I found this video of one of my favorite character actors, Hank Azaria, explaining how he came up with one of my favorite Simpsons characters, Professor Frink (also Comic Book Guy). Take a look – it’s short and fun – and I’ll be right back.

In the video, Hank mentions that he gave the Simpsons producers a list of the various impressions and accents he does, as a basis for writing characters for him to voice. This reminded me of one of the basic lessons voice actors are taught when it comes to doing characters: it’s not about the VOICE, it’s about the CHARACTER.

A lot of beginners are initially attracted to voiceover work because they do some funny voices or impressions. But just doing a voice is NOT ENOUGH. You must develop fully realized characters.

Impressions and accents are a good place to start to build characters, but it has to go beyond that. You’ve got to give us a multi-dimensional personality – a character with a history, with attitudes and opinions and motivations and various character traits (and flaws!) if we’re really going to believe it and be compelled by it. Grandpa Simpson comes to mind as a very complex, layered character who displays all of these elements.

If you take an animation voiceover class (and you should, even if you don’t plan on focusing on character work, as it’s a great stretch and will help your other work), you’ll probably be given some sort of character sheet – this is a form that you can copy and fill out, to help you build and keep track of your characters. They typically have room for the character’s name, voice type, accent, personality traits and so on. Using these forms (make your own if you need to) and supplementing them with audio recordings of your characters is a great way to start to build your character voice repertoire.

Stay tuned for interviews with some great character voice actors…