Fan-dubbed On the Way to a Smile

The team over at TheLifestream.net have been very busy preparing something very special. Going by the screen name Pixel both at TheLifestream.net and here at our very own EoFF, one dedicated FF enthusiast Joseph Knight has assembled a team and created audio book versions of the On the Way To a Smile short stories that bridged the gap between Final Fantasy VII's finale and Advent Children's opening act.

You can check out "The Case of Tifa" here, free for download, along with the other short stories. If you've got a long commute to work, this is the perfect way to pass the time. Let your inner FF nerd out a little!

I chatted with Joseph a little just to find out what kind of FF fan he really is.


Q: What got you into Final Fantasy in the first place? Do you love the stories?
JK: FF7 was my first, so it has always had a special place in my heart. These stories [On the Way to a Smile] added so much more to the characters we all love, even more than we saw in the original game or Advent Children.

Q: Have you ever narrated anything like this before?
JK: This is the first time. I have problems with my speech and reading, so I had someone else narrate the first audiobook. Once I moved onto "On The Way To A Smile" I felt it was better to take on the responsibility myself. It was a lot of work to ask someone to do, and it also meant I could have more control over the audio quality and rewrites, etc.

Q: What made you want to do audio book versions of these stories?
JK: These stories didn't get nearly enough exposure. I figured a slick audiobook production could help get them out there. They were originally Japan-only, and were only unofficially translated by Xcomp. I planned to use the fan translations but I eventually got official English translations of Case of Tifa, Denzel and Barret, which came with the expensive Advent Pieces collectors edition of Advent Children.


Q: How much time and effort did you have to invest to bring this project to fruition?
JK: I started this whole thing about 3 years ago. Casting always takes a long time. Not just finding the right voices, but finding people who are reliable. It would be great if I could book voice actors to come into a studio and record their lines, but this is all done online, so there's a lot of stress wondering if people are going to come through for you. I thought that we could release one per month, but it was more like one every six months.

Music was also a very important thing for me. A straight audiobook would have been boring. I asked a pianist on YouTube, HypochondriacPiano, to write compositions of some of the Final Fantasy tracks we love. She did such an amazing job that we decided to turn it into an album called "Pulse of Life."

Q: Do you have your sights set on doing any more in the future?
JK: I'm currently working on "Case of Shinra." This will most likely be a feature length audiobook. I just finished translating the German version of the story and used it to rewrite Xcomp's unofficial translation. Casting is about 90% complete, and hopefully I will have a little 5-10 minute preview up soon. While casting "Case of Shinra," I thought it would be nice to bring a story from a different game to life, so I turned "FFXIII -Episode i-" into an audiobook, which didn't take quite at long as the other novellas.

So there you have it folks. What an impressive effort from one dedicated fan. I don't know about you guys, but I'm looking forward to seeing more of Joseph "Pixel" Knight's future work! Show some support and let him know how you enjoy his audiobooks.