15
Mastering Character Voices

In This Chapter

You’ll find more about character voiceover and more scripts at AOVA.VoiceActing.com.

Vocalizing Characters

Most genres of voiceover require the voice actor to create a character and, logically, a voice for that character. A forced voice is rarely effective, is difficult to sustain, and can cause physical damage to your vocal cords. Effective character voices are those that originate from your normal voice and exaggerate (slightly or radically) the attitudes, emotions, and personality traits of the character being portrayed, or take a small quirk or idiosyncrasy and blow it out of proportion through a shift in placement, texture, tempo or rhythm. This is especially true when creating the voice for an animated or video game character.

A character voice for a commercial, corporate narration, phone message or audio book will often be very close to the actor’s natural voice in terms of placement and tonality.

Regardless of the genre, a believable voice for the character can only be discovered after all other aspects of the story, and the character’s role in it, are thoroughly understood.

Animation, Game, and Other Character Voices

Acting is the key word when it comes to working in games or animation. If audio books or narration are your style, you may not be suited for extreme character voices.

The trend in feature film animation has been to apply very real, human characteristics and voices to animated characters. Although there is still a place for the occasional wacky voice, the majority of animation and game work has moved to a more conversational style sourced from the actor’s natural voice.

Understanding the character and story are extremely important in character voice work. Many factors affect the voice, so the more you know about the character, the easier it will be to find its true voice.

Consistency is also extremely important in this type of voice work. When you find the character’s voice, lock it into your memory and keep the proper physicality, attitude, and quality of sound throughout your performance, adapting your character’s voice when the mood of the story changes. To make your character believable and real to the audience, the quality of the voice must not change from the beginning of the script to the end and it must, in some way, be different from your natural voice. Achieving excellence in this aspect of the craft requires a mastery of acting and performing skills.

Most animation and game voice actors have a repertoire of several voices. A typical session may require voicing three characters before lunch, three more after lunch, and then going back for pick-ups on the first set of characters. This sort of schedule means character voice actors must be extremely versatile and must be able to accurately repeat and sustain voice characterizations over a long period of time. These demands make animation and video game work a challenging niche to break into, and one of the most creative in voiceover.

In addition to voices and vocalized sounds, character voice work also includes dialects, foreign and regional accents, and celebrity impersonations. Special accents and dialects require an ability to mimic a sound or attitude that is familiar to a portion of the listening audience. Usually, this is a stylized interpretation and doesn’t necessarily have to be 100 percent accurate, unless the character is represented as being authentic to a region or culture. Many times, the best accent is one that reflects what a community “thinks” the accent should sound like, which is often not the real thing. However, when authenticity is required to give the character believability, vocal accuracy is important. Most of the time, however, a slight exaggeration of certain familiar regional vocal traits tends to give the character attitude and personality.

Celebrity voice impersonations, and voice matching, are often the most challenging because the celebrities are usually well-known. The voice actor’s job is to create either a very accurate representation of the celebrity's voice to replace or alter a celebrity’s voice in a film or TV show (voice matching), or a voice that offers recognition of the celebrity, yet hints at being just a bit different (impersonation).

Celebrity impersonations are usually done in the context of humor in which some aspect of the celebrity’s personality or vocal styling is exaggerated or used as a device for communicating the message. In most cases, if a producer wants an extremely accurate celebrity voice, he will hire the celebrity. It may cost more to hire the actual person behind the voice, but the increased credibility is often worth it and hiring the real person will circumvent any potential legal issues.

In the case of dialogue replacement, accuracy of the celebrity’s voice is important. The voice actor will usually be replacing short lines or sections of dialogue when the original actor is unavailable.

Pat Fraley's Six Critical Elements of a Character Voice

Pat Fraley is one of the most amazing voice actors I’ve met. He’s not only a consummate performer—in just about every area of voice work—but he’s also an excellent, and very generous, teacher. Pat understands character voice work better than most professionals. He’s one of the top 10 voice actors for animation, having performed more than 4,000 different cartoon voices. He’s narrated dozens of audio books, and voiced thousands of commercials.

Just as I’ve broken down a performance to its Seven Core Elements, Pat breaks down a character voice to its six critical elements.

The Six Elements of Voice
© Patrick Fraley, 2006
Patfraleyteaches.com

With any artful endeavor, you will find two words that are important to define: Form and Content. What is the form of a character voice? The way this applies to character voice is that the form is the sound of the voice. The content is the thinking and feeling, the psychology of the character. The Six Elements of a Character Voice are all about the form. What makes up the form of a character voice? Like everything else, there’s a finite amount of elements.

These are the six elements: Pitch, Pitch Characteristic, Tempo, Rhythm, Placement, and Mouth Work.

1. Pitch (Higher or lower than your own?)

The first element is Pitch. Pitch relates to the musical notes of the character’s voice. Is the character’s voice higher than your own? Is it lower? Or perhaps the character goes both higher and lower, showing a wider range. Thus far we’ve dealt with Pitch and it has been assumed that the characteristic of the pitch was clear.

2. Pitch Characteristic (Gravelly? Breathy? Husky? Constricted?)

The second element deals with the specific characteristic of the pitch, Pitch Characteristic. Pitch Characteristic is the dynamic of the pitch, or coloring. If Pitch were a noun, Pitch Characteristic would be its adjective, as it describes the nature of the pitch. It is clear? Is it gravelly? Is it hoarse? Is it breathy? Is it constricted? Is it cracking? Velvety?

3. Tempo (Faster or slower than your own?)

The third element is Tempo. Tempo refers to the character’s general rate of delivery. There are three possibilities: (1) Does the character speak faster than you? (2) Slower than you? Or (3) does the character vary or have a wider range of tempo than you?

4. Rhythm (Syncopated? Plodding? Loping?)

The fourth element is Rhythm. Vivid characters go about getting what they want, and they go about getting it in the same way, over and over. There is a pattern to their behavior. This pattern shows up in the way they speak. Character Rhythm is defined as a repetitive pattern of emphasis in the way the character speaks which emerges from the thinking and feeling of the character. It’s kind of a vocal thumb print.

5. Placement (Nasal? Back of Throat? Normal?)

The fifth element is Placement. Placement refers to where the voice seems to be coming from or where it’s placed. When I think about placing my voice in my nose the sound takes on a whole different dynamic. I feel a lot of air coming through my nose. It sounds a whole lot different than when I place my voice in the back of my mouth. How about if I think of creating the voice in my throat? Distinct sounds? The trick is to learn how to stay in the placement all the time for any given character.

6. Mouth Work (Accent? Lisp? Tight lips?)

Because placement happens in and around the mouth, it has a kind of relationship with our sixth and final element, Mouth Work. Mouth Work refers to anything done in and around the mouth to affect the character. The kind of affect that comes to mind is accents. But also, having tight lips affect the way we sound, stretching your mouth to one side and talking, or the way a character pronounces their “S”s.

So that’s all the ingredients it takes to bake up the form of a character voice—no less, no more: Pitch, Pitch Characteristic, Tempo, Rhythm, Placement, and Mouth Work.

Finding Your Voice

Begin creating a character’s voice by doing a thorough character analysis to discover as much as you can about him or her (or it) and the character’s role in the story. Based on what you learn, make the decisions and commit to who you are talking to and if your character has any special accent, attitude or personality quirks. Finally, decide where in your body the character’s voice will be placed.

Visualize the voice coming from a specific location in your body and work with the copy until the voice feels right, using choices about the character’s physical size and shape to help you localize the voice. Use “the sweep” (Exercise #10, page 36) to find a suitable pitch for your character voice. Once you have found a pitch, use placement, pitch characteristics, tempo, rhythm, and mouth work to create a unique sound. Here are some possible placements:

• top of head (tiny)
• behind eyes (denasal)
• top of cheeks (bright)
• front of mouth (crisp)
• under tongue (sloppy)
• diaphragm (strong)
• loose cheeks (mushy)
• back of throat (breathy)
• nose (nasal)
• chest (boomy)
• throat (raspy)
• stomach (low)

Based on your understanding of the story, practice different voices with different attitudes to find one that is most believable. Use computer clip art, comic strips and other drawings to get ideas for character voices. You may find that a particular physical characteristic or facial expression is needed in order for you to get the proper sound and attitude. Remember: Physicalize the moment and the voice will follow. Record a variety of voices and characters, then listen to what you’ve recorded. If your character voices all sound the same, you’ll need to work on your character voice skills.

The Character Voice Worksheet

In animation, you must be able to recall a voice on demand. The Character Voice Worksheet on page 234 is just one of many good ways to document the characteristics of each voice you create. The worksheet is divided into four parts: (1) Accessing and recalling the character voice, (2) Placement, (3) Physical characteristics, and (4) Other notes.

Accessing and recalling the character voice:

• Give your character a name for quick recall.
• Define age, gender, attitude, physical attributes, and energy level.
• Create a key phrase that will allow you to return to the character. You will know the phrase is correct when it sounds natural.

The Character Voice Worksheet © James R. Alburger, all rights reserved

Placement:

• Determine where in your body you are positioning the voice.
• Choose appropriate pitch, pitch characteristics, tempo, rhythm, and mouth work to create the reality of the voice.
• Understand the character’s emotions and feelings.

Physical:

• Determine how your character stands and moves in space and time. Experiment with facial expressions, physical gestures, and speaking quirks, including how your character laughs.

Other Notes:

• Include any additional information that will help you recall your voice.

Each voice you document is what Pat Fraley terms a starter. This is a core voice from which you can create many more simply by adjusting some of the characteristics. Start with a defined voice, then experiment with changing the pitch and altering pitch characteristics. Change the tempo and rhythm as you work with the voice, or see what happens as you adjust the voice placement or slightly modify the mouth work—and voila, you’ve got a new character. Visit AOVA.VoiceActing.com for recorded examples of how to create and document character voices.

Tips for Character and Animation Copy

Character voice work can be challenging, but lots of fun. Use the following tips and suggestions to help find your character’s voice.

• Choose your character’s voice only after you fully understand the story and your character’s role in it.
• Understand the scene. In animation and video games, you must often use your imagination to make up who you are responding to or what you are reacting to.
• Discover who the audience is and understand how the audience will relate to the character. You might need to make this up.
• Maintain a consistent voice throughout the script and be careful not to injure your voice by stretching too far. It is better to pull back a little and create a voice that can be maintained rather than push too hard for a voice you can only sustain for one or two pages.
• Be willing to exaggerate attitudes or personality traits for the sake of finding the character’s true voice.
• If a drawing, photo, or picture of the character is available, use it as a tool to discover the personality of the character.
• Find the place in your body from which the voice will come.
• Experiment with pitch, pitch characteristics, tempo, rhythm, placement, and mouth work to discover the most appropriate vocal delivery for your character.
• Experiment to take on the physical characteristics of the character.

Character Sides for Games and Animation

Sides are short lines excerpted from a larger script. The lines are not contiguous, so each line needs to be interpreted separately. Find a suitable voice and delivery for each of the following characters. Use the six elements of character voice: Pitch, Pitch Characteristics, Tempo, Rhythm, Placement, and Mouth Work to create a believable voice. Do a quick “A-B-C” (Audience, Back Story, Character, Desires, and Energy) for each line of copy to discover clues about your character. Explore any relationships that may exist or that can be implied by the copy or the drawing. Experiment with different voice possibilities and add layers of emotion, attitude, and physical movement.

You’ll find more about character voice work in the AOVA Extras section at VoiceActing.com.

Character and Animation Full Script

Voiceover for animation can be very challenging, especially when you are voicing an extreme character and your only reference is a still image or line drawing. Fortunately, most animation voiceover is directed by a writer, producer or director who knows exactly what she wants for the character’s voice, where to take your voice and how to get you to that sound.

Sometimes, the producer will provide a link to a reference video to give you an idea of what she is thinking in terms of the character’s voice. As with other VO genres, a video reference can be a double-edged sword. Although, intended to provide inspiration and a baseline for the character, it’s easy for the auditioning actor to mimic or duplicate the example, which is exactly what the producer is not looking for.

There are two ways to work with the script that follows. The first is to refer to the character drawings and create your own unique voice for either the Gundarr or Bustiana character. The second is to go to the bit.ly link and watch the fully-produced animation. If you choose the second approach, your job is NOT to duplicate the voices you hear. Instead, study the delivery, attitudes, and timing and use what you learn to create a voice that is uniquely yours, and that will fit with the animation. Be careful to not injure your voice.

Special thanks to Mondo Media and Deb Munro for providing this script and voices.

Gundarr

Title: “Gundarr’s Origin” (Ep #19)

Media: Internet Animation

Series Creators: Ted Wilson and Cory McDaniel

Website: MondoMedia.com

Talent: 1-Female / 1-Male

Style: Cartoon Character

Copy Notes: Over-the-top characters. Play big. Gundarr: Big voice, brusk, loud, not too bright, out for himself Bustianna: Helpful, proud, assertive, doesn’t take any guff, has a job to do

Video Link: bit.ly/GundarrOrigin (note capital letters)

Voice Actors: Deb Munro and Cory McDaniel