Keisuke Mori and The Art of Acting for Anime

Japanese anime voice actor Keisuke Mori 

Japanese anime voice actor Keisuke Mori talked to our animation students in Tokyo this morning about his career performing voice overs for Japanese anime.   His credits include the 2018 movie Mirai.

Voice actors have to have to be able to perform a wide range of voices in order to do multiple characters. Vocal range is the key, the ability to perform in multiple different voices and styles.

Keisuke Mori explained that his voice is an instrument, one that he has learned to play over many years of practice working in anime. 

Why Animators Need Grammelot

What is Grammelot? And why do animators need it? Sometimes you want your characters to speak, but what they are actually saying isn't really that important.  Much more significant is the tone, and what that tone tells us about the character doing the speaking.  Think of the adults in the old Charlie Brown feature films; they spoke in a dreary unintelligible monotone.  We didn't know what they were saying, but we didn't need to - their tone of voice told us everything we needed to know.  And the content of their speech was far less important than what the Peanuts' kids had to say.

Farewell June Foray 1917-2017

June Foray

The Queen of Animation died yesterday. The extraordinarily talented June Foray, voice of countless cartoon characters in her long and varied career, has died just shy of her 100th birthday.  June was the go-to person for animation voice-over work for many, many decades. You may not recognise June's face, but you know her voice.

She was the voice of the Grandmother in Disney's Mulan, and did countless Granny voices for the Looney Tunes. She worked with animation greats like Chuck Jones and Mel Blanc (voice of Bugs Bunny and many others), and continued working well into her 90s. She was on the Board of Governors of the Motion Picture Academy, and ASIFA Hollywood. She helped to set up the Annie Awards (animation Oscars) in 1972.

How to Record Voice Overs - An Animator's Guide

Frank Gladstone directs actors in a sound booth in Soho

Most animators eventually find themselves recording a voice for a film project.  Whether it’s a short film, a personal project, or a piece of animation for a client, you will eventually need your characters to speak.

And for this, unless someone else does it for you, you will need to direct actors. So how does an animator or director go about recording voices? And how do you get a decent performance?