Ross Scott

I unfortunately still have no news on when / if I can upload new videos on Machinima.com. In the meantime, the whole situation has been making me nervous financially since I don't know what's going to happen. I've tried applying for an additional job, but haven't had much luck yet. In the interest of me being able to pay rent in the future, I am now offering my services provided someone out there is interested in hiring me for something. Here are some areas people may want to hire me for. VOICE ACTING: I can do any voices you've heard in the existing videos, plus I've also recorded a voice acting reel as a sampler for additional voices I can perform: Voice acting reel for Ross Scott (MP3, 4MB) Please feel free to spread this to anyone you think might have an interest in hiring me. SCRIPT WRITING: Writing is generally one of the lower paid categories in movies in general, but I thought I would list it as a possible option anyway. I've obviously done a lot of comedy writing which you see in the videos, though I'm not strictly limited to that. I am likely to be a poor candidate for any dramatic dialogue however. SOURCE ENGINE ANIMATION / MACHINIMA VIDEOS: I'm really not anticipating anyone hiring me in these areas, since even at minimum wage, I couldn't even afford to pay myself the hours I normally dump into machinima videos; animation can be incredibly time consuming. I also have some experience animating with the Unreal 3 / UDK engine, however I'm far less experienced with it than I am with Source. - - - As for how much I'm charging, it kind of depends on what people want me to do. I found this article indicating how much voice actors typically earn, but I'm guessing most of those numbers are far beyond what I qualify for. Also it's worth mentioning that I can't do any jobs directly related to Civil Protection or Freeman's Mind until things are resolved with Machinima.com, sorry.

I was hoping my next post on here would be a new episode, but unfortunately that's not happening. Last week I found out by accident that Machinima.com is planning to change the terms of their contract with me. This may jeopardize every video I've released so far and all future ones. Or it may not. I've been finding it difficult to get an answer either way and the only thing I know right now is that I won't have an answer before the start of 2013 at the earliest. I can't give any more specifics than this because of contract reasons, but this situation has been frustrating the hell out of me, because until I have this resolved, I can't release any more videos and I'm sure people are waiting on more. Just so you know, episode 45 of Freeman's Mind is DONE. I'll probably be done with episode 46 before I hear anything from Machinima.com again. I promise I'll do everything I can to get these out as soon as I can without having legal action taken against me or losing all rights to the videos.

Youtube (Downloadable copy will be up later) Here's a new video that was meant to be simple, but I ended up spending entirely too much time on it. This was made for a film festival that Machinima.com contacted me about, saying that if I made a video for this, it would open up a portal to a new universe and humanity would transcend into a state of pure energy. The festival isn't over yet, so I'm not sure how accurate their claims are, but either way, it was an excuse to make a new video. Part of the rules for the festival were that the video could not be part of an existing series, like CP or FM, so this is something else. I'm expecting this video to be hit or miss with people. If you like surreal or mysterious stuff, then this should be right up your alley. If you're expecting jokes or explosions every 10 seconds, then probably not. Personally I'm very happy with how this came out, it might be my own favorite of the videos I've done so far. The atmosphere is pretty much just how I wanted it and the voice acting and sound are great. I recommend watching it full screen in a dark room and not turning it off once the credits start. This is the first video I've made in Source Filmmaker and will also be one of the last. I was originally going to attempt this using the Unreal 3 engine, but I wasn't able to get enough functionality from the ported models in time, so the video was made in Source instead. As a result, this video just BARELY got done before deadline. For every advantage SFM has, it also has a shortcoming compared to Source SDK and the whole experience just strengthens my resolve to stop animating any videos in the Source engine. If you look for them, I'm sure you'll see lots of flaws with the animation in this video. I'm fully aware of all the shortcomings, it was simply the best I was able to do by the final deadline. I may make some small improvements for the downloadable copy later, I haven't decided yet. In terms of animation, I think it needed a few days more of polishing, but the vast majority of people will only see the online copy anyway. Anyway, I hope people enjoy the video, this is the LAST one I'm going to animate in any form of the Source engine (not counting FM). I'll still keep making videos, but Source is hell. - - - You can vote for this video in the festival, but as I understand it, you can only do so via twitter, and then there will be a judge panel to decide who has the best vote (I am not making this up). What happens if a video gets the most or "best" votes? I DON'T KNOW. My guess is this. EDIT: Looks like my 36 hour sleep deprivation paid the price on the credits and I made a typo with the name of the LEAD VOICE ACTOR. It should be Kamran Nikhad, not "Karman." It will get corrected on the downloadable copy.

Hey everyone, I have some news to bring up. There's a user on Youtube that's been hosting copies of the Freeman's Mind videos without permission with the user name "FreemanMind." Just so everyone knows, this is not me. While I can live with a doppleganger of myself floating around, what I have a problem with is apparently he's been sending out this email to his subscribers: " If you want to see more episodes please donate some money to develop the channel WEBMONEY: wmid: 997662107645 OR Z404399251838 PAYPAL: email: [email protected] " THIS IS A SCAM I can only hope no one has been tricked by this, but with about 7500 subscribers to his channel, I'm sure someone has. I have never asked for money from viewers, I'm happy people even watch the videos. I have set up the donation page because I had so many requests for it, but even on that I clearly state there is no obligation to donate, that money is going towards helping the movie project along. If my situation ever got so dire that I wasn't able to keep up with food and rent, the most I would ask from anyone would be for room and board from somebody. I'm sure at least one of you has a farm. I can chop wood and dig ditches and stuff. Anyway, I'm going to try to shut this guy down since this is just scamming people in my name, I just wanted make an announcement in the meantime. Also in other news, the mystery video I think will be going up on Monday and I'll begin working on the next FM episode tomorrow. EDIT: Machinima.com has since taken down this guy on Youtube.

Hey everyone, this is another one of my I've-been-awake-for-36-hours-and-feel-the-urge-to-communicate posts. The REASON I've been awake so long is I just barely managed to hit the extended deadline for the mystery video I've been working on for weeks. This deadline was a for a film festival Machinima.com is going to be participating in a few days that will last about a week. You can expect the video to go up in a few days, I'll make a new post about it when I'm more lucid. For now I guess I'll just rant about Source Filmmaker. My initial impressions of it acting like an inverse relationship to Source SDK are entirely correct. They are both great at some things, and horrible at other things. So horrible. Just saying the software sucks doesn't really do it justice, because it does have some nice features, but to take that and assume that as a WHOLE it's great is incorrect. I get kind of annoyed by this kind of reasoning as I think some people make one TF2 video of some guy jumping around (or better yet, have never animated anything in their life), then assume Source Filmmaker is the answer to everyone's problems and will usher forth a new Renaissance for all. I kind of feel like eventually someone will make the end-all standard for making good machinima with the least amount of pain, but it's not there yet. I've been waiting for it ever since I started working on this. I do plan on jumping ship to UDK, but I'm going to have help with getting models ported over and having NPCs created. UDK gives you basically nothing in terms of assets, whereas Source has a plethora of options there. If I was just starting off making machinima today, UDK wouldn't be a realistic option. Great potential, no assets. That's great for developers, but machinima is all about taking shortcuts so you can actually get stuff done. I don't want to animate, I want to manifest things in my brain, but that doesn't happen, so I animate and do a hell of a lot of other things too. I really don't understand what the hell's Valve's attitude is with their tools. People complain about how long it takes their games to come out, but I'm guessing those people haven't worked in the Source engine. Hell I'm amazed they get as much done as they do. The crazy thing is I think Valve as a whole works like I do. They take a long time to do things and their energy gets divided up among several different projects. I want to do civil protection, I want to do freeman's mind, I want to do short fun videos, I want to do the movie, I want to do other series ideas, also have improvements to the site, finalize subtitles, respond to emails, etc. The thing is though, I'm just one guy who earns less than your schoolteacher. They're a mega corporation with no rules. If I had access to a fraction of the money valve has to work with, I feel like I could get 10x more done than I do now. Hell, anything to get animation out of my hands without sacrificing quality would do it. If I didn't have to animate anything, I would have 10x the videos I have now. So back to Valve, what are they doing with that money? Are they building an underground secret civilization? Rich people should be doing all this crazy Scrooge McDuck stuff with their money, not just letting it in sit in a pile when you already have more money than you would ever spend in your life several times over. I guess the idea goes against their touchy-feely "no management" employee ethos, but why not hire some people whose sole job is just to fix the source engine and make better tools. They have so much money it could operate at pure loss directly, but would help solidify their long term future on yet another front. If they DO have people like that, they're either bad at their job, understaffed, or too hamstrung by someone else. Source is a mess for the kind of resources they have backing it. Almost every major update I've seen to the engine since HL2 came out has been more about eye candy than making life less like hell for devs. I'm calling them out, I think if I had access to those kinds of resources I could have more games out that are just as fun AND better tools for people without making everyone hate their life, like at Electronic Arts. It would take management, but you can have managers that aren't assholes, that could be a company policy. I have ulterior motives though, I get frustrated with having to take care of hundreds of different elements in a video where the right tools could have saved me thousands of hours over the years, but the people I'm at their mercy for seem to operate like they're not sure what they're doing. Anyway, I've lost weeks to Source Filmmaker and this video. I'd say it wasn't worth it, but I'm pretty happy with how it came out. It could use some improvement, but I'm not letting Source steal any more of my life force. I'm never using the Source engine again for anything major (Freeman's Mind doesn't count, that's just playing through). I could using it for some simple 30 second videos, but nothing I really cared about. That way lies only pain. Pain. I know this will piss people off, but the month of Freeman was completely robbed by this side project that took way too long. I plan on doing it, but this video took so much out of me, I'm going to take a break for a few days before I start anything again, I still promise a FM spree at some point. To put it in perspective that all of you can understand, I haven't even had a chance to play Black Mesa yet, I have literally been that busy since when it came out. I did a lot of lip sync work on it back in 2007, but I ended up flaking out timewise and made more civil protection instead. I'm wondering if they kept my name in the credits or purged me from the project, probably with lots of others, I can respect their decision either way. So I'll be chilling out, but I'll try and catch up on emails. I'm going to sleep. ADHD version: I haven't slept in a while. EDIT: It turns out public schoolteachers on average make about 56k a year, so I should have said I probably should have said "grocery bagger" instead.