Question for August 5th - August 13th 2012

[Sukisho]

Have you ever had to do an accent for a project? if so, was it hard to stay in character while preforming the accent?

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[~ChibiSammii]

I had to maintain a Chinese accent for this one fandub of IS. It was...insanely hard. Took me a while to record too (about two hours ?). I think I sounded a little flat, mostly because with more emotion, I lost the accent. However, the characters were just speaking, so I guess it was okay to an extent XD

[AmyAnn]

For myself, pretty much every project is a challenge. I've been able to use my natural accent in a few projects but they never got released and one is still in the works at the moment. I do find it really hard, sometimes, but it becomes natural after a while. The moment you start doing lines, it just works. There are a few words or sentences I struggle with but if I am having too much trouble and just can't get things done I ask the producer if I can switch it around a little.

[SS-chan]

For a few projects, I've had to maintain a British accent. It was definitely a challenge to stay in character while trying to maintain the accent. Even now it is still difficult and occasionally slips. However I feel with each time I do it, it seems to improve very slightly.

[Haruhost]

For some reason yes it was. But only cause I was very rusty at my brittish accent.

[Jalen K. Cassell]

As of late, I've found myself using accents more and more in various projects...I find it fairly easy to maintain the accent and emote because after I get comfortable with who the character is, I forgot I'm doing the accent and it comes naturally. The only time it really gets tricky is when I have to yell in the accent O_o

[Tomoyo Ichijouji]

Ironically enough the projects I have gotten paid for (in some form, shape or another) involved me using accents, even though accents are something I'm generally not good at! One was a Southern accent, which was the particular accent they were looking for in the character, and the other involved me using an English accent. The difficulty for me comes in maintaining the accent sufficiently and consistently; I don't have a problem staying in character when adding an accent per se.

For some strange reason, Southern accents come pretty easy to me (it's not my native one, nor have I lived in any place that would have that accent commonly), so there's been times I'll pop it into a project if someone asks me to put in some variation on a voice for like say an extra or something. English accents, I don't think it's particularly authentic or anything (makes sense, I've never been to Europe personally and my relatives either grew up in the US or in Taiwan, so I don't have anything to draw on there), but I've heard it enough and have the general tendencies down (how to pronounce the vowels, mainly) to do it without overmuch difficulty maintaining it.

Every other accent, I really just don't think I could pull them off, even if I delivered them totally flat ^^;; The most I've done beyond the two above is faking an Asian accent on English (i.e., pretending I'm a non-native Asian speaker), and that was only one case so far. French, Russian, Indian etc. accents -- I'd be embarrassed to display my attempts at them 6_6

EDIT: I will note though, that I had gotten cast for two characters, one by scout and another by audition, where I had to speak a language that I didn't personally know (Japanese and German, respectively). While I couldn't do a German accent to save my life, with some help from Google Translate I could manage to say a German line well enough so that I was cast for that character. o_O

[Wazzock]

I usually use an accent of some kind. A lot of the characters I've played were in the context of impressions, so an accent is usually necessary. Personally, I find it easier to stay in-character that way if the accent's a big part of the character. My natural accent isn't blatantly 'from' anywhere (it's more like a blend of accents from a few regions), so it helps to zero in on one accent.

[Konno]

I tried to do a Spanish accent a long time ago for a project where it wasn't mandatory. I figured that even though I don't have a distinguishable accent myself, I should be able to do some sort of a "Spanish accent" since I'm half-Spanish. But, yeah, it's not quite that easy. I tried to just imitate the people I know that do have thick accents, but I could never keep it consistent. Understanding why people speak the way they do helps tremendously (if it's not essential), but I just couldn't do it convincingly despite all the great information I seemed to have. Obviously, I wasn't dedicated enough.

Speaking a foreign language (without actually knowing that language, just pronouncing stuff right) is so much easier, haha.

Accents are something that I've always been kind of interested in but never really ready to get into. I don't want to do a horrible fake accent, so of course I'm going to work hard and try to sound believable when I finally start training for real. I hope to one day learn an Australian accent.

I'm sure that it's very hard to act with a "newly obtained" accent. But that's why you shouldn't jump into projects before you're fully confident and comfortable with it.

[Praxis678]

I had to do a Russian accent for a Dark Cloud dub. It was really fun, and I didn't have too much of a issue with it.

Accent I have the most trouble with probably has to be a Scottish one. Trying to find the sweet spot between sincere and silly is difficult when you have to roll your words.