I’m thrilled to present my new Character/Animation Demo to the world, along with the story behind its creation!  Give it a listen right here…

It has also been updated on the Voice Acting page at ToddsVoice.ca.

I’ve been speaking in funny voices for as long as I can remember. It’s something that grew out of my appreciation for Saturday Morning cartoons as a kid, but has continued to develop over the years.  When my kids were younger, I treated story time like a showcase or training session for what I hoped would be a feature in my voice over career.

Even with this passion for characters, my focus as a voice actor has always gravitated to commercials and narrations.

After booking a role as a kung fu master in a video game, I met with my agent, Elaine Hamat at OAZ.  When I mentioned how I wanted to do more character and animation work, she admitted that she had never though of me as a ‘character guy’.  I was crushed, but I understood why she felt that way, since I had never really focused on this part of my voice career.

With this, I resolved to develop my skills as a character actor and started working with a coach – Sunday Muse at Great Big Voices – in January.  We met weekly over the next few months, working on scripts with existing character descriptions, as well as characters and voices I developed on my own.

Sunday helped me tap into these characters and to break free of some of the hang ups and habits I carried over from my commercial work.  It was a gigantic amount of fun – hard work to be sure, but fun, rewarding and fulfilling.

When I was ready, we hit Davidson Recording Studio and cut this demo.

After so much time recording at home on my own, it feels great to have a professionally produced demo to help me put my best foot forward.  Thanks Sunday Muse, sound technician Jim Davidson and Elaine Hamat for working with me to put this together.

Aside from the specific lessons in character and animation voice work, the experience reminded me of the value in working with coaches and mentors to help develop in any pursuit.  Being open to investing the time, money and effort is the lesson I’ll carry with me as I look at my commercial voice work, my day job  and other pursuits.

I hope you like the demo.  Listen often!