Voice Acting 101 tutorial

So, you've decided you want to start doing voice over!

First off, congratulations and welcome to the fold!

You have scrounged up a microphone that you deem has decent quality, you've seen other voice actors do their stuff and you can't wait to enter the same fantastic world they must be wallowing in every day.
You'll start small, but eventually you'll hit something big and you'll be the envy of the internet!

It then strikes you, that you have no clue as to where to start this awesome experience.

There are a few tutorials on voice acting in this group, but none of them really point you in the right direction of where to take those tentative first steps. Hopefully this will change with this tutorial.

This tutorial assumes that you have the following:

- A microphone
- Interest in doing voice over
- The guts to do it (I've covered this in an earlier article)

Now with that out of the way, where does one start when it comes to voice over? What material does one reach for? Who will you contact? Who CAN you contact?

In order to get yourself out there as a voice actor, the first thing you need is some material to show what you can do and where you're at skillwise as a voice actor.
Voice actors who don't post any past work run the risk of being instantly ignored. What voice actors need to realise is that we humans are, by human nature, lazy beings, and like electricity we seek the easiest solution to most things.

A developer visiting a voice actors site where there is material for him to skim through, will be much more inclined to hire him instead of the voice actor who has nothing to show for, even if he has past experience.

"But doesn't one need to join a project to get material? It's a neverending evil circle of disappointment!" you cry out.

Not necessarily. There will be projects out there who will take on a beginner with no questions or showreels asked, so visit every forum you can that has something to do with voice over, find projects that you like and apply for several at a time (5 at a time isn't very unusual).
The reason why is that the chance of these projects either a) being cast with someone else, b) dying as free projects are wont to do, is pretty high, and the more potential callbacks you have, the better.

Here are a few forums to get you started:

Moddb.com
Voiceactingalliance.com
Voiceacting.proboards.com
If you are unlucky and get no responses at all to anything, you have to pull up your sleeves and get creative. There is a vast amount of text out there just waiting for you to try it out. Short stories, scenes from movies, monologues the list is unending.

And if you still don't find any material to use for your showreel for whatever reasons, you can always try your hand as a writer and write your own monologues.
I did this myself and was quite proud of the results back when I did them. Now I just die a little inside every time I hear them.

If you after this STILL don't get any work, try and find a senior voice actor who can listen to your work and give you feedback on it. I know with myself that I only feel flattered if people ask for my opinion on this kind of thing, so it won't hurt to ask other voice actors if they're of the same persuasion.

So now you have a pointer as to how to get material to show off, which can hopefully be used for more interesting stuff as leverage later and you know where to look for projects that you can work on. You also know what to do if you, despite everything, don't get any work no matter how much you try.

There is really not much else to it than this. If there is, I haven't gotten that far yet myself.
But hopefully this information will help you get your foot in the door as a voice actor, and get you started on a wonderful journey in voice over.

Go out there, create clips, post them on youtube, moddb, all the sites I linked and let the world know you're here!

If you feel that there are questions unanswered in this tutorial, shoot me a PM here on moddb, and if I think the question holds merit I'll update the tutorial accordingly.