Voice Over for Animation: Creating your Walla Library

1. Intro: Oh, too. Hi. I'm Kelly Meter. I'm a voice actors based in Vancouver, Canada. I'm best known for voicing the role of Nia in the Cartoon in Dago Dragons Rising. Welcome to my third Skillshare course. Voice Over for Animation Building Your Wallow library. In this course, you're going to be learning all the little techniques and skills you need to make all the sounds you hear around the lines in the cartoon. The grunts, the squeaks, the falls, the punches, the impacts, the trips, the crying, the laughing. All these require little skills and techniques and practice. If this is your first time taking a skill share course with me, jump right in. We can start here. Or if you're interested, you can check out my courses Voice over for Animation, creating characters for your demo, or Voice over for Animation, auditioning for cartoons. Thank you for clicking on my course. Join me in the next video where I explain the project for this course. You want had to exert more effort, and then when I landed, it was successful. 2. Project: Oh. The project for this course is to build your own Walla library. This contains all the different extra vocalizations that the production team needs to fill out the cartoon to make it as fun and as real and as whole as possible. Things like laughs and grunts and impact sounds and running and falling. In this course, the only supplies you need is a smartphone with voice memos or voice record. If you have a home studio setup, that's great, but it's not required. In the resources section, you'll find a downloadable PDF with all the wa categories that I'm going to walk you through. You're going to join me in my home studio where I will lead you through each little sound. You can copy me to start and experiment. You can use your strongest character voice that you developed in another voice over course, or you can use the character that you always seem to drop into when you're making voices around the house, or you can use your own voice. After we've gone through all the categories together, I want you to record yourself and build your own Walla library. Then post it on SoundCloud and share the link in the class project gallery. If you need some help setting up a sound Cloud account, I go through that process in the next video. If setting up a SoundCloud account is no problem for you, join me in video four, and we'll step into my home studio, which is really just my closet. And we'll get started. This is going to be lots of fun. Really silly stuff. I can't wait to play with you. I'll see you there. See the one. I did exert more effort, and then when I landed, it was successful. 3. Soundcloud Tutorial: You. This is just a quick tutorial walking you through how to set up a sound Cloud account. Then I'll show you how to share your link in the class project gallery. If you already know how to do that, it's no problem. Just skip ahead to the next video, and we'll get started on learning how to build your own Walla library. I'm on the SoundCloud website, and I want to create an account. So enter my e mail address. Use a strong password. Sure. Okay. I'm going to simply show you how to record a voice memo and then upload it to your SoundCloud account. Okay. Let's go to voice memos and I'll press record. Check out my tutorial to learn how to set up a sound cloud account so you can upload your voice files and share your auditions with me. I'll label that Upload your first track. Goodness set it to public, but you can set it to private if you want, if you just want to share your files with just who clicks on the link. You share that within the class, and only me or students who are interested in listening to your work can click on it and hear what you're doing or see what you've posted, and it's not open to everyone. But I encourage you to just share your voice with the Internet and make it public. Choose files to upload. Downloads, SoundCloud tutorial, upload, uploaded images my face. Earning. Learning. Here we are back on the SoundCloud account. I have my voice file, and if I go up here, I see this little link. It says Copy Link. I click on it. Now I go to Skillshare. I've looked up voiceovers on Skillshare, and I see classes, and then I see my class, voice over for animation, creating characters for your demo. Insert a link. Inserting a link. I'm going to out here. I'm going to call it posting Sound Cloud link. So post. And as you can see, That's the SoundCloud link. I click on that. Takes me to my SoundCloud Brest play. Hi. This is Kelly Mezger from the Skill Shared class. Voice L A Carton more effort and when I landed, I ice successful. 4. Laughing Crying Sighing: Oh. Okay, here we are in my luxurious home studio. That's right. If you complete this course, you two can live the glamorous life of a Canadian voice actress. Okay. Let's begin. Let's say you have booked a cartoon, and you have the lead part. And now the production needs to make a library of all the little extra sounds that your character makes so that when they are working on the show, that you'll record your lines and then they'll think, Oh, we needed her to jump in, we didn't get that sound. They can pull from this library to get those little sounds. The first sounds we're going to work on are laughing, crying, and sighing. I think that doing an authentic laugh is actually one of the hardest sounds to make. Let's just jump off the deep end. You can do your own voice. That's what I'm going to do. You can do a character voice that you've been working on and have developed in previous voice course, or you can do the, like character voice that wears slip into hay whenever you clean up around the house or like talking to your partner or something like that. H. Mmm. Maybe I'll just switch character voices the whole way through. I don't know. I'll start with my own voice. How about that? We're going to do a laugh sound. I'll do it first. You repeat after me laughing in your character or just copy what I do to get the ball rolling. We're going to do a sh medium and long. All right. Short. A short giggle. Medium. A chuckle. Long, a hearty laugh. Silly. You see, I just jump right into it and pretend no one's watching me. In the end, they're not going to see me when they show the cartoon, you're not going to see me being all silly, but I want to get an authentic sound and create an authentic sound. I get my whole body involved, and I am not afraid to look ridiculous because this is a ridiculous job, and that's why I like it so much. Now let's go to crying. And cry in my own cry sound with my own voice. Orb. Okay. Repeat after me. A c, a quick sob. Medium, soft weeping. Long, prolonged crying with hiccups. Now we're going to do sighing sounds. Sort. Slight disappointment. Hm. Mm. Maybe I'll give three options for that one. Try three options. Medium. Seeing something very cute. Think I'll give three options again. Oh. Now, for the long long si, falling in love. Let's give three options again. H. H. Okay, those are the first three Walla sounds. Experiment. Play. Do them over again. Fool along with your PDF. Try different characters. And I'll see you in the next video when we work on running, jumping, and falling. I want to exert more effort, and then when I landed, it was successful. 5. Running Jumping Falling: Yeah. No. Wow. Okay, welcome to the next lesson. We're going to do running, jumping, and falling. I do a lot of these sounds in n jago. I love them. It's really fun. The jumping sounds and falling. Often you have to engage your core muscles. I make it kind of like, like, you hold your core muscles, and then and hold your breath even and have, like a release kind of sound like that. But first, let's start with running. Running, short, a few quick footsteps. Medium. Continuous running sounds for a short distance. Maybe there's some stumble in. Let's try another one with they stumble and they keep going. Long, extended running sequence. Now, again, we can add some variations where they're running for a while and then they jump over something and maybe they stumble and then they keep running. Let's try that. Repeat after me. You can hear that when I got to where I was going, then I had a couple breaths to catch my breath and you can hear that the character has stopped. Try that option. Now we're going to do jumping. The short one, we're going to do a single jump with a soft. I would do something like this. I imagine my characters doing scotch or. It might just be H. Something like that. But then they'd say, Okay, now I want you to imagine that your character is jumping over they have to jump over these obstacles, and below is lava. So a medium length. Repeat after me. Hey. And you can hear when I got to the last jump, it was a bigger one. I had to exert more effort, and then when I landed, it was successful. Let's do continuous jumping like I'm bouncing on a trampoline. And then how about at the end, I lose my way, and then I fall and I hurt myself. So it might be something like this. Woo. Something like that. Give it a try. Okay. Falling, also, super fun. For the short one, we're going to do a short fall with a quick thud. Repeat after me. Woo. At then they want to hear how the character feels once they've landed, so you can do a groan or some reaction like that. Medium, a moderate fall with a grunt and impact. Imagine you're falling off like a short cliff. Woah I want heard a bit more. You can express that with your voice, give it a try. Now for the long on, we're going to do an extended falling sound with a louder impact. Now you're falling off of maybe your character is flying in some vehicle, and then they fall down, but what they lend in is pretty soft. You character doesn't die, but it makes an impact. B anything can happen in a cartoon. Here we go. Whoa. Give it a try. Play around with that. Press pause on the video. Follow along with the PDF. Try it in different characters. There's so much fun with falling and jumping sounds. We do a lot of these in Nin jago, and I love listening to the other actors do them because it's pretty hilarious, and it's like this, I sing it like a song. But instead of singing a beautiful note with Vbrato, what you sing, is the sound of someone? All right. Quick and easy. I'll see you in the next video. Where we're going to work on. Oh, yeah. Kicking, tripping, impacts, and punches. More effort, and then when I landed, was successful. 6. Kicking, Tripping, Impacts, Punches: A. We do a lot of these kind of punching and kicking sounds in Jaco. I'm ply experience. Though, I don't kick people in real life. I just know how to make the sounds. Sometimes that comes back to bite me when I'm like, playing a baseball or something, and then the balls coming to me, and then I start making all the sounds that a cartoon character would make like, Oh, you're the. H. O. Oh, my God, Kelly. In real life, you don't have to make all those sounds. You can just throw the ball. But anyway, we're in cartoon and right now. Kicking. Short. A single kick. Hot. Medium. A series of kicks. How about three? Repeat after me. Hot. Yeah. How they'll be I'll say, do that again, but faster. Uh, say, Oh, we want two quick and then a spinning kick. Let's do this medium one again. Repeat after me. L. Try it out. Long, a continuous kicking sequence. Now, maybe I pretend that my character jumps in the air and they're battling the bad guy and let's put five or six. Maybe the director would be like, give me five or six kicks in a row, and they'd say enrolling and you begin. Ho. Ho. Give it a try. Use your imagination, try and picture your character doing different things. Okay, tripping. Short. A short trip with a stumble. O medium. Tripping with a fall. Hoo. I think I could do that better. I want to try again. Hoo. Yeah. So you can play around. There's different variations. Maybe your character trips and falls in a different way than mine. Long. Extended sequence of tripping and falling. Maybe like your character keeps trying to catch their balance, and it doesn't work out. So would be like oh, I was imagining they kept trying to recover and it didn't work out. Impacts. This is when another character hits you. And so let's start with short. We want a light impact sound. This is the one where I would engage my core muscles and hold my breath for a second and then let my breath out making a vocalization. For a light impact sound, I go 00 medium, a moderate impact. O. O. For the long one, we're going to do a heavy impact with follow through. Okay, then you can really hear the reaction and the pain that your character is going through. Repeat after me. O. Let's do it again. I can have imagined I got kicked in the stomach or something. Punches, a single punch. Helps me to just move my body. When I'm doing Jago and a lot of the other actors, we are moving our body so that you can hear the movements of our bodies in our voice, but we got to be careful not to make sounds like that. Let's do a series of punches. Oh. Okay. Now, along the extended punch sequence. Repeat after me or some variation of this. Maybe I'll do like five or six punches. Ho. Yeah. A. You can hear how I tried to build it up. I didn't do the same sound over and over again, but I created a little story of, like, punched and then punched harder and then punched with all her might. And then you could hear that in and what my voice was doing with like the a hear that, sang different notes. Join me in the next video, we will do coming, yelling and thinking. One exert more effort, and when I landed, it was successful. 7. Humming, Yelling, Thinking: Yeah. Okay. Now we're going to imagine that your characters on a nice little walk, and they're having a great day. Sometimes they'll just ask the actor to make up a little song or something because the character is doing something that they really like. So short, a quick m. Or maybe Medium, a short tune. Now the characters may be going for a little stroll, looking at some trees, some flowers, Just anything. Repeat after me, get silly. Think what kind of practicing improvisation. That's part of the exercise. Long a continuous humming of a song. Pretend your character has a favorite song and they have it in their head, and they're cleaning their room. All right. Let's go. M, m. You know, believe it or not, sometimes they ask you to do crazy things like that, and you just got to make up a silly song. Practice. Practice Pete silly. You can do it. Nobody's listening. Yelling. Maybe this is like these would be moments of rather than just being about yelling. This can maybe be about fear or desperation. Like you're surprised. So short, short yell. But something bad is happening to your best friend and you see them like falling. You might go, Oh. So this is maybe an exercise in being courageous to really let your voice out. Let's do a medium one. They've now fallen off a tower. W. Or they got kidnapped by a dragon, and they are being taken away. You could even put, a no in there for your long sound. No. Just let it out, man. Just let it out. Something a little bit more quiet. We're going to do a thinking sound. Sometimes they say, Okay, I just want to quick, like, the director will tell you exactly the sound they need. Copy me, pretend I'm the director. He's like, Oh, yes, I just want you to do your character to be like, H m do it. Small. Quick. Hm. There, I gave three options for them to pick from. Medium, a contemplative m. So another character has said something interesting. Mm. The options again. Okay. Extended thinking sounds with musing. Maybe you could pretend to be like an evil character because they often have a evil, long sound. Let's try that. Repeat after me. Or maybe like a grow because it's a dragon or something. Now we're gasping and surprise. This is standard, especially when I am auditioning. I often will put a gasp before a line to show that I know how to fill out a script and bring it to life. A quick gasp. This is just like an inhale and a stop. Just repeat after me. Everybody knows how to make that sound. You can make it with where you can hear more vocalizations, like, or it could just be air. Okay. Medium, an audible intake of breath. F. N. A prolonged surprise reaction. So this gaze is more than a gasp, like. It's like out and an in. Ws many different ways to do. A long gasp. Again, press pause if you like, and go over these categories and play around with your different characters and see what you come up with. Record yourself. Listen back. And when you're ready, I'll see you in video eight, where we do grunting, groaning, lifting, and climbing. See there. One more effort. And when I landed, it was successful. 8. Grunting, Groaning, Lifting & Climbing: Again, this is a sound with the grunts that you're going to engage your core muscles and kind of let it go and then relece it with a vocalization. So a single grunt. You can imagine your characters maybe picking something up, like a series of grunts. Maybe they are pulling on a door that won't open. H. Long. Now this is going to be a continuous grunt. Let's say they're pulling on a large rope that's pulling something heavy, and they're doing it all with a group of people. Then I put a release. Oh. That may be a little bit dizzy. Give it a try. Disappointed groaning. Just imagine that your brother or your sister or somebody that his cousin, someone said something annoying to you. O or a dad joke. Oh, even worse. Oh no. Or maybe how about you have like a tummy ache? That's the kind of groan they need. Oh. Oh. Okay, prolonged grow. This one, you're really sick. How about? Or how about your leg, your leg hurt so bad. Let's do a groan like that. Oh. Something like that. Lifting. Lifting a light object. They have to pass to someone. They still want to hear it. So if it was really light, you wouldn't make any sound, it has to be a little bit heavy. Medium, a moderately heavy object. You have the initial sound with the and you're holding it, and then may have to carry it somewhere and put it down. Maybe it would sound something like this. Lifting a heavy object with effort, then pretend that you fall and then the object crushes you. How about that? Go. Very. I did things with my mouth. I clinched my teeth. I cltch up all my muscles too so that that would affect my voice. I get physical in my roles so that you can hear the sounds that my muscles make and how they affect my voice. Use my whole body to make my vocalizations realistic. Climbing and you've done it. You've climbed through this whole walla course, and now you've reached the last sound in your Walla library. So the first short sound, we'll just do like you're pulling yourself up like a single pull and then you get over. Ready? Give a couple breaths, like you made it. Now you're climbing a ladder for your medium one. Repeat after me. Yeah. Or maybe that was more like a rope ladder where you were quite high and you could feel gravity. For the long sound, you're climbing up a cliff to safety, and then you get over the edge, and then you gasp for breath because this was a matter of life or death. Repeat after me. And you'll notice listen how I add variations like you can hear different surfaces that I'm climbing over. Oh. So I told a whole story, and I didn't use any words. Just little sounds. Great. You did it. Join me in the conclusion where we can go over what we learned in this course. And I can encourage you to build your own Walla library and post it in the class project gallery. I'll see you in the final video. Se no one had to more effort than when I landed, who was successful. 9. Conclusion: Oh. Congratulations. You made it to the end of the course. Now, it's your turn. Get your downloadable PDF of all the different Walla categories and record yourself, doing versions of the short, medium, and long. Then upload the file to SoundCloud and share the link in the class project gallery. I can't wait to hear what you've been working on. Thanks again for watching my class. And I'll see you in the next one. Single one I insert more effort, and then when I landed, it was successful.