News

Mark Estdale’s joining the Jagex team on 27 May at 11:00 at the London 2012 Comic Con for a rather exciting hands-on panel session all about voice and RuneScape. 

The informative article from the pen of Craig Chapple, "Inside Outsourcing", explores the pros and cons of outsourcing.

Read the full article here

Check out the finished product developed by Jagex over at www.runescape.com

With the new year comes new coffee. This season we’re celebrating with some of the finest South & Central American coffees.  As usual we’ll be starting the studio’s day with a roasting and filling the air with the tantalizing aromas of these wonderful beans.  To add to the coffee lovers delight, this season we’ve added a fabulous Gaggia espresso machine to the gourmet arsenal. Come be seduced!

The coffees:

Brazil Daterra Bruzzi This Rainforest Alliance Certified coffee is blended by Daterra to be “ smooth and nicely fruity with pronounced sweetness, medium to low acidity and with chocolate notes. Creamy with a smooth finish” Great espresso and also very nice in cafteieres. Daterra’s environmental philosophy of fully sustainable coffee production emphasises social responsibility, including labour, health and housing.

Brazil BSCA Monte Alegre This fully washed coffee comes from the estate of the Vieiria family in the south of Minas Gerais, known for the high quality of its coffees.The larger part of the estate is untouched native forest and protected wetlands. There is an extensive social program on the estate ranging from schooling and medical care through training to the right to unionize. The coffee is processed with full wet fermentation in clear mountain water to produce a cup with medium body and acidity. In the cup expect excellent balance with a full buttery sweetness.

Colombia Excelso La Zulia  Produced on the La Zulia farm, a member of the Coffee Growers Co-op of Risaralda in the western highlands of Colombia. Certified under the Utz programme This coffee has all the balance to be expected of a good Colombian, with good body, medium acidity and fine flavour and aroma. 

Costa Rica Dota Tarrazu Coop: Hermanos Dota This is the highest and most remote subregion of the renowned Tarrazu growing region and has the reputation of producing the finest coffee in the area. This is a classic and well balanced Central America coffee, medium bodied, aromatic, with fruity complexity and with spice tones. 

El Salvador, Shekinah Estate The Shekinah estate is on the De Izalco volcano in the Ahuachapan, renowned as one of Central America’s prime speciality coffee regions within the Mesoamerican Biological Corridor. This high altitude  shade grown coffee (1500 m +)  is in a sheltered micro-climate that provides home for migratory birds. Here, Luis Ernesto Urrutia produces a fine blend of Bourbon and Pacamara beans. Depending on the degree of roast this coffee gives a semi sweet and lightly floral cup that develop nutty and chocolate flavours in a fuller roast. 

Guatemalan San Francisco Tecuamburro The farm is uniquely located within the crater of the dormant Tecuamburro volcano. The altitude of 1460-1770 m provides ideal conditions for the production of coffee of the highest quality and the farm is planted with 80% Bourbon and 20% Catual. Sergio Barillas Escamilla oversees a farm using abundant shade cover and the resultant leaf mould provides a natural fertiliser for the soil. The coffee is sweet yet complex, with distinct lemony notes but also creamy chocolate. 

Nicaragua La Bastilla estate, El Buey micro. The La Bastilla estate has been Rainforest Alliance certified since 2003. On the edge of the Datanli el Diablo nature reserve it protects primary rainforest. The ideal micro climate, shade growing, and the eco-friendly soil management combine to produce an excellent fat chocolaty and green fruity cup. 

We were invited to completely recast and rerecord the voices for the Steve Ince scripted point and click adventure Captain Morgaine and the Golden Turtle. There’s little of the work we did on youtube as the original recordings dominate. I hasten to add we were not responsible for the original, just the rescue. Here’s Ali Dowling going through her paces at our London Studio.

The game is published by Reef Entertainment and developed by Wizarbox

Jules deJong as the young Morgane

We were featured in the January 2012 issue of Develop Magazine. The article titles  "Direct Action"  scratches the surface of the methods we’ve been developing to empower directors, studios and actors in producing truly subtle, real and connected dialogue for video games.  It is one thing to talk about what we’re doing, but the nicest thing about  the work we’re doing is that results always speak for themselves.

The full digital issue of the magazine can be downloaded here
A pdf of the article can be downloaded here

Jess Robinson’s fun Justin Bieber piss take filmed at OMUK’s studio one. Enjoy!

 

PANeK Presents: An introduction to acting in the non-linear narrative world of video games. The session will look at the games industry, the impact that games do and will have on other areas of dramatic art, the opportunities for the actor, voice performance in games and the seeming conflicts between preparing for a theatre role and a game role.

The session will be led by Mark Estdale – the UK’s most experienced voice producer, casting and voice director working within the video games industry. He founded and runs the successful voice production company OM. He works with many of the world’s leading production teams and brings a keen practical perspective to the workshops.

Saturday 5th November; 3.00pm – 4.30pm
Chaucer Technology School, Spring Lane, Canterbury, CT1 1SU

Although the workshop is free, please book your place by emailing cathy@panek.org.uk

Mark Estdale, founder of OM was a guest speaker at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts last week.  "It is heartening to know that a leading drama school like RADA is taking a serious interest in performance for video games" said Estdale. "Games as an art form are the forefront of a revolution that is and will continue to  transform the way we are entertained, communicate and are educated."

Another great review.  http://kotaku.com "Driver: SF seems like it’s a crime game but the little dialogue moments that occur when you possess random cars on the roads of San Francisco turn it into this wonderful celebration of our quotidian experiences on the road. And yet how profound and emotional moments those are… it sounds so right, so jarring, so funny and sometimes so sad all at once to hear the rage, the hysteria, the raised blood pressure of people speaking in that weirdly private public place: the front two seats of a car. You’re the ultimate eaves-dropper in some of the most ordinary, human moments ever captured in a game. "