Introduction
Hi there I’m John and I’ve made this Community Tutorial on how to do voice acting, we’re currently on version 1.0; I hope you enjoy and best of luck. Many people have a concept on what voice acting is all about. It is usually completely inaccurate. Recently I’ve started to study voice acting for the pure reason of helping the Roblox Developer community. Throughout the tutorial we will go through different levels of how complex the steps are. If you would like the best understanding my advice is to learn and master each step in sequential order. This tutorial won’t be 100% in depth and shouldn’t be used by its own to get a professional voice acting related job outside of Roblox because we’re not your coach so we won’t be able to cater to your every little whim. Through out this tutorial in order to master what we’re providing make take weeks or even months or years.
Encouragement
This is just a little section for those of you who feel down and don’t believe it can work. It might seem silly but sometimes little quotes can help.
You Can Do It!
“Rome wasn’t built in a day.” [John Heywood] (In other words keep going it might take a long time but you got it.)
“A man should look for what is, and not what he thinks should be” [Albert Einstein] (Someone should never expect something to come to them instead they should go out and find it for them self.)
What Is Voice Acting?
Voice acting is the art of being able to voice over a sequence of vocal movements in order to give the illusion of the being communicating or making verbal noises. (Definition by @Strongjohnfgamer)
Common Questions
Why is Voice Acting Important For A Game?
Voice acting is important for your game because humans are social creatures due to our neurobiology. With voice acting a player will hear the voice and feel more welcomed as if there was another human there. Take for example when you hear someone say “welcome” when you enter a place you feel more at home. That same principle applies for games, movies, etc. Over all I think as Developers we should help people feel welcomes which in return usually brings them into our community.
Why shouldn't (I/We) just talk into a microphone?
Voice acting might seem like a simple thing to do. You might think all you have to do it just pick up a microphone talk into it then upload it. But I want you to think about how the main key to voice acting is imagination and practice. Let’s try a exercise let’s go through these themes and record your self doing it. These themes will get harder and harder as we progress through them.
Themes:
- Robot: “I was made it a factory by Pittsburg” (No punctuation because that emphasizes a emotion)
- Farmer: “Boy potato’s and gravy sure taste good” (No punctuation)
- Business-man “Betty put me on line one please” (No punctuation)
Now I want you to stop recording if you haven’t already. Now think about each answer as we go down the list again.
Robot
I want you to think was your Robot all choppy sounding or smooth and soft toned sounding. Maybe choppy because you were going for an older Roblox vibe or smooth and soft voiced like a new robot. Or did you just not think about it at all. You got to remember to study what you’re trying to imitate. Remember the sound might change my location, surroundings, age, emotions, etc.
Farmer
Look back at your farmer was he slow talking smooth sounding or quick and hyper and “Yee doggy” sounding. Maybe if he talked slower and smoother he was from the south or quick and hyper like someone from the west. Remember location, surroundings, age, emotions, etc. Now to ramp it up a bit. He was talking about potatoes is he currently in the process of eating them or just finished maybe he is licking away any left over potatoes or gravy from his teeth. It’s important to go about know what your character might be doing or what he’s doing.
Business-man
So how was your business-man feeling? Did he have an annoying client to deal with and needed to change what line he was on to talk to his supervisor? That’s two emotions right there. Or was he happy because he just sold thousands of dollars worth of stuff and now he was going to tell his supervisor the good news. I cannot stress this enough know who you’re playing and what they’ve been up to. Now to throw a huge curb ball at you if you noticed each line I had you do had the letter p and the letter b in it at least once. That was no mistake those two letters require you to exhale and puff on the microphone. To stop that take your finger and hold it like you’re telling someone to hush move it about 2 1/2 to 3 inches away from your lips. That should block the air being pushed out of your mouth to split and muffle it.
Now look over your first attempt and study it. Think about all those things you learned and how it applies to you. Then after looking through all of them and studying and thinking of ways to improve try it again. Then once done look at how it came it hopefully it should be better. Now that’s why you shouldn’t just talk into a microphone. I bet you didn’t know that and reading through this will give you more tips of how voice act.
Level 1: Basics Steps
So let’s talk about the very basic steps of being a voice actor
Basic Steps
Introduction To Level 1
Even being level 1 and the most basic we need to go over more information like a schedule, excursuses and steps.
Schedule
The key to learning anything is doing it over and over again. The biggest key is to teach your brain a new muscle movement also known as muscle memory. Don’t think it works even for a basic level? Well think about something easy maybe eating. As you start to grow you learn first how to eat, what you like, how to savor your food, and more. So take these steps as extreme as you want to be good.
Release Notes
I’m currently working on Level 2 as well as audio examples once I fix my mike. Both updates should happen in about 1- 1 1/2 weeks.