Welcome to episode 185 of the Voice Acting Mastery podcast with yours truly, Crispin Freeman!

As always, you can listen to the podcast using the player above, or download the mp3 using the link at the bottom of this blog post. The podcast is also available via the iTunes Store online. Just follow this link to view the podcast in iTunes:

http://www.voiceactingmastery.com/podcast

Welcome to the second and final part of my interview with the fabulous JP Karliak! You may be familiar with his extensive work in animation including Boss Baby: Back in Action, Spidey and His Amazing Friends, TrollsTopia, Dogs in Space, and the New Looney Toons! In games, he’s worked on Skylanders, Crash Bandicoot 4, and Marvel Avengers Academy. You can also hear him in anime shows like Fate/Grand Order the Movie and Neon Genesis Evangelion. He’s also the founder of Queer Vox, a not-for-profit training academy and community for LGBTQIA+ voice over talent, and co-founder of the non-partisan voter action group, NerdsVote.

In the previous episode, JP shared with us how he broke into voice acting. After seeing Disney’s animated film Aladdin as a child, he was convinced that only celebrities were cast to play animated characters. He pursued a more traditional acting career on stage and screen, but was pleasantly surprised to discover in college that his classmates appreciated his voice acting in their student film projects. One of his professors at the University of Southern California suggested he start taking voice over classes with professionals in the Los Angeles area, and JP quickly realized that he had found his niche!

In this episode, JP tells us what inspired him to become an actor in the first place. It turns out that JP had some very personal reasons why he found acting appealing. As a queer kid growing up in a small town culture that didn’t always approve of him, he had to spend a lot of time pretending that he was actually a straight person in order to fit in. Acting as characters in stories gave him the opportunity to play pretend without being self-conscious or worrying about satisfying other people’s cultural expectations. It was especially exciting for him if the character he was portraying was a powerful villain like his childhood favorite, Skeletor from He-Man and the Masters of the Universe! Inspired by his story, I then share with JP my personal reasons for pursuing acting, including the fact that I didn’t always fit in with the macho male stereotype that I felt pressured to adopt as a young boy. I’m sure JP and I aren’t the only ones who felt drawn to acting because it helped us explore and develop our emotional lives in a healthy way.

We then talk about QueerVox, the academy and community for queer actors that JP helped found with his colleague, and earlier guest on the podcast, Sarah Elmaleh. JP explains the inspiration for starting QueerVox, and how it has less to do with whether or not someone has the acting skills to be able to play someone other than their sexuality or gender identity, and more about making sure that queer actors benefit financially from the rise of queer characters and queer stories in entertainment. We also discuss how the industry keeps moving from a broadcasting paradigm where producers are trying to appeal to the broadest audience possible, to a narrowcasting paradigm where a show’s authenticity is important for securing a smaller, but more loyal fanbase. JP then talks about the different services that QueerVox offers both to aspiring talent, and to producers and casting directors who are looking to hire them! You can find out more about all of it at QueerVox.org.

After that, JP and I end our discussion with his advice to the aspiring voice actor and how he encourages all of his students to simply relax around their fellow industry professionals. It helps if you have interests and hobbies outside of voice over that you can share with your colleagues. That’s something that Dee Bradley Baker also mentioned in my interview with him back in episodes 146 and 147. Not only can sharing outside interests help you build a natural rapport with other voice over people, but it can also help replenish your own artistic well of creativity. Exploring this topic is a wonderful way to end our discussion and I’m happy I get to share JP’s insights with you!

Download Voice Acting Mastery Episode #185 Here (MP3)

Welcome to episode 184 of the Voice Acting Mastery podcast with yours truly, Crispin Freeman!

As always, you can listen to the podcast using the player above, or download the mp3 using the link at the bottom of this blog post. The podcast is also available via the iTunes Store online. Just follow this link to view the podcast in iTunes:

http://www.voiceactingmastery.com/podcast

I’m excited to share with you the first part of my interview with the incredibly talented, JP Karliak! He’s played characters in numerous animated shows including Boss Baby in The Boss Baby: Back in Action, the Green Goblin in Spidey and His Amazing Friends, Dante Crescendo in TrollsTopia, Happy, Bucky, and Luke in Dogs in Space and Wiley-E Coyote in the New Looney Toons. In games he’s played N. Tropy in Crash Bandicoot 4: It’s About Time, Wolfgang in Skylanders: Imaginators, and Vision in Marvel Avengers Academy. In anime he’s played Miruchi in Kuroko’s Basketball, Gawain in Fate/Grand Order the Movie, and Fuyutski in Neon Genesis Evangelion. He’s also the founder of Queer Vox a not-for-profit training academy and community for LGBTQIA+ voiceover actors and co-founder of the non-partisan voter action group, NerdsVote, which encourages all pop culture fans to get involved in American democracy. With all this going on, I’m not sure when JP finds time to sleep!

In the first part of our talk together, he tells me how he broke into the world of voice acting. While JP enjoyed watching Loony Toons when he was a kid, and had a special love for the character of Skeletor in the original He-Man animated series, he never thought that he would be able to voice those kinds of characters himself. He was familiar with the Disney animated film, Aladdin, where Robin Williams played the Genie character, and after seeing that film, JP assumed that one had to be a famous movie star in order to work on animated shows so he never thought it was a viable career path for himself. Instead, he decided to pursue more traditional forms of acting on stage and in front of the camera. He started college in the D.C. area where he focused on studying acting, but eventually transferred to the University of Southern California to finish his degree and pursue acting in the Los Angeles area.

At USC, a few of his classmates asked him to provide voices for some of their film and animation projects. He was happy to do so and was pleasantly surprised when he got positive feedback on his performances. He was encouraged to seek out Kelly Ward, a professor at USC who worked extensively as a director on many animated shows. Kelly suggested that JP take classes with working professionals in the LA voice over industry including voice actor Bob Bergen and voice director Ginny McSwain. While he did pursue some on-camera work in LA at the beginning of his career, JP quickly began to focus on voice over as the area where he felt most comfortable.

After discussing the origins of JP’s career, we then take the time to go over each stage of his voice acting journey in very close detail. I think it’s valuable to hear all the different small steps that someone took to reach their current level of success. When talking about someone’s experiences after the fact, it can often seem like the end result was inevitable. However, when you go back in time and look through that person’s perspective from moment to moment, you begin to realize that they were just trying to do the best they could,with the resources they had at the time, as well as the options in front of them! No outcome is guaranteed, and often the path forward can seem confusing or unclear when you’re trying to navigate it in the present moment. Hopefully hearing the challenges that JP faced and overcame as he was negotiating his career path will help inspire you to persevere in your own voice acting journey!

Download Voice Acting Mastery Episode #184 Here (MP3)

Welcome to episode 181 of the Voice Acting Mastery podcast with yours truly, Crispin Freeman!

As always, you can listen to the podcast using the player above, or download the mp3 using the link at the bottom of this blog post. The podcast is also available via the iTunes Store online. Just follow this link to view the podcast in iTunes:

http://www.voiceactingmastery.com/podcast

Welcome to the second and final part of my interview with Amanda C. Miller! Amanda has worked extensively in animation, video games, and anime including Boruto: Naruto Next Generations, Sailor Moon and Sailor Moon Crystal, and the Dangan Ronpa video games. In American animation, she’s worked on Netlix’s She-Ra and the Princesses of Power, Kid Cosmic, and DC Super Hero Girls. Amanda also works on-camera as an actor and behind the scenes as a writer and producer of her own web series! Having recently moved to Atlanta, Georgia to pursue acting opportunities there, she brings a unique perspective on how to manage an acting career where she works both in Atlanta and on remote voice acting projects in LA.

In the previous episode, Amanda explained how she broke into voice acting. While she initially intended to pursue a career as a theater actor in New York city after graduating from college, she changed her career trajectory after taking a voice acting class with veteran voice actor and director, Tony Oliver. His feedback encouraged her to pursue voice acting in Los Angeles instead. Amanda moved to LA, interned at Bang Zoom studios, and quickly learned what it took to work professionally as a voice actor. There was no magic “break through” moment where she was suddenly discovered. In fact, she didn’t win the 2009 AX Idol voice acting competition held at Anime Expo, but was only a runner up. That didn’t stop her. She continued to develop her abilities as a voice actress. Her success is due to the fact that she can deliver consistent, believable, and professionally competitive performances over and over again.

In this episode, we dive into what inspired Amanda to become an actor in the first place. Amanda was a very shy and sensitive child who moved around a lot due to her father being in the military. While she couldn’t control her circumstances or her surroundings, she did develop a rich imagination. She would create characters and stories where she could explore different emotions, relationships, and situations. Her fantasy life definitely helped inspire her acting pursuits! We also talk about what it’s been like for her to play a beloved character from her childhood, Sailor Jupiter in the Sailor Moon and Sailor Moon Crystal anime series. We then get into a discussion about how you can find satisfaction in the face of the uncertainty and volatility of an acting career. At the end of our talk, Amanda shares with us her advice to the aspiring voice actor including how important it is to find value as a human being regardless of how successful you are in your career! So without further ado, here’s Amanda!

Download Voice Acting Mastery Episode #181 Here (MP3)

Welcome to episode 180 of the Voice Acting Mastery podcast with yours truly, Crispin Freeman!

As always, you can listen to the podcast using the player above, or download the mp3 using the link at the bottom of this blog post. The podcast is also available via the iTunes Store online. Just follow this link to view the podcast in iTunes:

http://www.voiceactingmastery.com/podcast

I’m very happy to present the first part of my interview with the multi-talented Amanda C. Miller! Amanda has played many famous characters in animation, video games, and anime including Boruto in Boruto: Naruto Next Generations, Sailor Jupiter in Sailor Moon and Sailor Moon Crystal, and the characters Junko and Toko in the Dangan Ronpa video games. In American animation, she’s played Flutterina in Netlix’s She-Ra and the Princesses of Power, and Jo in Kid Cosmic, the new animated series from Powerpuff Girls creator, Craig McCracken! Amanda also works on-camera in films and web series, including the comedic web series, Ghosts ’n Stuff, Inc. where she co-produced and wrote many of the episodes! I’m excited to get her perspective on the voice acting industry as well as what it’s been like for her starting her career in Los Angeles and having now moved to continue her career in Atlanta, Georgia.

Amanda had an international upbringing. A self-proclaimed Air Force brat, Amanda was born in Germany and spent much of her childhood traveling back and forth between Germany, Florida, and Maryland, eventually settling down in Maryland after she was in the 7th grade. She started participating in her school’s theater program during middle school and high school and had every intention of graduating college and moving to New York to do Broadway theater. However, while in college at the University of Maryland, she had the opportunity to take a voice over class with Tony Oliver from Bang Zoom recording studios. After the class, Tony told her that she had real potential as a voice actress. She decided that instead of pursuing acting in New York after graduating college, she would move to Los Angeles to pursue voice acting opportunities there. She applied for an internship at Bang Zoom, was accepted, and began to learn about the voice over industry during her time there. This eventually gave her the opportunity to start auditioning for voice over work. As she repeatedly demonstrated her ability to perform characters at a professionally competitive level, she gained access to more voice over opportunities which allowed her to pursue union voice over work and to eventually land an agent.

I enjoy talking with Amanda about her journey because like me, she was a very shy child. She was not gregarious and outgoing as most people expect actors to be. Instead, what drove her to perform was the desire to bring characters and stories to life, not to get attention from others. She understood that in order to achieve continuing success as a professional actor, she had to apply herself diligently to doing the “boring work” as she puts it of being able to give consistently believable performances as well as being reliable and easy to work with. She also did her best to network with fellow actors and reach out to studios to market her skills to them. She even emailed yours truly back in 2009 when she took an acting class with a classmate of mine from Graduate Acting School. My classmate had suggested that Amanda reach out to me directly to ask about the voice over industry in LA! Amanda’s ability to be courageous in connecting with industry professionals coupled with her sustained commitment to honing her acting skills has truly served her well and I’m eager to share her story with you!

Download Voice Acting Mastery Episode #180 Here (MP3)

Welcome to episode 179 of the Voice Acting Mastery podcast with yours truly, Crispin Freeman!

As always, you can listen to the podcast using the player above, or download the mp3 using the link at the bottom of this blog post. The podcast is also available via the iTunes Store online. Just follow this link to view the podcast in iTunes:

http://www.voiceactingmastery.com/podcast

This is the second and final part of my interview with Feodor Chin. You can hear Feo’s voice over work in games like Overwatch, Ghosts of Tsushima, League of Legends, and World of Warcraft: Mists of Pandaria. He’s worked on the Regular Show for Cartoon Network, and on-camera he’s worked on TV shows such as Nash Bridges, The Mindy Project, and Jane the Virigin. He’s also narrated or contributed narration to over 100 different audiobooks!

In the previous episode, Feo outlined the steps he took to become a professional actor. There was no single moment when he “broke into show business”. Instead, Feo diligently studied to improve his acting skills and then consistently took the actions necessary to find acting opportunities. This included regularly marketing his skills to producers and casting directors who were hiring actors. This is the unglamorous homework that it takes to book regular work as an actor. No one in the industry suddenly discovers you and then paves a path to success for you. If you want to get paid to voice act, you need to master your art, research your industry, and then market your professionally competitive skills to producers who are looking to hire top notch acting talent for their projects. Feo never shied away from putting in all the behind-the-scenes work that was necessary to help him become a working actor both in voice over and on-camera.

In the final part of our discussion, I ask Feo what inspired him to become a performer in the first place. In the previous episode, Feo had mentioned that in high school, he had seen Dustin Hoffman’s performance as Willy Loman in the movie, Death of a Salesman. Hoffman’s acting had made a huge impression on Feo, so in this episode, I ask Feo to outline in more detail what exactly was so compelling about that performance. Feo explains that after watching Hoffman perform, he became fascinated with diving deep into the emotional life of a character. He talks about the satisfaction he gets from fully embodying a character, especially when a character’s psychology is incredibly rich or nuanced.

After that, we discuss Feo’s background in improv and sketch comedy. He explains to me the differences between full improvisational performances and the sketch comedy writing that he works on most often. We then talk about how we both apply our improv background to the challenges we face as voice actors, especially when we’re given very little information about a character or the story they come from, and yet are still expected to deliver authentic and believable performances. We also discuss the challenges Asian-American actors face in the entertainment industry and how Asian representation in media has changed over the past 20 years or so. We wrap up our discussion with Feo’s advice to the aspiring voice actor, and how important it is to be open to different career opportunities because you never know where you’re going to find success.

Download Voice Acting Mastery Episode #179 Here (MP3)

Welcome to episode 175 of the Voice Acting Mastery podcast with yours truly, Crispin Freeman!

As always, you can listen to the podcast using the player above, or download the mp3 using the link at the bottom of this blog post. The podcast is also available via the iTunes Store online. Just follow this link to view the podcast in iTunes:

http://www.voiceactingmastery.com/podcast

Welcome to the second part of my 10th anniversary feature! As I mentioned in the last episode, the Voice Acting Mastery podcast is now officially 10 years old! I released my first podcast episode in July of 2011 and I wanted to take these two episodes to celebrate that important milestone. I’ve always tried my best in this podcast to share the most practical and useful information I could on what it takes to succeed as a professional voice actor and I hope the content I’ve provided in this podcast has in some way helped each and every one of my listeners.

For these episodes, I asked my listeners to either call in or e-mail me a voice message letting me know how the Voice Acting Mastery podcast may have influenced their own acting journey or any other part of their lives! I received a flood of messages and I’m grateful for each and every one of them. I thought it would be a nice way to celebrate the occasion if I shared some of the messages I received and responded to them here on the podcast.

In the previous episode, I shared 3 messages from listeners who talked about how the podcast helped their mindset when it came to approaching voice acting. It allowed me to expand on their ideas and share some important mindset goals including how to approach auditions without stressing about them afterwards, the importance of doing your best to express a character rather than impress a casting director, and why there is no such thing as a “right” way to perform a character.

In this episode, I’m going to be sharing 3 calls that focus more on the practical approach one can take to pursue a professional voice acting career. I think it will be a good compliment to the previous episode.

I’d like to start with a message I received from Riley, a young voice actress from Louisville, Kentucky.

When Riley was in the 7th grade, she watched a Netflix documentary about the voice over industry. It so inspired her that she became obsessed with researching what it would take to become a voice actor. One very wise thing she did was to surround herself with other actors and creative artists by attending a local performing arts high school and then continuing her artistic education in college.

I emphasize how valuable it can be to participate with a community of creative artists, even if the only way you can collaborate with them is online! I’ve learned just as much, if not more from my fellow actors as I have from my acting teachers!

Our second call is from Paul in Los Angeles.

Paul feels like the podcast was the friend in the industry that he always wanted, but never had in real life. Paul shares some of his professional acting journey with us and it’s clear that he’s been able to combine both professionally competitive acting skills with an entrepreneurial business spirit. I congratulate him on his ability to manage those two sides of his career and say how much I wish I had had teachers that helped me learn more about the business side of an acting career. I emphasize how much I try to share my business acumen in the podcast and how heartening it is to hear that Paul has found my podcast so helpful in his journey!

Our last call in this episode is from Afaz in Greece!

Afaz wants to thank me for both the detail I pursue in my interviews with industry guests, as well as my commitment to making sure I explain any confusing or esoteric terminology. I thank her for her compliment. It’s always been a high priority of mine to make sure my podcast remains accessible to anyone who is curious about voice acting, regardless of whether they are already familiar with acting jargon. Often teachers will suffer from something called “the curse of expertise” where they will forget what it was like when they were a novice in the industry. I’m glad that Afaz appreciates all the work I have put in to making sure none of my audience is left behind.

There’s a piece of advice that I’ve heard articulated by many different teachers including the famous physicist Richard Feynman that goes like this, “If you want to master something, teach it.” I can testify to the fact that teaching others has improved my own artistry tremendously and I advise my listeners to teach what they know to others if they truly want to achieve Voice Acting Mastery.

I’m grateful to all of my listeners who have diligently listened to this podcast over the last 10 wonderful years, and I look forward to the topics we’ll explore together in the future. Thanks again to those of you who called in and left such wonderful messages. I truly appreciate them all. Until next time, I wish you all the best in your voice acting endeavors. Take care!

Download Voice Acting Mastery Episode #175 Here (MP3)