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Heya! I'm a beginning caster, sometimes playing for the team [Maegis] on the EU server, mid masters Zerg and I'd love to hear people's opinions on a couple of things.
I really enjoy casting, a lot. I like to talk, that's probably why I like it aswell. Starcraft is fascinating to talk about with others and to others, and that's why I enjoy it so much. One bad part: I'm not the best and I have no idea how to grow.
I've made one blog entry before, trying to get some feedback on my casting skills which resulted in 0 replies: I get that. it's not interesting to hear a young person try something many have tried. But where do you start then? I know I should practice, do it a lot and I'll get better, but it won't help me grow very much. I have limited feedback from a couple of buddies, and that's it. I don't cast for any organization or anything, either, So I'm kind of lost in this sea. I've checked a couple of sites but couldn't really straight up apply anywhere either. (SCVRush etc.) So my question really is: Where should I search for opportunities to cast, or should I keep casting from replays, etc. etc?
Thanks in advance!
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just do it?
may not be helpful but do it every day.
either noone wants to hear you or you will get a following - eventually.
But if you do it for any reason other than you want to do it and enjoy posting shit that noone wants to watch and ignore the haters with nothing better to do than hate then you should easily come up with a plan. Otherwise just do it.
Read a lot out loud. Dont be lazy with your voice. Dont contract words.
If you compare casters to TV presenters you will find them lacking in professionalism and delivery and presentation. I make no judgement on whether that is good or bad. But imo that is something that is starting to change.
If you cast and are all 'ere yu r maet, ya wanna gowa push lak fuk' you are going to turn off a good chunk of people. Neutral voices are successful ones.
you need to decide what you are doing.
At first it will be solo casting. Are you analysis or entertainment.
Entertainment = tobiwan ... if u want to see someone transition from entertainment to analytical just go and spend some time watching apollod over the last few years. I ahve a lot of respect for him as he just did it - and played a shit ton to get the knowledge.
If you want to be taken seriously (and are getting your shit down)
get a good mic, get a software compressor and parametric eq ... sort your sound out. You may be a kid, doesnt mean you have to sound like one.
Read out loud, practise not shortening words listen to barry white.
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Do with Nathanias did, proleague audio cast. Everyone loves to hate SNM and Whiplash, most likely someone will tune in to you instead.
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I think what today's sc2 casters are missing is professionism. You will hear tastosis talking about Pokemon, dragon ball, you gi oh etc... In the downtime and it really does turn off viewers to think that eSports can't go on live TV. The closest I've seen is Jason Lee casting at GOMTV in the earlier stages with his play by plays and even though it was obvious that he knew nothing about the game, he actually made it feel like it was on par with American commentating. I have not seen any style like that ever since and perhaps you can refine your skill to be like him and maybe one day eSports does become mainstream and you maybe the only candidate that's decent enough for the role and Booom ... Cash in your million dollar deals
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If you really want to improve as a caster then you should probably just focus on improving. As redundant as that sounds, there are a lot of not very good casters hanging around, and unless you get lucky and somehow go viral/have some niche which attracts fans, you're just going to have to buckle down and practice.
You don't magically become a better caster just because you are casting for some official league or something. In fact, I'd avoid putting myself in the spotlight like that until I was very comfortable with my casting ability. First impressions stick, and if you somehow got lucky and landed yourself a job casting some big thing before you've fully developed the skills necessarily to cast at a good level people might be turned off by any rookie mistakes you make, and you handicap yourself for the future because people will remember you as just being amateur and not want to watch you again.
If you want to get really good then just focus on improving rather then getting recognition. Record yourself casting any random game, just take random replays from tournaments or something, and then watch them back. Watch out for any nervous ticks (coughing, sniffing, umm-ing, aahing,) any crutch words or phrases (basically any word you over use, try and not repeat phrases and vary up your adjectives as much as possible,) any useless words, (fx, don't use "like" in front of every sentence, and try not to repeat yourself) and work on your pronunciation and enunciation as much as possible. (If you have a thick accent that's fine, but if there are any words or sounds which you actually have trouble pronouncing correctly, do your best to fix those individual words.)
Becoming good at anything is normally just a matter of being hyper critical of yourself, and being willing to fix any mistakes you find. You don't get better at starcraft by winning a lot of games as fast as possible just like you don't become a better commentator by getting as many people as possible to watch your commentary. Rather you have to go through any mistakes you can see that you made, and work hard to fix them.
I'm not saying that you should lock yourself in a sound proofed room and train yourself into some kind of super perfect caster before ever letting anyone even hear your voice, but the best way to improve is probably to just cast every single game you can get your hands on, go through each cast to see what you can improve, and then maybe dump all the videos on youtube or something and let anyone who stumbles across them enjoy them. Besides, unless you very specifically ask for people to be as harsh as possible when grading your casting, you're probably only going to get a ton of people either saying "you're very good, keep it up" which is kind of useless for anything except an ego boost, or people just saying things like "you're voice annoys me" or "you're ok."
So when you say "I don't know how to grow," I would tell you not to go looking for events to cast or people to watch you cast, but rather just focus on improving your own casts as much as you can, fixing all the objective problems with it like repetitiveness, pronunciation, energy, things like that, and as you get better start casting anything you can find. For example, most open cups allow anyone to apply to cast the first few rounds. Cast because you want to cast, and screw whether anyone is watching or not. If you get good they'll come.
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EPT
