Question for November 29 - December 5, 2010

[Amby Leigh]

Has there ever been a character you were cast in that was totally alien to you and how you normally sound or act? How did you face the challenge of a character THAT different from yourself?

[Akumaryu]

ABSOLUTELY. Actually, in a role I'm not allowed to talk about. But the character is a villain, and a loud, deepish-voiced, ridiculously-violent and callous person. A lot of screaming and ordering people about. It was a very difficult role for me, as I tend to be more of the "Please do this for me" kind of guy, as opposed to the "Do this or I'll kill you with my bare hands" kind of guy. I approached the character more as if he had a superiority complex; everyone around him was an unworthy, sniveling pile of filth that had the GALL to address someone of my caliber. It wasn't easy, but eventually I fell into the role. :)

Another difficult role for me to fall in is anyone of noble or upper-class birth, especially if they've grown up with that same socioeconomic status. I found (through the wonderful guidance of Mr. Freeman) that I have an internal bias to characters of that kind of background. The reason behind that probably has something to do with my relatively humble upbringing. I think the role this was most apparent in was when I was approaching Leo in Scrapped Princess (also at Mr. Freeman's workshop). I had to make him an innocent teen (my specialty), but still noble and gallant (where the trouble comes in). Not easy for me. So I always have a tough time playing those characters and making them noble without making them snobby and stuck up. It's a challenge I constantly practice at, but still feel like I could use some work there. ^_^;

[Subaru-camui]

Yeah, I was scouted by Gonax to play Saisaishi in a G Gundam clip and his voice was very high and rough and I was so use to doing the medium to medium low smooth voice. So I did my best to make my voice as rough as I could, maybe even having a sip of water and have it stay in my through for a while, and I made it as high as I could which hurt my voice sooo much, but in the end it fit really well and I was happy about it

[lightofhope18]

As most know, in voice acting I'm always type-cast as the soft spoken/motherly chick. It's a given. However, in stage acting, it's the complete opposite. I'm always the screamer. So I'm currently cast as Laura in the Glass Menagerie by Tennessee Williams and by far she is the most frustrating character I've ever played. She is extremely complex and bottles up her emotions which I find difficult to express on stage. I'm still playing around with her character, but I feel like I can't grasp her personality. It's a work in progress. :3

For voice acting, the most recent role I've had that was completely opposite of mine was as Yuri from Armed Librarians whom I self cast. Honestly, when I did that, I just did it because she seemed like a fun character. But trying to pull off a drunk voice was the hardest since I do not hang around drunks and my interpretation is pretty shallow. So I just drank a lot of pink lemonade and ate a bag of Ruffles chips late at night and that really helped me get giddy and happy. Her voice was rather complex as well since it was normally medium, but would keep on getting higher when she was drunk. I kept on wanting to make it lower but it never sounded right.

[Y. Chang]

I feel like every role I've ever been cast in falls under this category.

I guess I just do my research, chat with the producer, and bring out what feels right.

[ichigo_m]

In Vaing not really. But for stage acting oh yhea!
My latest role of Cecily Cardew from the Importance of Being Earnest was really hard for me, but actually it was hard because she /was/ like me. Almost exactly like me. I find it to be harder, when characters are like me.

[Jigen's pink puppet]

Well, lightofhope, good luck with developing that more understated character! ^^ It's interesting that you get cast for completely different roles in voiceover than in theater.

I'm more comfortable with playing characters farther away from my own personality. The grander and larger-than-life the character is, the easier it is for me. Therefore I have difficulty with conversational dialogue. ^^;

The character and myself are separate. So then I try and find the character somewhere in the story/world. For voiceover a long time I just dove into it without really thinking. : ( Lately I'm trying to apply what I'm learning in theater--in my case, start from physicalizing--which also conveys social status and just their most basic outlook on life-- and then adding in the context/psychological component, which affects and adds to the basic framework. It's crude, but so far it works. ^^;;; Also, it eliminates the problem of being so different from the character, because it's not necessary to become the character--you (the general you) only need to understand the character well enough to convey him/her.

[Scarlotte]

Voice acting wise the more alien/weirder and more challenging the character/voice the more fun it is to record. There is only one character that I remember who was vocally quite close to my normal voice but her personality drove me insane. She was a very realistic character but extremely nosy and just plain pissed me off. Like if I ever met that character in person I'd slap her. D:< Her personality was just every bit what I told myself never to become when I was growing up, so having to pretend to be like that just... it was just upsetting to record, I would end up hating her more and more after each line. :/

Other than that I tend to do a lot of angry screaming and yelling roles which to this day I have never genuinely gotten angry enough at one person to start to even yell at them.

[Seymour]

hmmm, I suppose when I have to play someone thats a bit lower than my voice can go or a bit off-key personality wise, or I dont get enough info on the character, I feel like I'm just taking a shot in the dark when recording, even after I do my research on them.

[Ovarku]

Yes. Let me provide an example...

Para_Bolic cast me as Happy the Cat in his Fairy Tail dub, and the role is originally done by a woman. So I first thought i'd have to get a felinish voice going....didn't work out. Here is the strange part, in a call with Para, I did this voice where I was doing Heath Ledger's Joker, but here's the thing, I raised the pitch as high as the voice could possibly go. I think it all worked out.

That is one example that is completely from my original voice and personality.... I think. It's the closest example I could tell.

[Kei]

I played a father character once, when I was like...17...I'm trying to remember whose project it was...

I didn't have much of a range at that point , well...it was more like I didn't want a range, so me accepting the role was odd.

[MissAck]

Definitely.
But with that comes my responsibility to man up and figure it out. If they've cast me as that character I've clearly shown my potential in the alien character then it's my turn learn to stretch my abilities to what they want beyond that.
I have to get as MUCH background information on the character as I can. Whether it's about their past, their mannerisms towards people or if they awkwardly chew on their hair while waiting for their toast to pop.
Then it's all about convincing myself the personality. "I'm a bitch." "This scares the crap out of me." "I think that guy is a total skeez and clearly I'm in need of new make-up, uh duh."

[Amby Leigh]

I have never had anyone that was really SO out of character for me that it was troublesome. At least in voice acting wise really. Like someone said above though, I've had a few stage acting challenges in my time. A few times I had to play characters that were much older then me. The issue with being type cast in the "mature" roles. Playing an old woman is HARD. Sounding like one, yeah that's one thing. Having to walk around a stage like one when you are only actually 18 years old at the time? Let me just say... eek.

[Blue Leader]

Honestly, not really... I've been cast as villains a few times, and while I'm not that evil, I tend to usually speak in the deeper, sometimes more "rugged" voice.
The most "different" character I've been cast as was Drosselmeyer from "Princess Tutu", mainly because of all of the highs and lows I tried to get with that character. I wanted him to sound like he was off his rocker, so I tended to do the lines fairly low and "old-man-like", but every so often would raise my voice a bit, or even try to break or crack my voice, making him sound rather looney-- which he is, basically.
But Drosselmeyer was probably the most different character from myself that I've played. Though, granted, I haven't been cast as all that many characters. I haven't auditioned in quite some time...

I have to admit, I envy you guys who can act on the stage. I can't physically act to save my life. Though acting is one thing, remembering a bunch of lines... Impossible. Heh, my memory is about two seconds long. >>;;