When you’re creating a character voice, it’s tempting to start with the sound.
How high should it be? How low? Should it be raspy? Nasal? Fast? Slow?
Those questions can be useful, but they’re not where I like to start.
I start with the character.
Who Is This Person?
Before I decide what someone sounds like, I want to understand who they are.
What do they want? What are they afraid of? How confident are they? How do they see the people around them?
Those choices naturally begin to affect the voice.
A nervous character might speak differently from someone who believes they’re the smartest person in the room. A character who’s exhausted may have a completely different physical quality than someone who’s constantly full of energy.
Don’t Try to Sound Interesting
One of the easiest ways to create an artificial character is to concentrate on making the voice “interesting.”
Instead, make the character interesting.
If the character is believable, the voice doesn’t need to constantly call attention to itself.
Physicality Changes the Voice
Even when the audience only hears me, I find that physical choices can make a big difference.
I might change my posture, move my head, tighten my shoulders, or physically react to something happening in the scene.
Those choices affect the sound naturally.
Make the Voice Sustainable
A character voice might sound great for thirty seconds and become exhausting after three hours.
That’s a problem if you’re recording a video game or animated project.
Check out my blog on Voicing Thestus and Additional Voices in Mortal Shell II to hear how that played out on an actual game.
The best character choices are distinctive enough to be recognizable while still allowing you to perform them consistently.
The Voice Serves the Acting
A character voice is a tool.
If I’m concentrating so hard on maintaining a sound that I stop thinking about what the character is actually doing, the voice has become the performance instead of supporting it.
The audience should believe the person exists.
That’s the real goal.
If you want to hear character work in action, check out my character and video game voice acting page for demos and details.
