Kevin Sisk

Tell us a bit about yourself and your role at Crowbar Collective.

Hello, my name is Kevin Sisk, and I was initially brought onto in late January 2007 to voice the security guard NPCs in Black Mesa. Over time, I slowly branched out into other departments and lent a helping hand. Departments such as: - Audio Editing for the Character(s) Dialog, - Sound Design here and there for things like the overhead vox systems, the retinal scanner (one of my favs), etc - Recorded some alien voices/SFX, etc. - Worked bunch on the in-game scenes /choreography, - Even have done a bit of 3d modeling for a few things. Oh yeah, I also voiced the Gman...tee hee.

What software did you use for your work?

For straight-up voiceover editing, I typically used Adobe Audition 3.0, and FLStudio for some of the more electronic-based sound design bits I did on the project.

Do you accept pineapple on pizza or are you against it?

All I know is my gut says "maybe"

How often do you watch youtube videos/Twitch streams of Black Mesa?

Pretty often. I always look for YouTubers who have never experienced the Half-Life saga in any shape or form. Im always surprised to see when someone decides to play "Black Mesa" first instead of Half-Life then goes straight into Half-Life 2 afterward. I suppose this is a testament to the good word-of-mouth that Black Mesa gets for being a respectful recreation of the original even though we put our spin on things in quite a few places. That said, I would encourage ppl to play the original HL at some point, so as to better understand and appreciate the historical significance it brings to the first person shooter genre, and how far the HL series has come since that first outing.

Any favorite mods for Half-Life games?

The Hunger" was a favorite of mine back in the day. Good zany zombie-killing fun.

What kind of microphones & preamps were used to record your vocals?

For Microphones, I used an MXL 990 condenser which currently interfaces with a Focusrite 2I2 USB Preamp. In the earlier days, the 990 would have instead plugged into a Behringer Eurorack 1202 analog mixer and then that mixers output went into an M-Audio Delta 1010LT sound card. It was good for the regular conversation type vo and shouting loudnesses, but the noise floor on the mixer made the more whispery stuff a little tough to handle in post. Once I got the Focusrite though, the newer recordings had like 15+ dB less noise overall and made my life a lot easier. BOOM. HEADSHOT. NOW - ISH (2018)
THEN (2009)