comic-con 2002

adam, jonathan, sumir, and vince on 08/09/2002 12:19:51 -0700

Index
<< 01 02 03 04 05 06 07 08 09 10 11
12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 >>

Panelists: James R. Alburger, various voice actors.

I was only able to catch about 15-20 minutes of this workshop, admittedly, due to an overlap with the Futurama panel. so I did not pick up anything particularly substantial from such a short period of time. But I'll combine what was offered with some other observations I made over the course of the day in other animation-related panels.

First of all, voice acting is hard. I hope no one makes the same mistake that I did once, where I said that voice actors have it easy. Don't get me wrong, I'd still love to do it if I could, but I keep overlooking an obvious fact: voice acting is still acting. As James R. Alburger says, voice acting is more than just making funny voices. And even then, making funny voices is harder than you think. Some voices are more conducive to humor, and finding those voices is the work of the master. When I think of some of my favorite characters, such as GIR from Invader Zim (voiced by Rosearik "Rikki" Simons, who was a panelist), I realize that the main reason why he's particularly great is that his voice is absolutely perfect for his personality and image.

Secondly, voice acting involves a heavy amount of versatility. On certain shows I can easily detect traces of the voice actor's speech that helps me identify them, but some of them are so adept at the craft that their traces in other characters are undetectable. For example, on Futurama I can tell that the coarser voices such as Bender and Elzar are certainly the work of John Di Maggio. However, he also did the voices of Wakka and Kimahri in Final Fantasy X, which are both very smooth, rich, deep tones, quite the opposite of Bender. Also refer to my anecdote in the Futurama panel writeup about their voice actors.

-Vince

Index
<< 01 02 03 04 05 06 07 08 09 10 11
12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 >>