GandalfTheTartan

I had around six redundancies in three years, plus a suspected brain tumor (thankfully false!) which buggered up my university plans.

After a while I thought that I'd follow my dream and be a voiceover guy. I bought the proper equipment to compete with the pros and started listening to the great masters speaking to train myself. That's it. That's all you need... And plenty of luck.

I initially started off with a USB microphone, however it was far too electrically noisy therefore I took the plunge and bought:

• Violet Design Black Knight (later upgraded to a Sennheiser MKH 416)
• A Focusrite Voicemaster Platinum Pro
• A Focusrite 2i4 Audio Interface
• Beyerdynamic DT-150 headphones for monitoring

To get myself heard, I simply emailed every production company I could find on google, both in my area and further afield, asking them if they were looking for a new voice. Some said no, many never responded, however the ones that did around 10% gave me work within the first week.

I was once asked to be the voice of a couple of taking eggs for a egg cooking system, the character were called 'Justan Egg' & 'Mr Eggcelent'.

That and a talking ironing board... I remember sitting there thinking "what the heck is an ironing board supposed to sound like?"

A narrowboat, it's 57' long and around 7' wide. Only once at university. Also, getting into a lift and hearing your own voice is creepy as hell. I collect manga and books on philosophy mainly, my books now act as ballast for this boat, I dare not move them outside.

Hmm, tough question. I'm a fan of the original language (heck, I studied it at university for three years). The Japanese have put such a huge amount of effort into bringing the character to life, it seems a shame to dub over it rather than read it and hear the emotion in the original actors voice.

Then again, some dubs such as Ghost in the Shell or Cowboy Bebob just seem to fit naturally in my mind.