Styles of Cartoon Voice Over

Series Summary

Cartoons look simple but draw from the same artistic traditions as painting and sketching. Drawing is a visual art which makes use of any number of drawing instruments to mark a two-dimensional medium. Common instruments include graphite pencils, pen and ink, inked brushes, wax color pencils, crayons, charcoals, chalk, pastels, markers, stylus, and various metals. A cartoonist uses these tools to draw cartoons, whether for animation or comics. A cartoonist traditionally sketches pictures out roughly in pencil before going over the them in black ink or giving them to a colorist. The disposable villain is not only a former indie rock band from Detroit, but also a favorite stock cartoon character: most cartoons have a villain who loses to the hero anew each episode. In this free cartoon voice over video series, professional cartoon voice actor Maile Flanagan, voice of America's Naruto, gives you tips on how to become a cartoon voice actor. Flanagan gives information about the kinds of voices cartoon voice actors do, how to put together a demo tape, where to start looking for an agent, and how to find work in the industry. Flanagan recommends knowing how to act and taking acting and improv classes before spending to money to record a demo. Good voice actors should have characters that can portray emotion and personality through voices, a diverse cast of characters from which to draw, and the ability to think on their feet.

Video Transcript

"The difference between cartoon voice over and like regular voice over like narration or commercials is that in cartoon voice overs you have to do a lot more animated takes, so you have to put a lot more character in it, you have to, you get to explore more, there's probably more humor, there's probably more drama and in sort of straight on voice over it's either a narrative or you know you're narrating something, you are doing a commercial, it's kind of like your own voice. Where as in cartoon voice overs you can do many, many characters in cartoon. So it's more lively and fun I think to do animation and most people that do straight, straight voice overs aspire to do animation so it's definitely a more sought after field in the voice over field cause it's so much fun to do. The other thing about doing cartoon animation voice overs versus regular voice overs is that you know obviously you get to be a different person when you do animation voice overs so you know you can be an eighty year old woman or you can be a four year old kid. In straight animation you're basically they are hiring you for your voice and you sound just like your voice and that's about it. So it's you get a little more diversity in a cartoon voice over."