ANIMATION VOICE ACTOR

My profession is that of a voice actor. Or a voiceover artist. Or a voice over artist. In other words, I get paid to spend most of my time in a box. Sometimes they us do stuff outside, too.

I do a lot of voice over animation. I've been doing these for many years, and it's always been a lot of fun. I can't remember not having fun when doing a cartoon.

Rule #1 in the world of animation: Never, never, ever, ever grow up.

I remember being hired for a new cartoon series and walking into a session with the director. I was tired or distracted or something, and I had my "serious" face on. The session had a very "cartoony" feeling.

Y'know, at first I was a little worried about you. Everybody was sitting around, laughing, but you looked so serious when you walked in. And then you opened your mouth, and I started to relax."

In cartoons it's very important to be relaxed.

Let's say you've won an animation show audition. You take a look at the breakdown. You'll see some characters you know you'd be right for. It's not at all uncommon to be asked to read more than one character. They want you to provide them at least two, maybe three characters.

Here's something that will make voice over agents love you:

If you can do more than one voice they're more apt to hire you, because it's going to save them more money on the show. If you can do lots of characters, you can save money for the producers.

So it's really important to be as versatile as humanly possible, and that only comes with practice, with doing it.You have to sound young, or sound cartoony, or nasally.

Or you have to sound old, or very old. Or sadly old.

Is he old and rich, or is he old and poor?

You have to have a real good picture in your head of what this character's like.

For years I've been fortunate enough to be involved with the Transformers franchise. It's given me an opportunity to work as the bad guy and the good guy.

Cartoon villains are always the most fun to do.

It's harder to play the good guys, because their dialogue is always something like! We must rush to the rescue!" Most of the other characters roll their eyes when the main hero talks because…Well, sometimes it's not very interesting.

The villains are always looking for creative ways to do bad things. Like characters out of Shakespeare.

When you get the script, take a little time to experiment. This differs from other forms of voice over where things have to go in 30 seconds or 60 or some specific amount of time.

If you've got a paragraph you can take a little more time, because this is your moment. Not too much time, but you can play with the character.

Having an acting background is a big, big help. But even if you don't, just have fun developing these characters. If you get an opportunity to read for cartoons or animation, it's all about having fun and relaxing at the same time.

And, of course, you shouldn't sound as though you're reading it. That's extremely important.

When casting cartoons or animation, look for people who have broad ranges. It'll help you stay within your budget. And they're usually tons of fun.

And your fellow voice actors usually are sort of wacky. Those are the people I want to spend my day with, the wacky ones.

If you want to do voice overs for animation, working with these crazy people is a big, big benefit.

You need to be able to act. You need to bring the dialogue to life.

It's got to be fun for you.

Develop a stable of individual characters. Discover what you can do with your voice. Discover how far your range extends.

You need to be able change directions, instantly.

So, to summarize: For animation work, you need to be able to change gears, do lots of characters, have fun, and never — EVER — grow up.

If voicing acting for animation is your dream, work hard and don't give up.

Tags: animation voice actors, movie trailers, narration, promos, radio television commercials, video games voice acting, voiceover artists