The infancy of voice acting is over. When I first began looking into voice acting, I encountered a mass of horrific tragedies. Now that the introduction to bad and ugly of v.o. is out of the way, I am thrilled to discuss the emerging reputable side of the trade by way of voice actor Yuri Lowenthal. Yuri has worked on several video games and was kind enough to answer some questions about the voice acting trade with me.

So what does an industry veteran think about bad voice acting? Was it the writing, the actor, or a constrained recording times? Or maybe it’s something else?

“It can be all of those things. The actor could be tired, bored or miscast. The writing could be thin. The director might not have done his or her homework, or might not be giving the actor enough context. The project may be on a short timeline that neither the director nor the actor has enough time to really figure things out and work on it. The budget may not allow for the production to hire enough actors to play all the roles, so an actor may end up playing more roles than they should in a single game. Any one of those people could just be having a bad day.” he told me. But, happily, he ended by saying, “By that same token, though, any of those people could do a great job or have enough time to really take the game to the next level of greatness.” (more…)