“I recommend seatbelts in your armchairs as the creator and cast of “Family Guy” assemble on our stage for a hilarious, irreverent look at themselves, each other, their characters and their spectacularly successful show. This is, quite simply, unlike any Inside the Actors Studio you’ve ever seen.”
Since I'm currently bombarded with a GSSP certification, I was unable to see Monday's broadcast of the interview. However there's going to be re-broadcast on the 20th, which I definitely plan on watching.
That's the first item of interest for all things "Family Guy" related. The second is this... Karl Rove is making a cameo appearance on the show. Details are a bit scant at the present, but that's the thing which makes this show such a hit with the audience; not only does the show go out of its way to be equal opportunity offender of pretty much everyone at some point (much like "South Park"), but they actually get the very people they're lampooning to take part in the comedy.
I can only imagine what MacFarlane and the rest of the writing staff have up their sleeve for Rove, but I'm sure that it'll be completely irreverent and enjoyable.
I've no idea how everybody in the voice over community missed this one, so let me toss it out there for all to find...
There's a really nice article on TampaBay.com with voice actor Tom Kenny, who plays the voice/role of Spongebob Squarepants. This is one of those "should read" kind of articles IMO for anyone who is interested in voice acting, or interested/curious about the people involved in giving life to an animated character...
The article itself is originally about the 10 year anniversary of the Spongebob Squarepants series, but the reporter and Kenny turn the interview into a lot more than that, talking about some of the controversy that the character has stirred up (yes folks, apparently not everyone is a fan of ole' Spongebob), a bit about Kenny's past, and the correlation of how the survival and continued popularity of the show is akin to surviving a terminal illness (you have to read the article for that one, but I had a good chuckle with it).
Here's a link to the article, and I hope you get the same enjoyment out of it that I did. For anyone who has ever made a living off of the same stuff that got you into trouble when you were younger, this is worth the time.
What is SWTOR you ask? Well that part is simple, it's the new Lucas Arts MMORPG, StarWars: The Old Republic. But for all of the voice over folk out there, here's a little something which we don't often get, a blog post written by Shauna Perry. Shauna is the Director of Audio and Localization for SWTOR, and she goes into the process of voice acting from the writing to scripting to speaking.
I've got to say that what they're trying to do in SWTOR is nothing short of huge. The game is going to be fully voice acted which could mean a greater sense of involvement in what happens within the game. We're talking hundreds of voice actors being recorded in five major metro areas with enough copy to fill more than fourty novels. If that's not the definition of huge, then I don't know what is. The project is so big that they actually had to develop an audio pronunciation guide in order to deal with all the regionalisms and dialects that the talent brought to the project.
This is probably the largest commercially available voice over project ever produced, and you can read about it all right here.
This might be the one MMORPG that I actually find time out of my schedule to play, if for the voice over aspect alone...
There must be something in the air this week... this is the third or fourth interview for "The Spectacular Spider-Man" that I've seen. Whomever is doing the marketing for the show needs to be given a raise for all the hard work they've done as of late.
What makes this all the better is that it's a quality show. It's one thing to see a lot of marketing for something that's sub-par, and it happens often. So I'm more than a little pleased to see so much information about a quality show like this one.
The folks over at Comic Book Resources have a really nice interview with Robert Englund. Now most folks are going to remember Robert for his best known (and disturbingly, most loved) role as Freddy Krueger. What a lot of folks don't know is that he's also done more than a bit of voice acting throughout his career. In the current Spider-Man series he plays the role of Arian Toomes, aka. the "Vulture", and does so (in my opinion) exactly how you'd want to see him, brillant with some things and clueless about the rest, but totally remorseless about it all. It's what makes him a good villian.
Whether you're a fan of the show or not, it's an interesting interview than ranges from the series and Josh's start in show business to his love of comics and gaming.
A link to the interview can be found here, and a link to Josh Keaton's website can be found here.
If you've got a minute or two, there's a quick interview with voice actress Paula Tiso, who is probably best known for her role as Lulu in Final Fantasy X and the sequel X-2.
The folks at Mania have a special treat for fans of "Green Lantern", "Buffy the Vampire Slayer", or "Angel" in the form of an interview with Juliet Landau, who is plays the role of Labella in DC's next animated film, "Green Lantern: First Flight". The interview gets a little into the voice over work that Landau has done for the film (a quick check of credits shows that Juliet has more experience in front of the mic for animated features than one might expect).
A link to the interview can be found here. For those who work in voice over, it's her response to the first question in the interview really hits home, and should be taken to heart.
I recently stumbled onto this video through YouTube, and I have to say that it's quite amusing.
It is obvious why the voice work on the game has taken so many awards. The voice actors loved what they did (as evidenced by their shenanigans when given the microphone), and while it's not one of those videos that gives great insight from an actual voice acting standpoint there's a lot to be said for the sheer level of fun that these guys had while voicing their characters for the game.
