Is That The Voice of God!? Nah. It’s Just Mel! The Art of Voice Acting

Voice acting, a type of acting in which the actor is not traditionally seen but whose presence is usually only understood by their voice.  Voice actors are an important part in the animation industry because without them, any animated production would be a silent film and what fun would that be.

In the beginning, voice actors were not very publicized and had a fairly low profile.  A major exception was Mel Blanc, also known as "The Man of a Thousand Voices", and a few others.  It was the animated film Aladdin that changed the game on voice actors with its use the fact that Robin Williams was the voice of the Genie as a marketing technique.  With the success of the film, it opened up the floodgates of highlighting the voice actor, which in turn led to the movie companies choosing Hollywood actors for their name and not always for their experience. 

Voice acting, like regular acting, is an art form that takes talent, skill, and practice.  Some believe that there is actually more of a challenge to voice acting due to the fact that you do not have other actors present to feed off of.  Now as I stated, there does take an amount of skill to voice acting but there is a lot of practice involved also.  For those that would like to get into voice acting, there are many types of training that you can do with whole websites and books on the subject.  One such site can be found here.  This site has many pages written by DeeBradley Baker, who has voiced many characters such as Perry the Platypus, Klaus, and Numbuh 4.  His site discuss a wide variety of subjects dealing with voice acting, from how to begin, techniques to improve your skill, and don’t of the business.

Perry the Platypus

Numbah 4

Klaus the goldfish

In conclusion, to be a voice actor can be a lot of work, but it can also be a lot of fun and if you’re good enough, you could be very successful.

Adobe Flash vs. Anime Studio

Anime Studio and Adobe Flash are both modern programs used for animation.  Though they have similarities, that both are also quite different.

Adobe Flash is a program that is produced by, you guessed it, Adobe.  Flash has been around for almost 2 decades now, though it has been used over several different names. Flash can be used to create vector graphics, animation, games and apps, so it a very useful multimedia program.

Anime Studio is a program that has had several different distributors with the latest being Smith Micro.  It is purely an animation software.

It appears that both programs use vector images with some abilities to use raster images also.  The biggest difference between the 2 programs though is the process that the use to animate.  Adobe Flash uses frame by frame which is in conjunction with the “traditional” form of animation, which were cells.  Anime Studio on the other hand allows you to use bone, which in turn allows you to move parts of an object and not actually drawing out each new image to animate.

Adobe Flash was an industry standard for use and is still considered the professional program, being used to create some well know shows such as Danny Phantom, Happy Tree Friends, Total Drama, and a few others. One of the drawbacks of using Flash though would be that it is known to be a bit difficult and hard to use. 

Anime Studio on the other hand is beginning to get more credit as a program and is improving to the point that some prefer it to using Flash.  It is getting credit as a great beginners program because of its functionality and the fact that it uses bones instead of frame-by-frame. 

I am still looking into more information on these programs to figure out which would be the best for me to use. To I want to use the easier, beginners program that I have already learned the basics too; or should I teach myself the more difficult but “professional” program so I know it for the future.