Demo Reel

[Wadclod]

Heyo.

With the advent of winter vacation, I've had the time to make a reel.

Please, scrutinize it if you will. If you hear anything wrong with it, please let me know. I want to get better, after all.

[Zangya]

Very nice. I'm VERY impressed. I might wanna use you in my next fandub.

[Erurenu]

AHAHAHA! i love funny reels.. oh and i dont mean your voice, your voice is awesome! you'll do really well with VAing

oh and Welcome! =D

[Wicked5]

WOW!

Really nice job... I really liked it...

(I might be able to use you for one of my radio plays!)

[Wadclod]

Thanks for the compliments.

Again, please be critical.

[MorningStar Smiles]

Bwa ha ha! Now comes the sometimes overly critical critique from your's truly (I just know people are going to slaughter me when my new demo comes out because I'm always nit-picky when it comes to demos XD. But that's a good thing!)

I think your voice is interesting and would fit in very well with the professional world but you need to have more than one voice. There are a lot of people out there who have a voice similar to your own and have probably been voice acting for a lot longer. It's kind of the harsh reality of the biz. One thing my art professor taught in one of my classes was that many people will be able to do the things you do, so what can you offer that's different and unique to only you?

You also need to vary speech patterns or they're all going to sound like the same guy. The two after the "die monster" clip started to do that but you could really do more to really set the voices apart.

Length: Although some professionals prefer demos to be no longer than a minute, some are fine with 1 1/2 to two minutes. So my advice is, if you're going to go over a minute go ahead and fill 1 1/2 to 2 minutes. That is to say, if your voices are different enough. Every VA has two options in demo making: 1. If you can do many different voices in clips that are 6-8 seconds then go for it, otherwise, 2. Stick to the few that you can do best and make them longer (10-12 seconds). The purpose is to show your range so make sure you do that. Try as many different character types as you can too to get you started in figuring out new voices. Try an evil character, try a wussy kid or a tough kid, try a sad clip, an angry clip, a clip where you're in love, a clip where you're nobility, etc etc. There are so many different kinds of stereotypes that you can play off of. Experiment and pick the ones you like best.

Also, it's generally a trick (that works quite well) among professionals to link the clips together somehow. This shows how clever the voice actor is, shows they really put a lot of thought and care into their demo, and ties everything together rather then just being a bunch of random voices thrown together. For example, say you have an evil character that says something like "The darkness will soon cover the world and I will be supreme ruler of all! Bwa ha ha ha haaa!" followed by the voice of a proud but gentle father saying something like "That's wonderful Junior! Now put away your toys and get ready for bed." Ok so that's a corny example but see how two things that are completely unrelated now connect smoothly from one to the other? That's what I mean ^_^

Also, I'm going to keep saying this for everyone who does it. Take out the surfer clip! It's an honest mistake because TONS of people put that in as a clip to really sound different from the others. However, this also means that everyone and their grandmother can do that voice which kind of lowers your uniqueness. Also, how often have you actually heard it used in a production? Why not come up with unique voices that are all your own or voices that you could easily see being used in many productions?

As far as acting goes, you did a pretty good job ^_^ I definitely like your energy. Sorry for writing so much but I hope this helps and I didn't come off sounding too harsh. Good luck and feel to pm me if you need any other advice. You're going to do just fine here ^_^

[Wadclod]

WORDS(Truncated for the sake of keeping things terse on this end, hah)

I greatly appreciate the input, thanks. I agree with most of your critiques.

I did sort of do this out of haste, and it shows. I'm no professional obviously (first time I've done this sort of thing) but I'm more than glad you commented from that sort of perspective, it's insightful.

Yeah yeah, the surfer clip, haha. It was a last minute thing to get to 1 minute and I ended up going over. But that brings up another point, got to work on that range. And I thought I sounded a bit unengaged, I'm not so good at getting into character.

Again, thanks for taking the time for your constructive words.

[M.ichi]

Very nice, You should show a wider range though, a few of the voices sounded the same, but great mixing!!!! and yay, .hack voices ^^

[MorningStar Smiles]

Oh no, that's fine. My first character demo was the first thing I ever recorded too and believe me, it sucked. I didn't even have decent sound quality at the time (hense the reason I no longer even have a link to it in my sig). We all have to start somewhere ^_^

As far as getting into character goes, one thing that helps some people is to write a couple of sentences before each line that you're going to record in your demo so that you have time to get into character. I'm personally somewhat lazy in doing this but I still take time between each new charcter to think about the character, what I want them to sound like, and an imaginary situation they are in that leads them to say this line. Picturing the whole thing in advance helps. After all, it's reacting not acting. ^_^