How simple can voice acting be? North compares it to a childhood game. “It’s really not as complicated as a lot of actors want to make it out to be. It’s pretty much the same thing that any 4 or 5-year-old child does. It’s just playing make believe. “ Nolan has gone above and beyond a childhood game and turned playing make believe into a living.

North is no stranger to both the voice over and on camera acting world. Most notably known for his portrayal of Drake in the recently released Uncharted 3: Drake’s Deception, Nolan has an extensive resume to his name. Having worked on Batman: Arkham and Assassin’s Creed, to his on camera work for Pretty Little Liars & General Hospital, Nolan’s range of characters and abilities continue to take the acting world by storm.

Do you approach voice acting different from on camera acting? Share you thoughts below!

What?! I thought I was getting into a fun industry?!

If you have ventured into the world of animation and video games, you know exactly what I’m referring to. The wonderful thing about make believe, is that anything can happen. I’ll never forget my time on DragonBall – I played a character named ‘Mai’ and she died in what seemed like 50% of the episodes. You have to get very creative in your death scenes. You can only die so many times and in the world of video games, you can die over and over again. The interesting thing about a death scene is that this isnt’ something we can truly relate to ourselves. And the way we die in animations isn’t realistic to most deaths we know. So we have to become very creative and think outside the box.

While you start practicing and developing your characters – add another layer to them that you may not have thought through – how many ways can your character die? What would it sound like if you are falling out of an airplane as opposed to falling from the top of the building? What does it sound like when you get stabbed to death? When you are being slain by a demon? When you catch on fire? Falling into a dark hole? Melting? …..there is no end to the options of a dying character.

Something I suppose you didn’t give much thought to….. until now. Why don’t you YouTube animated death scenes or Google and rent some animations with characters that are similar to your range and see what other greats before you have done. Record your findings in the studio so you will be able to mimic them again in the future. Just listen and watch the animation or create your own death scene in your head. See it all happening and try and feel and physically act out the scene with as many human sfx as you can add to it. Don’t forget your sound of struggle (if there is one) before and after the death. Add the proximity affect (for example are you falling; change your vocal sounds to give the sound of distance – and don’t forget to land with impact.)

The point is, our vocal instruments guide the scene and it’s our job to vocally assist it along and create the scene using only our imaginations and our human sounds and words.

The true key to this technique, is that your character gets brought back to life….that’s the true art to dying. Coming back for another episode or season, until next time everyone.

His most recent venture, Uncharted 3: Drake’s Deception, blurs the lines between games and film with quotable dialogue and an epic narrative carried by a cast of some of the most talented voice actors in the industry. With the rising demand for more fluid video game animation, North now finds himself blending his voice and acting skills to make a character truly come to life.

Next in our series of videos we will talk to Nolan about other elements in voice over production including how voice over for games differs from other projects and the drawback of voice over acting.

Leave a comment below and let us know: What is your favorite character voiced by Nolan North?

If you’re a game publisher or developer, you may have some surplus video games sitting around your office that could use a better home. And if you’re a gamer, you may have some used games and consoles gathering dust somewhere in a closet. Below is more information about both organizations if you’re interested in giving back.

Child’s Play

Child’s Play is an eight-year-old charity that provides toys, games, books, and other items to sick children in hospitals across the US, Canada, and other locations worldwide. They can accept new games that are rated E or E10+. You can also purchase items through Amazon that will be shipped directly to the hospital of your choice. For more info, visit the Child’s Play website.

Donate Games

Donate Games helps children with rare diseases through the collection and re-purposing of video games and gear. They can accept new (packaged) PC games and all new or used console games (all ESRB ratings) as well as consoles. Visit the Donate Games website to learn more.

More of our voice over casting efforts can be found in World of Warcraft: Cataclysm patch 4.2, Rage of the Firelands.

This marks our second round of World of Warcraft voice over, having cast some of the actors for patch 4.1, Rise of the Zandalari.

From the deadly bosses in the new Firelands raid to the majestic dragons of the blue and bronze dragonflight, we had a great time imagining what these fearsome creatures would sound like. And now that 4.2 is finally here, we can’t wait to hear the final results.

Also, if you’re a fan of The Deadmines, Vanessa Van Cleef finally has a voice, making the Heroic version that much more awesome.

Time to get patching!

Take a look at the official patch trailer:

We’re also extremely happy to announce that we’ve completed production on a new Marvel game due out in December. WHEW! What a year!

Last but not least, ArcaniA was released! YAY! Finally! Go buy it!

We were commissioned to cast, record and direct this long awaited title for Jowood Interactive using 53 of our most talented voice artists. I’m told this will be in stores by the end of the year for Xbox 360, PS3, and PC.

The storyline:

Ten years have passed since the end of Gothic 3 and the world has changed – the Southern Islands have become embroiled in a grueling conflict, and set the stage for the player to brave countless adventures in the guise of a nameless hero. In a vibrant and elaborate environment, decisions will have to be made which will change not only the future of the Southern Islands, but of the entire world…

Old acquaintances and new faces will aid the hero or attempt to thwart his efforts throughout his epic journey. Especially the members of the fairer sex will play a more important role. Who knows maybe the women will make the hero’s life a little more complicated…

Exciting quests and challenging fights will be as much highlights as intrigue and betrayal. Will the nameless hero overcome these obstacles and complete his seemingly insurmountable task?

By Richard Verrier and Ben Fritz

December 7, 2009

When Dave Wittenberg began his acting career at a community theater in Boston, he never imagined that one day he’d be making his living as a voice artist for video game characters, portraying the likes of Hades, Tweedledee and Jerry Seinfeld.

But in the last decade Wittenberg’s voice has been heard in more video games than he “can remember.” And, though it’s not the traditional actor’s stagecraft, he still draws extensively on his thespian skills. “You get to create characters you wouldn’t be able to create in any other medium,” said Wittenberg, 38. “From an acting standpoint, it lets you flex your muscles that you wouldn’t ordinarily use.”

What it’s not doing, however, is fattening his wallet. Despite his extensive credits, Wittenberg earns roughly $30,000 a year from his video game work and, like most of his peers, supplements that income by doing voice work for animated TV shows.

Wittenberg is one of hundreds of Hollywood actors who perform in the heard-but-not-seen world of voice acting, breathing life into the virtual worlds of such blockbuster game franchises as Halo, Call of Duty and Grand Theft Auto.

The video game sector, once a backwater in Hollywood, has been the fastest-growing segment of the entertainment industry and increasingly competes with movies and television for consumers’ attention and dollars.

As games have become more like big-screen movies, so has their need for more sophisticated stories and emotionally engaging characters. Games once had practically no dialogue but now boast tens of thousands of lines of it — creating opportunities for actors at time when traditional jobs are shrinking because of studios’ cutbacks in film and TV production.

But the enthusiasm for the new medium has been tempered by a growing unease among many performers that their pay for voice work in video games isn’t keeping pace with the industry’s breakneck growth. Although it’s down this year amid the recession, U.S. video game industry revenue has more than doubled since 2005 to $21 billion in 2008 — about twice the amount of movie ticket sales in Canada and the U.S.

The concerns have fueled a standoff between the video gave companies and the Screen Actors Guild, whose members recently rejected a proposed contract that covers voice work in the video game industry. “The concern going forward is that as these games become larger and larger and generate more income, we as actors won’t see any more money when we walk out the door,” said Wittenberg.

Attorney Scott Witlin, who represented video game publishers in the recent labor negotiations, disputes the notion that actors are being shortchanged. “If you look at the total contribution either in terms of hours that go into the creation of a game or the earnings of the people who make the games, voice talent represents a minute percentage,” he said.

SAG’s bargaining clout is limited. The voices in about 80% of video game titles are performed by actors who don’t work under a guild contract. What’s more, SAG’s sister union, the American Federation of Television and Radio Artists, recently ratified a separate contract with video game publishers.

“It’s not so much their argument is weak or strong,” said Jonathan Handel, an adjunct professor at UCLA School of Law who specializes in entertainment labor law. “The overarching issue for any union making a deal is: Who has the leverage?”

There were practically no roles for actors in video games until the mid-1990s, when technical innovations made it possible to give speech to the digital characters. Video game cartridges before then had limited storage space, leaving little room for voice recordings. Dialogue instead appeared on the screen like subtitles on a foreign-language film.

“It used to be that there wasn’t very much data available for voice acting, and what we had tended to be cartoonish,” said Casey Hudson, director of the upcoming Electronic Arts game Mass Effect 2.

Later, with the advent of higher-capacity compact discs, characters started to speak a few dozen or hundred lines in games. But voices were still often performed by amateur actors or even the game developers themselves, because many companies didn’t think spoken dialogue was important enough to merit spending money on professionals.

In the last decade, however, as the video game industry has transitioned to DVDs and the storytelling ambitions of many game developers have blossomed, hiring experienced actors has become routine.

The use of actors in games varies broadly depending on the genre. Some titles include far more speech than a feature film. Mass Effect 2, a science-fiction game, has 90 actors playing 546 characters who speak about 31,000 lines of dialogue.

Uncharted 2, an adventure game recently released by Sony, intentionally mimics the cinematic style of movies like the “Indiana Jones” series. Actors not only performed voices but also acted in motion-capture suits for non-interactive story sequences — called “cut scenes” — that totaled about 90 minutes.

“We basically made a feature film at the same time that we made a game,” said Uncharted 2 director Amy Hennig, who worked with an experienced theater director to oversee acting. “Good performances are critical so that players maintain an empathetic association with the character who they control.”

Largely because of the industry’s roots in the software business, video game creators have traditionally been compensated very differently than creative workers in Hollywood. Unlike talent in movies and TV shows, they don’t receive residuals, or additional fees for the reuse of their work.

“In our business we’re all employees and any upside we get is purely discretionary, so many of us are not going to have a lot of sympathy for actors who want back-end residuals,” Hennig said. “That’s why we’re talking two different languages when we sit down at a bargaining table.”

The biggest sticking point in the dispute involves pay levels for a new category of actors: those who perform “atmospheric voices,” words and sounds for the incidental characters — bartenders, soldiers, elves, random monsters — in war and fantasy games that involve large crowds.

Under the proposed SAG contract, actors would receive a fee of about $800 for performing up to 20 atmospheric voices (up to 300 words per voice) in a four-hour session. Actors who perform “principal characters” — defined as those that drive the story — would fetch the same fee for doing up to three character voices, and more than double the amount if they do six to 10 voices during a six-hour session.

Although video companies offered a 2.5% increase in wages, an influential group of Hollywood voice actors has strongly opposed the contract. They contend that the provision would require them to do substantially more work for roughly the same pay and put undue stress on their vocal cords, notwithstanding a provision in the agreement to protect actors against “vocal stress.”

“Before, you were doing three characters dying a horrible death. Now you’re doing 20 characters dying a horrible death,” said Dee Baker, a veteran voice actor who has worked on such games as Halo 2 and Spore, in which he voiced entire races of evolving alien creatures. “Not only will this mean less money for more experiences, it’s also going to be a lot more vocally difficult.”

Though it seems counterintuitive, game developers say that advances in technology are making actors more important to the production process, not less.

Hudson, for instance, says he hopes that in the future, game makers will capture the facial expressions of actors for the eye and mouth movements of the animated characters whose voices they provide.

That’s one reason backers of the agreement — including negotiators for both actors unions — argue that the most important goal right now is to give the companies more incentive to hire union talent.

“One of the things we’d like to do is improve the union’s footprint in this area of production,” said Mathis Dunn Jr., an assistant national executive director of AFTRA. “A lot of employers are not signatories to our contract, and part of the reason is that we can’t accommodate their budget. . . . This will keep us in the game.”