent it in And I got invited to a small Facebook group back then who wanted to dub and do and anime fan Dubs and stuff like that. So eventually after I did kind of do those projects I got a lot of messages back when YouTube had a messaging system, you know all the time where you could message each other back and forth and people Started asking me to voice in their projects and I was getting something like anywhere from three to ten a week Like there was a ton of people who wanted me to voice in their projects and I had not done any of this before I didn't know what I was doing. I was just bored and sitting in my apartment trying to find some way to kill time on my computer So it turned out from there. I went from fan dubbing to working in machinima Halo machinima mostly back when those were a thing and then from that it kind of progressed where I Realized I could voice act for some kind of production on YouTube But you know how many people see one YouTube video only if they find it in this math This big algorithm, you know, and then I started voicing for things like mods for Skyrim fallout I wanted to find something where I could see people lots of different people play the stuff that I did and Luckily one of the mods that I did was for Helgen reborn, which was a big Skyrim mod It came out right around the time 2013 where I was looking into getting into that and he was apparently a big mod author So that explode and got like the number top three slot on the nexus after it came out And then I got a ton of requests again from people asking me to voice in their mods and now You know nine years later I'm still doing that and I've done over two dozen different Skyrim mods pretty much anybody who plays Skyrim now whether they're a streamer or somebody you know who's just downloading probably has at least one that I've been in out of all the ones that are out there and From then I kind of wanted to take it up another notch and go for professional acting So then I started looking into doing things like video games a different video game directors that I could audition for on places like casting call club and Eventually word of mouth from those people hooked me up with a whole bunch of opportunities. I ended up voicing in some films I ended up Doing some professional work that hasn't come out yet, but is still out there, you know floating around until it does get released so kind of ever since In the past couple of years that I kind of made the switch into pursuing it more professionally now More and more opportunities have opened up for me and I've had a lot of chance to really show what I can do That's awesome. Yeah That's incredible. I feel right now that like years from now, I'll be like, yeah, I had Daniel Hodge on my shirt No, you did not not Daniel Hodge You don't know that guy Founding blocks of where you come from and Everybody you connect to in this type of industry whether it's through media or video games or Writing, you know, you all have an opportunity to try to you're making friends along the way that always lead back to you for opportunities for work and to take your career forward and The more people you meet you're kind of like in this tight-knit Group of talented people who all have the superpower that they can create something somebody can write really well somebody can make music somebody is really good at editing videos somebody's really good at voice acting and All those people come together and they all utilize their talents to make something unique and not always just for money Just something unique and often that can be led to money Just like critical role was a big deal when it came out There were a bunch of voice actors who weren't trying to voice act They were just trying to play Dungeons and Dragons and eventually it spiraled out into this big, you know Empire almost of what they were doing this business where they could do that not even have to voice act anymore They didn't want to yeah, right And so is this I just out of curiosity is this one of the first interviews you've done like as a voice actor or Do you have you done other interviews talking about the work that you've done? I've done maybe one once before like back maybe in 2014 and That was just for like the machinima stuff that I had done before for Halo machinima and kind of catching up It was called fireside chats with a with a particular youtuber. I can't remember his name right now But it was just a small interview where I answered some questions But other than that, this is the only other one I've done so now that he when he becomes famous he can be like oh, yeah, my first my first like big interview was on a Podcast called enter the ether that he's gonna bring us up with a man goose. It's gonna happen That's true, everyone's gonna be like oh into the ether. Yeah, I know that no big deal We all have our plans All right, so the next question is did you watch like a spotlights I mean we kind of already got into this a little bit Already, but I kind of want to know if you watch other spotlights from other games to get inspiration It sounds like you didn't really get inspiration as much as you You wanted to do something Different than what they what they were doing in their spotlights. Yeah on the whole I would say No, I didn't watch them for inspiration But being a person who played League of Legends who played smite who played Paragon I was very familiar with the spotlight concept and how it should work What needs to be done how it should sound because I watch them on Repeat all the time back when I was playing and I would spend my time trying to learn as much as I could from because The different types of heroes and characters that you get to play because I wanted to be good I wanted to be a value to my team and I wanted to educate myself. So I Listened and really appreciated the tone and the informative nature of all the spotlights and how you know They weren't trying to slip in a bunch of little PR quirks too much or anything or like really doll it up to say like play this character Play this character play this character. They're just like this is what you need to know This is how you should build the character This is what they're good at and just make it as straightforward as possible because if you add a little bit too much Zaniness too much quirkiness to your voice or the performance Then it could become distracting and then at that point people are less Listening to what you say and more listening about how you say it and then they might start to think like oh That's weird how he said that or why is he talking in this way of you know, this tone of voice This is kind of weird. So I just kept it base Normal voice. I tried that out during their courting session When I put in my audition and then I immediately got back Hey, we want you for this sounds great. The whole team likes it. So go for it. So I was all right perfect And from that point on just not gonna change it gonna keep it the same as I've done If they want to make any switches or any tone changes I mean that's up for them to decide but as of right now I think I like the way that I do it because it's so much easier for me to do the voice when it's so natural Because if I tried to make it anything other than natural Then it would both be very hard for me to get done in a timely manner and to get it done professionally It'd be a lot more taxing on my voice if I try to force it to be something it wasn't and it could impact The informant of nature and pacing of the voice for when you're trying to you know, breathe appropriately and get all the words out when you need to so I'm I'm pretty happy with the way that the spotlights have turned out I haven't needed to spend too much time Analyzing how to do it because I've been doing narration like this for other projects for many many years and The narration on the spotlights. I love so much. So incredible work to you huge kudos because it's It captures that kind of feeling that you've mentioned with the other the other spotlights in the games, right of Being informational but it not being distracting but also being someone that it I don't I can't put words to it And in a great way But just I've really enjoyed them and they feel really professional in in quality because of that narration Thank you I'll just so you guys know real quick my computer completely froze during that for a few seconds. So jelly Gonna need your recording after this sounds good Let's want to keep that in I just had to panic for a second and realize make sure I was recording It's happened in the past in that something has happened in the recordings go bad I believe it I Was it that was just a few seconds, but still I'd prefer to have a cleaner recording Right moving on Do you do any impressions that I know you do the reason I came up with this question? So I was looking through your YouTube and just looking at a lot of you the voice work you've done The one that caught my attention the most was you did a Reinhardt from Oprah Impression that blew me away. I love Reinhardt and then your impression was so spot-on Do you is that something that you do to like practice or anything? Just doing impressions about like other characters Yeah, and the greatest blessing about being a voice actor is your voice is with you all day long You can practice anytime. It's not like a guitar or an instrument You know that it's sitting there that you can't just you need both hands to work with It's constantly here. So you should be refining it any chance you get I spent most of my time doing it in the car if anybody put a microphone in my car To hear the things that I have said I'd probably be in a mental asylum Because of the things that you know you have to practice things like maniacal laughter You have to practice things like saying, you know really menacing tones and stuff and controlling your volume But also to eliminate voice cracks and breaking so When you think of a line or if you think of a character and lines that you've heard The 90% of what you need to focus on is getting that delivery right when it comes time to saying it So you need to focus then the other 10% of the time when you're not recording is Spending time trying to figure out how that line should be read how to breathe appropriately during it Thinking of how the character used of their inflections and why So when it comes to impressions, I don't consider myself like an impressionist first I like to do acting first, but it turns out that I have done impressions pretty well so people have asked me to impersonate characters and Usually was always of all those messages. I got hey, can you impersonate this character? Hey, can you impersonate this guy? I really need this for my project I want somebody who sounds like him or very often when you're just trying to do a character voice They give you a lot of the times character voice example and they link you to an existing actor's work from like apex legends Or something like that and be like hey look can you do this voice? I really want this voice, but for this character with these lines and so then You try to make it sound close to what they want And not go too far to the point that you're just copying it's a direct rip off of the character Right, you are your own voice no matter how close you get to something you're only really Auditorially Kind of tricking people that your voice sounds exactly identical to that character Because if you really listen or at least when I really listen to my own voice I can immediately tell from hearing the two recordings what separates That original actor from myself and just where I can hit There's this bar of where you have to hit in your impersonation And you can only really ever hit here because the shape and nature of their vocal cords is completely unique It's completely their own and you may be able to get close But what is super easy for somebody else to do because of the way their voice works because they brought their natural quality to it can be really painful and excruciating to do for somebody else and When somebody gives you a long script of all these different lines that they want you to do as that character voice And they expected to oh, yeah, I should get it like you know next week It's like it is extremely painful because they don't always realize that to completely Take on somebody else's vocal performance to sound correct to the human ear You're often forcing your voice to behave unnaturally and can even damage it to the point that it's not even worth it To try to do that much work for something when they could have just hired the original actor I would be straight up insulted too Yeah, I mean there are actors like that who don't like being impersonated And I always tried to message the actor first and let them know hey, I'm doing this if they even respond to me I hope you're not offended by that because you become Competition in the professional industry when you take somebody else's voice and their personality and you start taking on work for them That's work. They could have gotten and there's only so much food for the fish in the sea. Mm-hmm So at that point I try to be respectful to the source material Anytime I do an impression if it's just something I do for fun that I post on my channel. I'm not making money out I don't monetize that stuff because it is impersonating somebody else's performance and I spend my time doing it kind of as a practice or a fun kind of thing that I can do to work on my voice and Try to figure out how far I can push it sometimes So yeah, the stuff like the overwatch ones I literally picked up my phone went to the bathroom in that video and started recording myself doing as many different lines as I could Think of because I was playing the game at the time in the living room and I was really enjoying it So I wanted to just go off of all of that that was the first time you see right there of me attempting any of those voices and I just posted it up because hey look guys. I made this thing You know wasn't trying to like make it this big production or like look I am this character It was just like yeah, I'm just doing an impression But I appreciate that you liked it so much. Yeah, that's the way I viewed it as to I was like this It's just it looked like you were just having fun and just trying to like Exercise your range a little bit I didn't think of it as you were trying to like take the Ride hearts voice actors job or anything like that, but oh man Yeah, I would be straight up if somebody was like hey, can you do this character's voice? I would be insulted like Let me come up with something for the character right like if you had to be a video like hey Can you edit this exactly like this other youtuber and it's their video? I'd be like, um, can you go fuck yourself because I'm not doing that. I'm gonna do it the way I want to do it Yeah It's a slow if we had a a microphone in your car. What would we hear? On a daily basis See, I knew mangus was was gonna call me out on that because I And I was gonna mention so I'm a singer, right? I've been in Singing for a long time And so hearing you say A lot of the same things that I do as a singer Professionally right like the practicing in your car people if people were listening right you 100% I get that 100% And just the different things you have to do Toward that end. I think it's really cool for me personally to hear that same similarity, but in a completely separate way Uh, so that's super awesome and I I relate to that in a lot of ways Irrelatable It's always nice to know that there's somebody out there who is uh, you know, just as kooky or uh, 100% Do I need the tinfoil hats is that No You keep that tinfoil hat we'll tap Jelly, what's our next question? So, I mean one of the things that we've heard you do is the announcer pack for paragon Um, so and you've already mentioned that you played a little bit. What kind of made you want to do that announcer pack? Well The voice that I heard every time, you know when I was playing that game And I would hear it go off whenever, you know, got a double kill multi kill Tower destroyed that kind of stuff. I mean, I liked the league of legends one, okay But it wasn't as deep and bassy as it was in that game So I played the game a lot. I played probably about 800 hours that I sunk into it up before it was shut down And it was pretty much my favorite game. I'd ever played when it came out every day I'd come home. I would play six hours if I could If I had to do any other work or voice work, you know, maybe four hours And then I would go back to playing it again once I was done And I wanted to get good I wanted to understand this game and really dig into how it works and understand things like The terminology like, you know elo ganking, uh, you know juking things like all this different terminology I had no idea when people said like there was this whole different world and I could understand Why it was a sport and why people wanted to watch it so much because then I found myself when I watched league Finally after playing paragon I understood how the game now worked. So when it came to making the voice pack I really wanted to just take a shot at doing my take on the paragon voice And I just called it at first I called it the moba voice But then because it was the lines taken from paragon, I just renamed it. It was like, uh, it's the paragon voice I'm not going to pretend like it's a moba voice anybody who's played paragon will know from hearing it It's the paragon voice. Yeah. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. I got so Excited because I want I'm like, okay. Well, I tried recording it and it didn't sound so great Just because it wasn't as big and booming and bassy and I would go back and I'd listen to the original lines From the actor who I still don't know who did the lines for the game I always assumed it was like michael, uh, uh, Richardson or something, uh, but I uh I was trying to figure it out and along the way I started practicing and adding effects until I could create this kind of layering of the voice And add some reverb to make it really sound like What the paragon voice sounded like to the point? I was happy with it. And then I was like, oh man There's all these different paragon games coming out It's like maybe if I put it out there or I tried to see because like everybody I looked at all the different videos of gameplay It's like is anybody already got a voice for the announcer and everybody was using the placeholder one that came with the Epic game assets. So it's like, okay. Well, obviously nobody wants all of their different games to sound the same So somebody's going to want it to sound different So I just kind of popped into chats. I joined a whole bunch of servers and I decided to share it and to see what people thought Um, and then some people are like, that's pretty cool. You know, we'll send it up and like see what people think other people are like Yeah, that's pretty cool. You know That's how many people commented on it. You know, like I think right now it still has like four comments on it Like maybe like a hundred views or something. I don't know but maybe less than that But it was just something that It was one more thing I hadn't really ever gotten to do I tried doing some video game announcer stuff more like, uh, the unreal engine voice or halo And I liked doing those voices a lot But never enough to record them because those were always games that Had the voice it was iconic. There wasn't really anything for me to use that voice for So this was the first time I could create something like this and really say, hey, look, I can do this Anybody like it? What do you think? You know, maybe and then if it catches on enough people would share it It would go up the line People would start talking about because the more and more eyes on it the more chance that I get to use it for something So I decided just to just put it on there and be hopeful But for me, it is probably one of the coolest ideas to be not only a voice It's just like, oh, yeah, my character got picked and you get to hear my character But to be the voice that every person who plays the game will always hear Till the end of time as long as the game exists That means you're in every game. You're not going to be like, oh, maybe if my character gets picked That means you're a part of every game. So That would always be something if I ever got to do it I'd be stoked. I'd be stoked to do And so I remember you coming into the ethereal discord and you sharing that video of the the paragon announcer um video and there was A considerable amount of time that i'm watching it and it just kind of hit me with that nostalgia feel Of paragon because like you said, I mean hundreds and hundreds of hours into that game And then listening it was like is this the guy like i'm not sure Like I knew but it was just all those feelings of like hearing the those the callouts, right and just being like, yeah Like yeah, I just did the thing Just absolutely incredible I'll link it down in the description Exactly Your power grows Dude, oh man Is That was smoky too, so hopefully How many times I practice that in the car in the bathroom because of course All bathrooms have the greatest like acoustics. It's the greatest place In you got to just turn off the fact that yeah, maybe there's somebody outside waiting to hear You know trying to get to the bathroom and they just hear that inside wondering what's going on Like what millions are you talking about? I was playing my mobile on my phone Especially the minions are spawning that would be the one that got me Oh, yeah, that puts that puts something completely different in mind. I didn't So I do have to ask though because you said you put you played so much paragon Who was like who would you consider your main in paragon? Who was your character? Severog I love dark edgy characters. I love tank characters and Because of the fact that you get to feel badass and you have that terrifying presence When you are forced to be reckoned with on the battlefield So I love that idea of just you know laughing hysterically while I make people run from me swinging my big ol hammer around trying to take them out And uh, I was really good at it to the point that I almost never missed a subjugate To where I whenever I was in lane or when I need to land my subjugate no matter where the person was getting away I would just snipe him with it from far away Lock him down get in front of them beat them under tower Do whatever I had to to the point that I could lead the team even though I wasn't a carry I could still lead my team to victory being a severog And I loved him. I was just like there was never enough skins out for him And I tried all the ones they had they never really came out with a high tier skin That just really completely changed his character So I tried playing him in all the different roles. I could I I got so bored at one point. I made him carry support Just because and that worked so well Surprisingly people were really miffed at the point sometimes when I made him carry support But all the times I did that ended up really well because I could subjugate and lock people down Beat them under towards the carry get them away from the carry. He just worked so well and He was my character because when he first came out I mean my character in the beginning before he was announced was Gideon and I loved Gideon so much. He was so cool I love crowd control. I love mages and It just kind of sucked that whenever I used his ultimate He was always just to sit and duck up there and he'd get sniped By a murdoch from across the map because he's sitting there sucking people under tower and then oh god, that sounds bad Yeah But when it came to Zebra coming out, I immediately dropped and I said, oh Okay, that's my main. Sorry. You guys can play everything else, but I'm playing Zebra I don't care. I don't care when I saw his trailer and he does the finger point where he comes up and points it directly at the camera And then I was so disappointed. I want to know from his story. What does his voice sound like? I couldn't find any evidence of his voice and I started to picture. I never did like a A severog voice pack wherever tried doing the character, but it'd be really fun to do To try to emulate that character. I think you would be perfect for what I envisioned But he didn't really have any lines because he didn't have a voice So it's hard to like unless I wrote my own stuff, you know It'd be hard to try to discern. Oh, what should he sound like because he didn't have any lines He spoke, but yeah, he was he was my guy whenever I played that game Severog always anytime I could There was too much of me hoping to hear that you were a Kalari main so I could feel justified in some way But it's fine. Oh, no, no, no. He played a real hero. Oh, yeah. Yeah, I'm sure all the jokes. I'm aware, okay The hate that I got from you saying I was a Kalari main and the couple episodes ago was insane The amount of comments that would be like jelly. You're a cool dude, but I hate you because you're the worst person in that game Oh, man, the only way the only way people could opinion could be lowered of you is if you were like, yeah, I'm a wukong main Seriously, I was that low on the pole for everybody. Okay, I get it. Sorry Well, I mean when you play like Severogs or Richter's like real men do Whatever, you know, whatever man, let me just triple jump out of this conversation. Okay Richter was a fun one too that one Couldn't help myself every time, you know, I had to rope somebody and say get over here Every Richter main ever I say it as well to thought as well So is um, I mentioned your youtube is there anywhere else we can hear your work You said that you have some stuff that's currently isn't published But we'll be coming out soon and you you mentioned your your mods. Where's some other places people can hear you? Yeah Well, let's see I would say you could definitely find me over on my youtube channel or my soundcloud um, I'm also going to be on a Uh podcast it's a role playing podcast over at twitch.tv slash arcane recovery show And their instagram is also at arcane underscore recovery on instagram and twitter And so it is a community that's been kind of led to create this dnd group Where everybody comes together and creates their own kind of like story Collectively where everybody contributes and it can come back to it and then people who play in it can eventually dm and grow from there Uh, I'm also getting to voice in some upcoming kind of projects like there's an animation a legend of zelda animation that's coming out called Legend of zelda major's mask lost in time and that's by the innervation brothers They're kind of creating this short in the unreal engine that's really looks really really nice And has legend of zelda characters in it. I'm playing the Skeletons in it that kind of like, you know, the main antagonists in this animation that's coming out That's awesome. That's something that's kind of in the pipeline to a short film that will hopefully be published soon I've done two films already Um by steven hand cock and ebb and royalty over at retro digital Uh the scp dollhouse short film and the scp overlord Uh, I played two different characters in each of those films. Those were pretty big hits. They uh, they won awards So those were really fun to work for Um as far as video games right now I have only really done that still is published and exists On steam because some that I've voiced where I've been taken down since kind of smaller indie games The one that is still up is pop-up dungeon In that I play some sergeant grunt marines Like, you know a sergeant and some grunt marines that kind of like run around that you can place on the board And this kind of turn-based rpg game as well as i'm a druid That's uh can turn into different forms like bees and stuff. I'm an old man druid who always like takes these different forms and Interacts and attack enemies They they wanted me to kind of go for that voice and the first voice I immediately picked When I wanted to come up with this old silly man druid voice. I'm like, uh zillion. I'm gonna do zillion I'm gonna do that voice And just completely go for that So, uh until the embargoes have lifted I can't announce the other projects that are coming out game related projects. Um, because there's a Bunch right now that I've done since early 2020 That now are going to take about a year or two before they finally come out And as of now I can't speak on them But when I get the chance I'd love to post and tell everybody about it over at my twitter at daniel hodge va Or on my facebook at daniel hodge voice actor and of course my youtube Which is just youtube user slash dn hodge That is where I post anything that I can as far as impressions or updates I tried to release something every once in a while. I'm not very Very active on it where I'm posting like every week, but whenever something strikes my fantasy that I want to post on there so Hopefully you'll be able to catch me over on those live streams over at the our king recovery podcast And when I'm not there you can of course find me I'll I'll be hanging out when I can the ethereal discord or in any of the other kind of MOBA discords that I frequent Just to kind of talk to people and stay linked to the community because I want to see especially ethereal How it grows and evolves in the future now that I get to do things like the spotlights for it And kind of get to see how you guys react every time one comes out is always fun to Go and check youtube and see what you guys are saying about it and how excited you're getting and what you're uh Picking apart whenever you see something come on screen and one of the looks and stuff some of the things that I've definitely uh I've definitely got to say it looks so cool when they finally do Come out and the game becomes playable. I really want to explore the map just run around in it and circles Oh, yeah, and see you know appreciate the design and the aesthetics that they put into it all this time Because obviously the game's probably been worked on a lot longer than we've even known about it A long time. Yeah, you know most definitely. Yeah What we got next jelly So if there was one myth in ethereal that we've seen so far that you would want to voice, which one would it be? Oh That's That's the tough one. That's always the tough question If I had to pick If I had to pick It would probably be Aeron or grognark I would have to say and both are such cool in design. Uh, I love playing the big boobing monster guy or The dark conniving demon evil guy So They're their designs are just so cool. And of course the berserker and the archmage archetypes Being so cool. Um, I want to see what I could do if I played Something like aeron and just was able to like charge through and break those barriers and kind of like sneak up on people And creep them out a little bit the voice the voice is already perfect in my mind I I love the way that his voice sounds I don't know if I could do it better. I I don't think I could do it better than what how he sounds because it sounds So cool But if it was if it was my pick and I got to look at the list of names and their designs And see the artwork for each of them those two would be at my top one because I would love to be the big booming rock Like guy, you know or that or or aeron just just so cool and unique and different from The other designs that we got in paragon You know and got the experience. I love the more animalistic Exaggerated features that you get that really makes the character look like they're from another planet or another world than all the other Characters came from absolutely No, would you who would you play? Who would you want to play? Do you think? Same one wise. Yeah, I mean I would still probably play I love noxus. She looks really cool And I really want to play Talos as well Both of those look really fun noxus and talos In I guess because of my time playing in paragon. I'm usually Uh tank support at heart So I always love to do jungler stuff if I can as well said rog was so good at jungling So I guess um depending on who's the jungler because I don't know very much about who's the jungler right now I think uh is grognar kind of top lane jungler I would think we think so knows we think malaya could be used the jungle We think aron could be used in the jungle It's gonna be yeah next week. We'll get talos's kit So in theory we'll be able to tell better then as well if talos could jungle Yeah I would I would love to do something like that playing one of those guys and uh playing off lane Or top lane and just hanging out, you know soloing taking on two people at once with a big Beefy guy who's holding everybody back and then also being the guy who gets to come in and hit with cc Do any type of cool, you know swing of the battle, you know from getting in there positioning themselves I love positioning myself between me and the squishies and just keeping them Keeping the enemy sustained. So I think based on their looks the designs. I would love to play something like that Um, I just love the way talos looks how big he is with his big weapon And um, he looks like he could do a lot of damage that would really hurt So if I got if I got a chance the first thing I'm probably gonna play Is I'm gonna try out eron then probably grog nark then probably talos and then noxus In that order because they all look so interesting to me. I love their designs Right on yeah, that's awesome And do you have any advice for people that want to get into voice acting? We've kind of talked about it briefly with the other voice actors And I would love to hear what you have to say toward that end The best advice I can get Or anyone looking to get into it is to understand the three pillars of what you'll need To be a voice actor to succeed And that is talent Availability and money The first two will get you the third unless I mean you're willing to put what you make back into your work and Improve your sound. You're not going to really be able to compete so staying motivated and Finding projects that interest you that you want to voice for not stuff that makes the most money But projects that make you want to get up and get in front of the microphone again To try and record that character or do that narration things that just are fun Because that's ultimately the only way you're ever going to stay in this as a job or try to make money off of it Or be successful just having fun as a hobby is if you want to do it So make sure anything you do is something you want to do every day when you get back into it. Um And you'll do fine if that's the case worst thing that is that can happen is getting burnout I've had it before happened to me where I've gotten burnout And I've auditioned for so many things. I didn't get a lot of hits Um and the very like common thing that I hear in the industry is like Oh, if you're not willing to put in 100 auditions a day Don't bother being a voice actor And that I think is a little bit overblown because I usually find I get a lot more work If I just do like 20 25 and I still get a lot of hits and a lot of success But casting that net as wide as possible to make sure that You are getting a sustainable income to make this a career Instead of just a hobby you really have to make sure that you're trying every day when you get up is just putting in those auditions Finding projects doing research knocking on doors To the point that once you've gotten so many years into the business and you have an agent And you have somebody looking out for you when you go to audition for projects You don't have to worry about trying so hard anymore because everybody wants you to be there and That's what I experienced was in the beginning Fortunately, I didn't really have to knock on too many doors because In the communities I was a part of The stuff they saw and the word of mouth spread like crazy And I ended up getting a lot of messages of a lot of people and every place I went Asking me to be in their things to the point that I had to start turning people down and say no, I can only do this I can only do that And it's it's a lot harder to say yes when you're not being compensated when you're doing it for fun Because anytime that you are accepting work that is unpaid that you do as a passion project You're taking away from time that you could be doing professional work and furthering your career so I still love to try to stay involved with community things like that like mods or animations or videos But i'm a lot more upfront now about asking for money now that I have a professional recording setup And I can feel better about charging people for the quality that I produce And what I can provide as an actor I don't have to feel self-conscious about whether i'm good or not anymore and the actors that I talked to now You know, they hear my work and they don't they don't talk to me in a condescending way about like Oh, you really need to do this or that they're mostly they just see me as a business Companion is somebody else in the industry that they've met and it's nice to be treated that way by Other professional actors because you feel like oh, I want to get your autograph I want to get approval by you that I could be an actor people who wait in line at conventions For hours on end to get a signature just to talk for an actor for a couple minutes And I realized I didn't really need to do that anymore once I stopped being a fan and started being an actor because then it was just Them doing the same thing I do every day the mutual respect was there. You didn't have to try to prove yourself to anybody so what you want to do as far as Maybe exercises Is you want to do kind of like a rep system where You hold your breath in kind of go And then breathe out slowly And that kind of can expand your lungs a bit and allow you to kind of Take on longer sentences And if you want to make sure you don't have any mouth noise you do kind of uh exercise where you spell out the vowels You know with your mouth But you really exaggerate the facial features and stretch that out that allows you to Really get rid of the tenseness in your face and pronounce words correctly And then also get rid of any mouth noise that you may have So if people want to really succeed they need to practice they need to watch their diet cut things out like dairy Sugar, you know at least a day Before as well as the day of recording to make sure it doesn't impact your performance and make sure during that 90 percent that you're in front of the mic, you know that you are Making sure to hit all of those notes hitting every line the way that you want to And be comfortable doing so where you're not stringing yourself too much And you're showing people that I know what I'm doing And you don't have to be handheld through the whole time and that will all come with practice in time I've only gotten to this point because I've done all this for nine years 10 years now And I've gotten a lot of practice of just trial and error figuring it out teaching myself And learning about this industry through youtube videos that I look up That's awesome I'm definitely going to do that breathing thing because I have trouble with that Making it through a full sentence without having to You think about it your lungs are just big kind of elastic bags that are in there that As soon as you bring in that air it kind of fills up and then your lungs expand and they're like, okay Now I need to take this shape and I can start holding in more oxygen and woken up You know, it's like stretching in the morning So getting yourself ready for any acting work or even singing work You need to make sure that you have the bad capacity for what you're about to do And if you're doing it, you know, like really really small Like, you know lines or breaths and stuff like that. It's not such a big deal But when you have to do something like narration work It can take a lot out of you and you can end up making it sound really unnatural when you have to get in front of like What I do is first thing when I'm going to go do the narration work for a spotlight Do those exercises because there can be Not a lot of, you know Not a lot of breaks in some of the lines that you read you have to get them You have to get them through in the right breath and the right pacing Otherwise it sounds like you're literally running out of breath by the end of the line and you're like, oh god It's like just trying to say this is such a mouthful Right on. Jelly, do you have any more questions for Dan before we start closing things out? I think that's everything I got All right, that that's going to about wrap it up. Let's uh, let's move on to plugs Daniel, you listed a bunch of stuff and I'm going to I'm going to write all that down I'm going to link everything down below but anything else you want you wanted to plug Um Nothing at the moment. Uh, just once again Going on to twitch dot tv slash arcane recovery and going to their Uh twitter instagram if you could at arcane underscore recovery those guys Really talented always looking for more people to join the community and watch our podcast Um, as far as my work everything that you'll see from me, you'll probably get to hear through ethereal Um, as that's relating to all of this as it comes out Um, hopefully there'll be videos up out on that and of course They'll be happy to talk about it when things, you know, that come out get revealed and we all get to talk about it together because right now Nothing nothing major to plug just yet. All right Yeah, I'll definitely have that that twitch and the instagram and everything linked in the video description below if you guys want Easily check that out Jelly, you got anything to plug this week more videos like usual That we both man goose and I did uh a breakdown of the malaya spotlight if you haven't seen that so definitely go check those out Uh like man goose said maybe that he's more on the comedy side and I'm more of the like Look the little teeny pixel in the corner. We see the thing right but so depending on what you want to see that's that's Disparity maybe but yeah more videos. That's about it for me. What about you man goose? Ethereum gg jelly's website all about ethereal check it out We're having updates on that all the time so definitely go check that out yep And uh, I think that's going to wrap it up for this week folks. Uh, this is a really enjoyable episode for um This is one of the ones that i'm going to enjoy editing like Like just sitting down going through listening to everything all over again I hope you guys enjoyed it and I hope you guys all join us as we enter the ether man