Ottawa International Animation Festival
If you were lucky enough to get to the Animation festival than you got to see all the great animation being screen there. If you are interested in voice acting you also might have bee lucky enough to attend Stevie Vallance’s voice over workshop. She shared a few different ways she coaches people in voice acting for animation. She got a few volunteers to get behind the mic and try their voice acting skills by not thinking too much, leaving their inner adult at the door, and lots and lots of laughter. I got a chance to interview her for my current affairs class and The Algonquin Show which airs on CKDJ 107.9 every morning at 9. She is a very energetic person with a lot of great information that she shares with voice acting fans, people in the industry, and those trying to break into the industry.
I will re-post my segment from the Algonquin Show for anyone that wants to take a listen. It is about 5min long and includes part of an interview I got with Dave Cooper.
In my experience attending Stevie’s short workshops at the animation festival have been well worth it. They share a lot if information on voice acting for animation but it makes you wanting more. If you are truly serious about becoming a voice actor you should take a full voice over workshop, some improv or dramatic arts classes, or a even better a full course in acting for television. Radio Broadcasting has helped me with some of my behind the mic preformance, including breathing, speaking clearly, and telling a story. This is good for getting into commercial voice overs but for animation voice overs you really need to learn how to act because as Stevie says only 10% is voice the other 90% is getting into the character.
If you live in Canada and are interested in taking Stevie’s workshop you can check it out on her site http://toonedin.ca She does workshops in different cities including Vancouver, Toronto, New York, and Ottawa though be quick because space is limited and she may not be doing workshops for much longer. I am planning on attending one of her workshops in the future though be warned the fees aren’t cheap at around $300 for a basic one day workshop and the price goes up from there…but before you complain about the price remember Stevie has to account for travel costs, hotel costs, and the cost of booking a studio for the day and her fee helps out with all of this. Once I attend one of her workshops I will let everyone know how good it is and weather it is worth taking or not. Though considering she is one of the only people in Canada that does voice coaching it is more convienient than catching a flight to the United States.
Character Voices 
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