Welcome to the world of Voice Actors!

Here you can see tips and experiences from the actors and producers point of view in online projects, as well as endeavors of going pro. From frustrations to accomplishments, as well as providing resourses for others who wish to persue voice acting as either a hobby or career.

Birth By Sleep FULL Secret Ending Fandub

MAN! I'm so proud of this, I can't believe I haven't posted it here to share yet (well, I haven't done much of anything since I've been in Beauty and the Beast...live theatre...suppose I could do another post on how I decided that I don't like live theatre anymore and I'd be just content with my VAing career as a hobby XD) but anyway, one of my quick dubs while waiting for lines for my two big projects, I really wanted to play Aqua in BBSs Secret Ending before it came out in English and her having an official English voice (so I could do my own interpretation w/o having others compare the voice matching skills)

I'm actually really proud on how the music and sfxs turned out, I made a number of sfxs by hand...er well, by rustling clothes XD Anyway, here's an English dub for all you KH fans! Yeah, this does kinda mean that my Memoirs story isn't going to be cannon with BBS, but meh, that story still has a good plot and message I still wanna share (so between the BBS and the Play, I haven't had much time to write, but I do have the first 2 worlds with audio readings that you can listen to!) ACK! Why am I spouting such a tangent? XD

Enough of that, here we go with the long awaited dub! (and it was cool to direct after I watched all the scenes from the game subbed so I could hint the actors in how to interpret...whether they took it like that or not, but meh, I felt smart with some connections I made lol)

I think I'll be submitting a portion of this to the vid contest for A-Kon this year (since there is a 7 minute limit)

I think this video shows I've come a long way in my mixing skills, I'm actually not despising mixing as much as I did when I did it all on the laptop.

Plus the joys of being original vocally was totally awesome too. Makes me want to not do any more voice-matching, but then again, if I see auds for an anime I like, I still can't resist XD And I get excited when the director encourages original interpretations (which may be bad of me because I looked for FUNi sound-a-likes on the Eizou Dubs, I might have casted that before I heard Vic Mignogna's advice about someone can sound just like the Japanese voice but can't act their way out of a paper bag--since then, I've tried to listen more on the performance than the vocal quality)

Any other insights I learned from this experience? hm...this is probably the first time I actually had fun with the mixing, and I love how it turned out. Before I prefered to stick to the scripting and acting.

So I guess the lesson is the more you hone your skills in an area, the more enjoyable it may become!

How To Start Voice Acting On-Line

Voice actor-ism! For those who would like to audition for VA roles but don’t know where to get started…TODAY IS YOUR LUCKY DAY! Because I’m going to tell you here and now what I found out with lots of frustrating searching.

Ok, first you will need a comp w/ a microphone somehow attached. Then you can download Audacity for FREE from online. You can save your voice in wav or ogg files, but if you want to save as an MP3, that is a separate, but free download offered at the same website.

Then you follow settings that are asked for in the audition, I usally don’t change the recording settings unless the producer wants the file saved in a specific Hz or bit rate that is different from the default.

Click “Record” and TALK! Click “Stop” when done and “Play” to hear yourself! If you push “Record” again, it will start a new line so when you play you will hear both lines unless you mute or solo one.

The beauty of not auditioning in person, you can do the line over if you mess up and the director will never know! I usually do a few takes of all the audition lines then select the one I think is best, highlight it, and under File “Export selection as wav” or MP3, etc. {In the new Beta version of Audacity, it is just "Export Selection" then you choose which format} Save it the way the person asked to save the lines (Usually Yourname_Character_AuditionLine#.MP3).

I then usually zip all my lines together for quick loading as an email attachment, and quick for the other person to download it off the email.(I tried an evaluation version of WinZip, but there is a simpler way that your computer is already capable of doing so-- right-click on a/the file(s) and selecting "Send to..." and "compressed folder" will do the trick. You may also add more files after creating a zip folder--just drag and place them over the zip folder and it will copy it into it.)

Looking for somewhere to start auditioning for roles? I started on Voice Acting Alliance I also just came across another forum, the Voice Acting Club for a smaller community and more animated projects.

{I'm Refi-chan on See My Profile! VAA has lots of tutorials, but you can message me if you need help!}

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