Creating Good Voice Overs

[Greg Squire]

I didn't want to derail the other thread on "Voice vs No Voice", so I'm starting a new topic, and that is "What makes for good voice acting?"  What are the elements that make it good?

I'm sure there's more art to this than science, but I'm looking for some "rules of thumb" that may help us beginners create quality voice over work. I'll take a stab at what I think makes for good voice work, but I'd also like to hear suggestions from all you veterans out there.

1.  Have a good audio recording setup
The ideal here would be your own sound studio, but the cost of that is out of the range of most of us. I think you can get by if you use decent enough recording equipment (probably doesn't need to be high end, mid-range may work, but $5 pc mic won't cut it).  Needs to be a condenser (not dynamic) mic.

2.  Have your scripts organized (with dramatic clues and enough context) to help the voice actor.
You need more than just the lines.  There needs to be some story and emotional context given to the voice actor.


3.  The voice needs to fit the character (voice casting)
There are some obvious things here like sex, age, accents/dialects, ethnicity, and roughness/softness that need to fit the character, but what are some other things to look (or rather listen) for.  Please note that I'm saying the voice has to match, not the voice actor has to match.  In other words, a white man could do the voice for a black man, or vice-versa as long as the the voice actor can sound like the character.  Likewise a woman could do the voice of a young girl, as long as it sounds like a young girl.

Lastly, where do you find decent voice actors?
If you're on a budget I imagine going to your local college or university and finding students enrolled in theater, might fit the bill here?  They've had some theatrical training, but don't have a big name for themselves yet. They are still building their portfolio.
I'm sure there's lots of voice actors that can work remotely via the internet, but I would worry that different voices recorded on different equipment, might create some audio artifacts in the final product that might be "jarring" to the listener.


Also, here's some blog posts / articles on creating good voice overs

http://nygamedev.blogspot.com/2011/05/on-headset-microphones-and-my-own-damn.html
http://seguinsound.com/2006/02/18/how-to-produce-voice-overs-that-dont-suck-part-i-why-voice-over/
http://seguinsound.com/2006/03/01/recording-voice-overs-that-dont-suck-part-ii-the-tools/
http://seguinsound.com/2006/03/11/how-to-produce-voice-overs-that-dont-suck-part-iii-the-talent/
http://seguinsound.com/2006/11/16/how-to-produce-voice-overs-that-dont-suck-part-iv-editing-and-post-production/
http://www.garagegames.com/community/blogs/view/12138

[MadReizka]

Didn't check the links but here are few more hints:

There are a lot of USB microphones out in the market that has good enought sound quality. Lot of podcasters use these since you don't need any additional mixers and they are quite cheap. (They use USB because the microphone-in plugs on soundcards usually make everything sound bad. You could have good microphone, and when you plug that sucker to your gaming sound card and it sounds like some old c-casette recorder.)

Other thing to remember when recording home or anywhere other than a studio is to take note of background noise and does the room you record in have echo. Both are hard to get rid of later without professional audio tools, so best bet is to get rid of both (the noise and echos) before recording.
Easy way to get rid of room echo is to hang some curtains or other fabrics to walls and have lots of mats and rugs on the floor. Good starting point on getting rid of BG noise is to isolate the source or move the mic as far from it as you can.

[Azure]

For USB mics you can't really go wrong with either a Blue Snowball or Yeti.  I also think taking time to cast properly is important, a lot of first time game peeps seem to rush things or cast before they need to. Really voice casting can some toward the end when the script is finalized and your game has taken shape.
As for finding people there's a sizeable amateur voice acting community. I run one site and there are others as well as a few sub communities on other game making sites.