Voice Over For Animation: Creating Characters For Your Demo

1. Intro : Hi, I'm Kelly Metzinger. I'm an actor and I've been working primarily in voice-over for the last 15 years. Some of my more well-known roles and animation includes spit fire in My Little Pony, Friendship is Magic. And Nia in, in Django, masters of sporangia CSU. When I first decided to pursue voice-over, I found myself a coach with the goal of making a demo that made me sound like I knew what I was doing. I want to help you do the same thing. In this course, we're going to explore your vocal range and create five original characters. We're going to take those characters and put them into a tight one to two-minute script that you can use for your first voiceover demo. Thank you for clicking on this class. We're going to get silly and creative and hopefully find those unique characters you have hidden inside yourself that make you think there could be a voice actor. Let's go up. And if you would like to hear the first demo I made back in 2006, it's linked below. 2. The Project: The project. At the end of this course, you will have one to 2 min of an original script comprised of the lines of five new characters. We're going to build this script together by searching for images, soundbites, exploring your vocal range, making clear choices about what each character might sound like, and learning how to achieve that with your voice. We're going to start with accents. I've noticed that people who are interested in getting into voiceovers often have a natural ability to learn and imitate new accents. So let's start with that. We'll work on your strongest accents and build one or two characters from there. Next, we're going to work with archetypes of characters that I often see when auditioning. Starting with the hero, you want to play the lead in a cartoon, and let's find your hero voice. Then we're going to create a monster, a character who only speaks gibberish. You're going to learn how to build a scene using Grunt squeaks, last and snores, and believe it or not, there are a lot of shows for kids that are looking for a character like this. In the next lesson, we're going to develop a nerdy sidekick character. We're going to play with resonance and rhythm and learn how to use your lips to create a quirky best friend. We'll find your which wizard or old wise person voice. For each of these characters, you'll write two to three original sentences and record that with your smartphone. You can use voice memos or voice record. You do not need fancy equipment for this class. It's about developing the characters and working on your acting. To complete this course, you'll edit those five mini scripts into a type 2 min that you can use when you're recording your first animation voiceover demo. A demo packs a lot of info about your skills as a performer into a short amount of time. Honestly, you have about 30 s to make an impression. And if it's great, maybe they'll listen to the full 2 min. So let's start working on your strongest characters and write a script for your first animation voiceover demo. Below, you can read the script that I wrote for this course. And you can listen to this sound bites of the different characters that I found while exploring this material. I hope it serves as inspiration of where this course is going to take you. I cannot wait to hear what you come up with. So let's get started. 3. Resonators: Resonators. We're going to begin this exercise by teaching you some basic vocal warm-ups. Often before an audition or session, I'd like to run through my vocal range while blowing out my lips like this. Then my knees, I keep my body nice and loose. I picked my highest note, and then I run down. Try it with me. Now let's start at your lowest note and go up. Ready? Now let's warm up our faces. Open your mouth really wide. Make your face. And why? I really take Excellent. Now let's warm up our top. I take the tip of my tongue and stick it behind my back teeth and then push my tongue out like this. Try it with me. Okay. Now that our face and our mouth and our voice or a little bit warmed up. Let's learn about resonators. I'm going to use the imagery of four classical instruments to illustrate how we can place our voice in different parts of our body and give it a different quality as a foundational choice for making our characters. The first resonator is the violin. Way up here in our head, trying to imagine your voice going around your eyes, across your nose and your forehead, maybe in your teeth. It's going to sound like this. I find it helps to wiggle my fingers and imagine I'm at a little else. One more time. Now let's place our voice in our throat. And imagine where a viola, ready? I'm going to sing the same note. That this time I'm imagining my voice coming from my throat and vibrating. They're join me one more time. Real. Now we're going to place her voice lower into our body and we're at 0. This is called our chest voice. Same note, different register, 0. And again, imagine you're a great big opera singer. Oh, now we're going to place our voice even lower in our hips and guts with a swampy area. Ready? Boo, boo. Again. Boo boo. Bend your knees, let your body get loose and silly. Do boo, boo. Great. Now let's start from the bottom and go up. Images pop into your head about what types of characters might have voices that are placed in those different registers. Where does your natural voice resonate? I want you to read the text below recorded into your phone and then listen back to it. Here's my example. People are often telling me that I should get into voice-overs. I spent many hours talking to myself in different voices. Whether I'm walking down the street, making dinner, sorting my socks, you can get paid for that. If you didn't know what I look like, what type of character would have a voice that sounds like mine. How old are they? How much do they weigh or they high-status or low status? What do they do for a job? What type of character would you cast? My voice says, now I'm going to read the text in my violin register. I want you to listen to how it changes the quality of my voice. Telling you that. So first, any hours talking to myself and different voices, rather than walking down the street thinking dinner, my socks. You can get paid for that. Notice how when I put my voice in that higher register, a lot of other ideas popped into my head about what I could do with my voice. The rhythm of my voice changed. I was imagining that I was a little bunny or something and I could speed around. And so that made me talk a little bit faster, maybe make my lips a little tighter as well. Now I'm going to read the text in my double base register. Once you listen to how it changes things. People were often telling these and ocean get into voiceovers. Spent many hours talking to myself and different voices. Walking down the street. You can sorry my thoughts. You can get paid for that. Now, I imagine that character to be kind of a friendly lumbering there. I was inspired to speak a little bit slower, or even my lips Sterling, sticking out a little bit kind of murky my job or slow. So that's your assignment for this unit. I want you to read the text below in your natural voice Print and then take two different registers and see how that inspires you to make other choices. Let your imagination run wild yet silly. Don't be afraid to be ridiculous. I encourage you to post your clips in the class discussion. Join me in our next video where we pick our three best accents as a foundation for building even more characters. 4. Accents: A lot of people say, Oh, I can do accents. I could be a voice actor. Great. Let's build on that. I want you to list your three best accents. Now, keep in mind the standard practice right now is for your accents to represent your ethnicity. Basically, if you could play that part on TV, you could do that accent in a cartoon. But straight up why people are not doing accents that don't represent their background. As you already have a strong regional dialect. That's great. There's an inherent character in that. But you're also going to need to protect your standard North American dialect to expand your working possibilities. When I first started out in voice-overs, I had a stronger Canadian accent, especially with my boot and a boots. So I use Bob and Claire course, Standard North American dialect CDs. And that helped me a lot to learn about mouth placement. For this one though, we're going to work on accents that maybe you already have in your back pocket. For me, three accents that I can pull off. Our British accent, a Southern American accent, a Midwestern American accent. So what type of characters can I build from that? I think my British accent would be a good place to start for binds. Now, I think my princess is young and quite adventurous, seems to get yourself in trouble all the time because she's always wondering outside the castle or the castle. This time when she's wandering, perhaps she encounters some bend. It's in the woods who are trying to kidnap her. And she has something that she would like to say to them to help me work on my accent. I watched the movie The Princess Bride, and that gave me some inspiration where I'd like to take my own character and also what types of scenarios my character might find herself in. My original lines inspired from the Princess Bride where Juno, who I am, my father's army, is already on their way and they will make you pay. For my southern accent. I took my inspiration for Miley Cyrus. Miley Cyrus's voice is a little bit deeper, sits more on the cello resonator here in the chest. And to learn the accent, I've watched some clips of her on YouTube doing interviews to think of something that might, pop star might say, I have no regrets. I wanted people to talk about me and my music and it worked right now. I have a number one album for my Midwestern accent. I imagined my character to be a bit bumbling and family like the characters in the movie Fargo. Hey, first met movie. Oh, it's good. And externally is also a TV series to be really exciting, but maybe a bit too line length for my taste. Now, the character that I need up 10k and unsure of herself, except when it comes to her job as the librarian. Not only does she tack in a Midwestern accent, she also resonates up here in her violin resonator across her nose, maybe a little bit in your cheat sheet around her eyes. My notes in a little bit of a smile is a little bit of a different quality and a positive kind quality to my voice. Maybe when she speaking to one of the customers to the library, he'd see something like this. We have a new app for our library system. What you do is you can just request any book from branch and we will deliver it to branch. Just like that. Peasy, lemon squeezy. Great. Now it's your turn. I want you to list your three best access. And think of a movie or a celebrity that has an accent like that. Now I want you to watch a clip or a movie with that accent and that celebrity. Repeat their lines. Practice how they speak. Walk around your house talking in this accent. Use that movie or that clip of inspiration for the lines that you're going to write, your own original lines. You're not going to copy something from that movie. Use it as inspiration. Then I want you to record that with your smartphone and upload the file to the class discussion. And remember, even a bad impression is a good starting off point for your own original character. Have fun, good, silly. I can't wait to hear what you come up with. 5. Heros : The hero. There are various kinds of heroes that I see in kids cartoons. There is your rebellious, slightly nerdy little boy. There's your sweet overachiever, like Strawberry Shortcake. And there is the typical young adventurous hero newly discovering their abilities. There is a hero in every cartoon. So if you want to play the lead, you need to find a hero's voice. So let's find yours. Step one, I want you to find an image. Do you have a favorite comic book or graphic novel? Search for an image of that main character. Or you can use some of the images that I've posted in the resource section as inspiration, this is the image I'm going to work from. Now that we have our image. Let's talk about vocal placement. Where does this character's voice live? Does it resonate in their head? Or they have little kid. Are they in their early 20s? Does it resonate more in their chest? Or are they a big, strong hero whose voice is deep and resonates deepen their body. I've noticed that the main character in a cartoon often has a more clear and neutral sounding voice, whereas the supporting characters are the ones with more corks or unusual qualities, but not always. So is your main character or Hero more quirky or would, I would call neutral? I'm going to place my character's voice in my upper chest because I think she's in her early 20s. I'm going to pretend I'm auditioning for a sci-fi cartoon five-hundred years in the future. My character is a young woman who's attending a spacecraft Flight Academy. She's from a small town, families poor. And this is an exciting and intimidating environment. She's up for the challenge. Now I'm going to create a little scenario for her. This is her first flight simulator exercise. Things start off going well, but they quickly spiral out of control. I want to make up some lines for her to say, but I don't actually know much about flying planes, so I need to watch some resource material. Maybe some Star Wars or battle star Galactic. Okay, now that I've watched my resource material, these are a couple of the lines that I've made up. Starting we're approaching the chemical Nebula. Do you copy? Starting to come in? Know I've lost sight of him. What was that? Pull up? Your assignment. First, choose an image either from the ones I've posted in resources or your own. Next, watch some resource material for inspiration. Based on that material, I want you to write a couple of high-stakes, exciting sentences for your character to say. Now, record it and post it to the class discussion. And don't forget to have fun. 6. Monsters: Monsters. In cartoons. A story can be set in a reality where imaginary creatures can exist. Anything is possible in animation. So let's find some monster voices. For those of you with a lower resonant voice, this is going to be incredibly fun. Monsters can be big and hairy and ugly. For those of you with a higher sounding voice like me, Let's find a cute or sounding monster. Often in auditions like this, they want to hear you paint a scene using just grunts and squeaks and different types of reactions, sounds. I've posted some images in the resources section for you to choose from, or you can find your own monster image. So let's start with the basics again. Now that you have your image, where are you going to place your voice in your body? Is the big monster? Resume do but your body, does your monster have unique qualities to their voice? Let's take a look at their mouth. So what does her mouth look like? Do they have big lips? Form nerve? Do where they talked to you have a bigger every job. Wherever the tongue, mouth. Sound like maybe they have a raspy voice doing a price it in your throat, going to keep them. How much does your monster way? How do you change your voice to illustrate that, they definitely will influence the rhythm of how you talk when they take big lumbering steps maybe or clicks. The monster. How do you use your voice? To show how they can move really quickly and actually quite hot places maybe. What does your monster sound like when they're angry? Do they have a grill? What do they sound like when they laugh? Learning your characters laugh is an important choice to make. A quick little or big, heavy. So many places in different choices that you could make for this. But be specific now that we've played around with what our character ways, what they sound like when they walk with their laugh is cool. What about their cry? What do they sound like with a grid? There's a hilarious directions that you could take this because we're not going to write any real words for this scene. We have to be very specific in our scenario that we placed our character in my scenario. I'm going to have my monster walking along. And then they see your favorite food at the top of a tree. Unfortunately, it's very hard to reach, so they try for it, the fail. And then maybe they try and collide and fall and hurt themselves. And they decide, oh, I'm going to take a big running leap. So they run and jump. Layers accessible and grab their favorite food. Then it quickly devour it 0, such pleasure in bolus. And then once they finally have eaten it or they're so satisfied that they become very sleepy and they fall asleep and start to snore. I'm going to use this character. So maybe it's going to sound a little bit something like this. Whoo, hoo, woo, hoo, woo hoo. Who? Who? Who? Who? Okay, If I can be that ridiculous. So can you, let's have some fun. This is your assignment for this unit. Create a scenario for your monster. Be very specific. Have some failures, some successes, some ideas, moments that bring them great joy, moments, frustration. Take them on a journey. I want you to record your little scenario with your different reactions sounds and then listen back to it. Can you hear the arc of the scene? Can you hear your monsters, desires and emotions and failures? And please post this to the class discussion. This is going to be hilarious. I cannot wait to hear what you come up with. Please use this as an opportunity to be completely ridiculous and silly. Have fun. 7. Nerds: Nerds. Often there is a nerdy sidekick character and cartoons. And these characters can be really fun because while the hero's voice is usually pretty straight, his best friend can be a bit quirky and more unusual. I've posted some images for inspiration in the resources section, but I encourage you to find your own images and share them in the project gallery. I'm going to work on my nerdy little boy voice. And I'm going to use this image as inspiration. Here are some questions to ask yourself when you're developing your nerdy little character. How old are they? How much do they weigh? Can you hear this weight in their voice? Do they have any special characteristics about the way they talk to? They have a width maybe, or some other kind of speech impediment duty-free. Team share their basis. We may talk. Were just a voice, resonate. Have our keys, and so they always have stuffed up nose. So give me, give me run really, really, really fast. You have to stop. I want you to let your imagination run wild. Here's my example line. So I made my calculation for hypersonic jet. So your assignment for this unit is to read a scenario where your little nerds, it seems like his day or her day is gonna go perfect, but then something unexpected happens and everything goes wrong, right? Two to three sentences where your character is describing what's happening in the moment. Now record that with your phone and post it to the class project gallery. Your homework this week is to listen to and comment on what your classmates have posted so far. Remember, we want to be supportive and encouraging. Have fun because this is your inner nerves week to shine through and be the star. 8. Witches & Wizards: Which is, and wizards. I'm so excited for this unit. The wise old lady, they evil wizard, the teacher, the Sensei, the crazy old lady who works in a tea shop. These are all examples of reoccurring characters in cartoons. If you have an older sounding voice already, lucky you. If you dumped. We're going to work on some techniques on how to aid your voice so you can find your witch or wizard character. I found some great images to get you started that I've posted in the resource section, or you can find your own. An important part of this process is finding some source material, and YouTube is a treasure trove of interviews with old people, movie clips of your favorite which are wizard character. There's so much to inspire and build from. Remember, even your bad impersonation of another person's character is a great starting off point for creating your own original, which are wizard voice. So now that you have your source material, Let's start at the basics. Where are you going to place your character's voice? Where are they going to resonate from? When I paid my grumpy old lady character. I meant to make her voice resonate in her teeth, actually in a cross her nose. Maybe I put it a little bit of a crackle in my voice. Maybe she's smoked a little bit in the past. I like to make my ellipse really changed anything. Them slows down and sometimes keeps him only four. My brain can reach my mouth and I'm a bit surprised you're distracted. Stuff that comes up. Also. I'm only changing my buddy. Me. Why shouldn't I be grumpy? That right? Now? Leave me alone. My skim, feed my catch me up. Another older character in my range is a good wage. I'm going to paste in my head. But she hasn't little bit definitely lighter quality and maybe there's a little bit of a trembling my voice. I really missed more of a triplet. I imagine that very light and quite kind. Especially when I'm giving advice. Now my Tia must stay on the path on your journey towards the castle. To not get distracted By the sweet songs of birds calling you to explore deeper into the forest. This is my advice to you, that you will heat it. Sometimes you want to be loud and boisterous and exciting. Sometimes you can make choices that are very soft and subtle, that can pull your audience towards you. So your assignment for this unit is to find some resource material on YouTube of your favorite which wizard or wise old person. After you have studied and imitated that voice. I want you to create a scenario where you are speaking to a young person, either one that is your student that you care about, or if you are an evil which are Wizard, one young person that is your enemy recorded into your phone. Please post it in the class discussion. We all love hearing what you're working on. Have a great time. These characters come up all the time and it's important one to have in your back pocket. 9. Conclusion: Thank you for joining me in this class. We've got silly. You created at least five new characters. And you've learned a little bit about what types of roles you might audition for. Your final assignment is to take your mini script and edit it into a tight 2 min. You need to find some quality recording equipment now and add music and sound effects to pull it all together. If you end up recording your demo from this script, please post it in the class discussion. We'd love to hear what you've created. Feel free to comment on what you'd like to learn next. I've enjoyed teaching this class, and I look forward to playing with you again in the future. Thanks.