That There Blog of Robbie Burkett: 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.