How to Create Different Characters for Your Voiceover Projects

Whether it’s your primary focus or a portion of your career, good voice work skills are essential for any actor. Voiceover training opens a wide range of acting opportunities, including commercial and theatrical voiceover, dubbing, audiobook narration, radio plays and podcasting. Some actors even center their entire careers around voice work.

Creating consistent, nuanced vocal characters is a fundamental and complex skill. While most voice actors can manage a few vocal variations, projects like audiobooks and animation demand many distinct vocal characters and the ability to switch between them quickly.

To develop a range of characters, consider these foundational concepts.

What You’ll Find in This Article

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Monitor Your Vocal Health

Before developing a character voice, prioritize keeping your vocal instrument strong. Voiceover artistry requires significant stamina and athleticism.

Be aware that your microphone captures everything. Congestion, fatigue or mouth noises will negatively impact your audio and vocal quality.

Hydration is key to maintaining vocal health and clarity in the recording booth. Before a voice acting session, avoid dairy, coffee and sugary drinks—anything that dries out or thickens mucus. Water and non-caffeinated tea are recommended. For long sessions, a green apple can be a useful hack. An occasional bite can quickly help clear your mouth, boost clarity and improve vocal quality.

Proper vocal warmups before every gig are essential. They ensure your range and diction are prepared and help prevent vocal fatigue and injury. Be mindful of vocal choices that originate from your throat rather than being supported by your breath. While they may sound interesting, they’ll wear out your voice and become unsustainable for longer projects. After long voiceover recording sessions, drink hot tea and avoid speaking to maintain proper voice care.

Creating Your Character’s Vocal Pitch

Pitch is a fundamental building block of vocal character. When creating characters who interact or speak in quick succession, varying their base pitch helps differentiate them for the listener. Accessing a range of sustainable vocal pitches also depends on consistent vocal warmups and exercises.

Pitch carries many societal connotations. Consider the character traits ***ociated with low versus high voices; leveraging this audience shorthand can help quickly sketch a character. Conversely, subverting those expectations can disquiet, delight, endear or alienate. Command of a wide pitch range will significantly expand your repertoire of vocal characters. When creating characters for voiceover, rely on voice acting skills rather than voice impersonation.

Discover Your Character’s Speaking Pace

While pitch is crucial, voice actors have a limited range of consistently accessible levels. This is where pacing becomes vital. Pace is another fundamental layer to differentiate characters or add nuance to one. A character’s speaking pace can reveal much about how they navigate the world, their social expectations, age and authority, among other characteristics.

Create the Texture of Your Character’s Voice

Once you have established a character’s fundamental pitch and pace, add voice texture to create believable characters.

Ask questions about your character: How breathy is their voice? Do they favor chest or head voice? What habits might influence their voice texture? For example, a hint of gravel can indicate age, a history of smoking, a life spent outdoors or other character traits. Ensure your voice textures can be used without vocal strain, as this can harm your vocal quality long-term.

Find Your Character’s Age

Aging your character up or down is another way to add voice texture. This quickly differentiates and builds a more well-rounded world of characters. It can also subvert expectations or establish an emotional connection with the audience, depending on its application.

Understand Your Vocal Placement

Vocal placement within the mouth is a subtle change that can significantly affect your character. Speaking from the back of the throat, the side of the mouth or the nasal cavity significantly impacts voice personality. This choice can also be made without vocal strain.

Specificity and consistency are key. Practice building awareness of vocal placement in others. Experiment by keeping all other character voice components the same and only altering placement; the character transformation can be surprising.

Don’t Forget About Your Body Posture

It may seem unusual, but changes in physical posture will be picked up by the microphone. Your body significantly informs vocal choices; though unseen, its influence remains active. Physical movement benefits voice acting skills. Remember, the body informs the voice, so avoid acting solely from the neck up.

Consider Your Character’s Dialect

Depending on a character’s history or location, dialect work can be a powerful storytelling tool. However, it requires research, practice and specificity. If creating numerous characters for a single project and vocal choices are limited, incorporating a dialect can add interest and range to the auditory landscape.

However, a poorly performed or misplaced dialect can do more harm than good. If your character requires a dialect, ensure you can convincingly perform it and that it aligns with the story’s world.

Think About Quick Character Types You Can Summon

When asked to create many distinct characters quickly, it helps to have a cast of character cues to draw from. Identify characters and actors whose vocal characteristics you can quickly and easily mimic and adapt. If you encounter a creative block, recalling your best Katherine Hepburn, James Earl Jones or Billy Crystal impressions can help spark ideas and facilitate character development.

Infinite nuances exist when developing vocal characters. As with any acting, thorough research and preparation are essential. Specificity, consistency and a willingness to play will set you on the right path.

Final Takeaways

Voice acting is a nuanced craft that demands a blend of vocal technique, character insight and physical awareness. From maintaining vocal health to mastering pitch, pace and texture, skilled voice actors build believable characters that captivate audiences. Here are key takeaways to help develop a strong foundation in voice work:

• Prioritize vocal health with proper hydration, warmups and care to sustain stamina and clarity during sessions.
• Use pitch and speaking pace strategically to differentiate characters and convey personality traits quickly.
• Add texture and age to voices thoughtfully, ensuring choices are sustainable and enhance character believability.
• Experiment with vocal placement and body posture, as subtle physical changes influence vocal expression and recording quality.
• Incorporate dialects carefully and rely on familiar character types or impressions to quickly generate diverse vocal personas.

Mastering these elements with specificity and consistency will expand your vocal range and deepen your acting versatility.

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