Hello all

I was just wondering if any of you do your own voice acting for your animations. If so, is it normal to get pains and aches. I'm making most of the voices for my characters and some of the voices i do, hurt me cause i have to make my voice high or low or make it sound weird and then it starts hurting.

Also, i feel like i'm going through my scrip and recording the characters lines. But then i forget how to do the voice of a certain character. I can go back and listen to a piece i recorded earlier but it's still kind of difficult to make it the same. 

ANy tips? 

maybe you could try some cherry-flavoured "throat lozenges".  those are my favourites.
don't forget to post a video, or all may be for naught.

Do the voice for one character at a time then work on the next one.

Try to make the voice memorable enough so you can remember how to do it the next time if you can't do it all in one sitting (sort of like how impersonators can get into the character of the person they are impersonating).  Develop the voice so you can go back to it without having to work on it and then do the voice work.

Give yourself plenty of breaks.

See if any of your friends are willing to do voice acting to help out.

Winterclaw, thanks for the tips.

I"ve developed the voices but they're  hard to do.

Yes i have 2 friends who will help me out. But they're just doing the female voices. All of the others i have to make.

I'm a shy guy, and i never speak with people and i'm not a reader either so my voice sucks and i'm not a good speaker, but well whatever. At least i'm trying.
That's funny, guy with no  speaking skills trying to do voice acting. 

As for remember how the voice should sound, I made special Reference sound files for each character. So i can open them and have them open in another sound program while doing voice recording on the Voice acting recording program. It's kind of helpful

Miss nancy, you also do voice acting? I bet you're better than me

You might want to google voice changing software. I found one "VOICE CHANGER SOFTWARE DIAMOND 7.0"  but it's $99. There might be some freeware alternatives. I don't know what the quality/realism is but in theory, you could use your normal voice and get consistent results for  different characters. If you check around your local community college drama department, you might be able to find some pretty good talent who would do it for free (or at least for pizza), or maybe talk the prof into giving them extra credit for it. A bonus, it would help with your shyness and help you to meet new people.

MorphVox is a good voice changer, too, and it's a little cheaper.

I've been acting for a long time, and I can tell you that if you're throat is hurting, you're probably working your larynx too hard, and not letting the rest of your breathing system do the work. Most of the effort for extended speaking needs to feel like it's coming from the bottom of your lungs, not the top.

Before you speak, you need to take a really deep breath, and evenly squeeze the air up through your larynx. If you have someone who can help you, have that person stand in front of you, and push his or her fists into your stomach (just far enough to make contact). When you breath in, you should feel a strong pressure increase against the other person's hands. If you don't, you're not breathing deeply enough. As you speak, the pressure should increase; if not, you're just lettting the air rush out willy-nilly, instead of in a controlled stream. By letting the air rush out so fast, you're making your larynx fight to keep control of the sound against the air, instead of letting your diaphragm do that work. This dries out the larynx, which makes it hurt, and it tires the larynx, which makes you hoarse.

Related to that, turn your head away from the microphone as you take your breaths, so the mic doesn't pick up so much of the air sound. Also, before your first speech, stretch your mouth out... try to stratch your lips down, up, left, and right, stick your tongue out, that sort of thing. It looks silly, but it helps your performance a lot.

As for your characters, I would agree with the idea of doing all your lines for one character first, then do the next character, then edit the lines together. A lot of professional animation is still done this way, to accomodate actor's differing schedules.

Another thing you can do is to improvise with your characters. Try it on your family and friends (if they'll put up with it, of course; I get varying degrees of support from my friends...); just have everyday conversation using your character's voice and mannerisms. I do improvisation exercises with a drama group I belong to, and it really helps your acting in general. It will also help your writing, too; you'll have a much better feel for how your character thinks by acting in real-world situations.

Hope that helps.

Somewhat off topic, but I had to laugh at myself when I re-read the topic header.

I thought it said: OT: Palin with Voice Acting and also How to Be consistent in the voice

 Hey thanks Captain.. How do you do it from the diaphram. I've always heard that , singers do it too but i have no clue how.

Anyways , i'm doing fine^ ^ just gets tiried sometimes. I've also had a throat injury ( badly damaged with dorito)before so i have to be extra careful.

I do improvise my voice and get into character.. And i speak in some chatrooms and guess what?

they get all mad at me and say that my voice is stupid. And they want me to talk with my real voice. That's dumb. What does it matter if i use my real voice or not in a chat room.. 

Cheeses, i'm just practicing my voices

Audacity is a nice, free program that lets you change pitch and tempo without changing speed and the effect results are quite nice. I don't like its noise removal feature but you can also go to download.com and pick up Wavepad for free as well. It has a limited trial that expires but a lot of the features are still available after the trail expires. It's pitch changer is not very good, though but its other features are very good including noise removal. If you want free then get both. Do your pitch work in Audacity and all other editing in Wavepad and you will get nice results without spending a dime. My only problem with Audacity is the noise removal feature. If they make it better, that will be the only free sound software you will need. However, CaptainJack is right. For the price MorphVox is quite nice.

Good luck :)

Quote - Hey thanks Captain.. How do you do it from the diaphram. I've always heard that , singers do it too but i have no clue how.

What it really means is that you have to take deep breaths. The diaphragm is a muscle system that is located around the lower third or so of the lungs. It works automatically to move air in and out of your lungs. When you take a deep breath, you can send a strong, steady stream of air out, instead of one that varies like wind on a stormy day.

Ever try to make noise with a balloon? Blow up the balloon, and stretch the opening out so that it makes a whining noise? If you blow up the balloon really big, you get a nice solid tone (okay, it's a loud screeching tone, but at least it's steady). If you don't put much air in the balloon, you either get no sound, or it wobbles and doesn't sound right.

So, how do you know if you're breathing deeply? Stand in front of a mirror. Breath in, and watch your shoulders. If your shoulders are rising with the intake of breath, that's wrong. Watch your abdomen. Is your belly pulling in or pooching out? If your breathing deeply, it should pooch out a bit.

You should also try the other things I mentioned. If you don't have someone who you can work with to press against your stomach, get as big a book as you can find, hold its top edge against your abdomen, and put the other end up against a wall. Feel how the pressure increases as you breath in, and feel how the pressure is stronger as you're speaking your lines. Practice that, and you'll get a feel for how it should work, and you can repeat that feeling when you're in front of the microphone.

As for your chat room, I think maybe you need some more mature friends to practice with.

I'd also make sure that you have a good mic system. With a solid mic, you have to exert yourself a little bit less to get good sound. I use a Samson C03U for my voice work, a podcast-level USB mic that is rock solid and makes a huge difference compared to the lower-end mics that typically come with computers. Spend the extra $20 and get a pop filter or clown nose and that will make your sound much cleaner.

Audacity works very well as a freeware app that allows you to change pitch and so forth, but changing voice pitch can only be done by an octave or so (and usually just a half-octave) before the voices start to sound foolish.

Other than that, practice, practice, practice.

Most of the time that is about as much as the pitch will ever need to be changed, though. It still comes down to the person speaking. If you are incapable of making your voice sound different then a pitch changer will not take your project far at all. But he seem to be able to pull that off so the range of a single octave give or take, is good enough. When I animated a monolog of Morgan Freeman I could make the voice but not at the depth of the actors voice. Pitch alteration applied and it sounded completely like him.

If your not trying to impersonate an actual person, then it's that much more beneficial and I wouldn't see why anyone would not prefer pitch alteration software. It's much easier then finding the people willing to act for free or even capable of voice acting. In my experience, it's hard to find people that will do it for nothing let alone have the necessary talent and not just read their lines as if it were a shopping list :)  My point being, use any and all talents and tools available. And yes, spend the money and get a quality microphone with a filter.

 Well all the Pitch alteration things i've tried( FOR MAC, cause i have mac) create Warble.. so it makes it sound like  robot. 

I tried it with Garageband, and recently with a thing called VoiceTweaker.
They do good voices, add to that the fact that I also change my voice and i have made up some neat character voices. But they create warble .

I'm guessing there's better voice changing software for the PC cause most things are made for pc.
But anyways, that's why i'm happy i got Female voice talent to help me. 

There's a lot of software out there for Mac, considering that Mac built a lot of its reputation on audio.

For example, there's an older program called SonicWORX Basic, which can still be found on some shareware sites. This is a fairly powerful free program for doing sound editing and digital signal processing. Had some neat voice effects, IIRC.

Audacity is also available for Mac--again, freeware and very powerful. I'd highly recommend it.

You can also look at Amadeus. I haven't used it, but for $40 it may be worth trying.

And then there's Pro Tools. Very high-end, with a price tag to match.