Tips For Your Child Starting Their Voice-over Career

Does your child enjoy imitating the voices of characters on screen? Have they done any acting for a school show? Maybe they’d love to be a voice actor!

It’s a misconception that all child characters in animation are dubbed by adults. This is true for some characters like Bart Simpson (The Simpsons) or Ash Ketchum (Pokémon)–both young boys played by adult women–but there is a wide variety of child characters who are played by children, such as Peppa Pig (Harley Bird starting when she was 5 years old) and Aang from Avatar the Last Airbender (Zach Tyler Eisen starting at 11 years old).

Many studios want “authentic” child voices and try to cast actors close to the onscreen age of the characters. Dubbing is particularly popular for children TV shows where it is preferred over subtitling since younger age groups have varying literacy rates. In this blog we’ll discuss if this industry is a good fit for your child, ways to get started, as well as other tips you should know as a parent of a prospective child voice actor.

Please note, this is not a comprehensive list and that you should refer to the SAG website in regards to certain legal requirements for young performers.

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photo by Scott Webb

Voice Acting: Seeing if it’s Right for Your Child

If you feel your child might enjoy and do well at voice acting, it’s important to gauge their own interest. Maybe they’re not even sure what voice acting is. You can show them online videos of voice actors doing voice-over and see if it excites them. They might get really surprised, “Making voices can be a job?”

Being a voice actor can be an incredibly fun, fulfilling experience for a child. But before diving into the industry, it might be helpful to have your child take an online introductory class to see if it interests them. Many voice teachers offer remote coaching through Skype and have specialized lessons for minors.

Through the lesson you may be able to see if you child has a number of key voice actor qualities. A child voice actor should be creative when making up different voices and giving characters strong personalities. A game you can play is presenting your child with different images of animated characters and have your child come up with a voice for each one.

When doing voice-over, your child’s performance will receive input from clients and voice directors. There may be a number of notes from them and your child should be able to take direction and adapt their performance. Child voice actors should be open to ideas from the director and flexible in their performance.

Voice acting also takes focus. Putting vocal energy into each line while also matching the voice to video takes a high level of concentration and endurance. For practice you can try having your child read a short script to a scene in an animated show. See if they’re able to focus and more importantly, if they find the activity fun and interesting.

photo by Sam Rios

Getting Started

As mentioned above, you can start with an introductory online course and also begin searching for a coach. Finding the right voice coach is incredibly important. You want to make sure you find an instructor great at their craft who can also provide encouragement for your child. Coaches are mentors and you want to take the time to find one whose personality and instruction style fits your child’s temperament.

You may have heard about creating a voice demo in order to get jobs, but when starting out, focus on investing in your child’s vocal training first. Your child only gets one first impression for clients and if a demo tape is recorded too early on, they may feel the performance is too amateurish.

Learning is not limited to just coaching. There’s a wealth of information on voice acting on podcasts, YouTube, Facebook. Be sure to follow JBI Studios’ blog and social media, where we consistently share information about the voice-over industry and craft.

When you do feel that your child is ready to record a demo or audition, this is the time to invest in a microphone and audio recording software. Start small though, no need to create a professional home recording studio just yet. There’s plenty of USB mics that you can plug into your computer to record and are affordable and easy to use. There’s also free audio recording software online that you can test and get familiar with through online tutorials. As your child gets more work, that is the time to consider upgrading your mic and finding soundproofing equipment to soundproof a section of your home for recording.

There are a number of casting sites like LA Casting and Backstage where you can create a profile for your child in order to start receiving audition notices and submitting auditions. When filling out your child’s online profiles, you want to make sure to fill out the fields correctly and highlight some of your child’s strengths and interests. This will help your child receive audition notices that are more aligned with their vocal abilities.

photo by Markus Spiske

What to Keep in Mind

When casting a child voice actor, clients are also casting you, the parent. That means that your schedule should have the flexibility to handle communication with project managers and also help your child record voice-over and deliver audio on a strict deadline. Parents are also expected to accompany their child for in-person audition call-backs or recording sessions at a studio.

Productions that hire child voice actors generally have longer production schedules due to children having to go to school and requiring shorter recording sessions than adults. Therefore, for each project be sure that your own personal work schedule allows you the ability to support your child during the production.

Another thing to keep in mind is that while auditioning, your child will generally be rejected for voice-over roles more times than accepted. This can be especially hard for young children who may feel particularly hurt by not receiving roles. Be sure to let your child know that this a normal part of the auditioning process and that not being accepted for a role could be for a number of reasons completely outside of the child’s control: maybe the client decided they wanted another gender, an older voice, etc…

Voice-acting should be a fun and rewarding experience for your child. By setting their expectations and being informed, you can help facilitate your child’s career and get them started on the right foot.

Make sure you know your voice-over and dubbing terms when communicating with studios.

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Voice-Over Localization & Video Dubbing Terms.