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SEBASTIEN CROTEAU - Monster Voices Unleashed!

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Sebastien Croteau

Sébastien Croteau is a seasoned metal vocalist (Necrotic Mutation, since 1991) and accomplished throat singer, mastering Tibetan, Mongolian, and Inuit techniques since 1996. With over three decades of experience, he is widely recognized for his expertise in extreme vocal techniques, vocal effects, and vocal distortion.

For the past 15 years, Sébastien has been teaching metal vocals and throat singing, training hundreds of vocalists and voice talents across the globe. He is one of the rare vocal coaches certified in Vocal Distortion Teaching by New York Vocal Coaching, underlining his authority in the field. His deep knowledge of vocal distortion, extreme sounds, and creature vocalizations has made him a sought-after expert in both the voice acting and gaming industries.

In 2005, Sébastien began collaborating with video game studios, specializing in vocal stunt work and creature voice design. Since then, he has contributed to over 40 video games and films, including major titles such as Genshin Impact, Helldivers 2, The Outlast Trials, Until Dawn, Star Wars Outlaws, The Watchers, Hellblade 2, Baldur’s Gate 3, Warhammer: Realm of Ruins, Gotham Knights, Marvel’s Guardians of the Galaxy, Dead by Daylight, Dungeons and Dragons: Dark Alliance, Shadow of the Tomb Raider, Far Cry 5, Rainbow Six Siege: Outbreak, Prince of Persia – The Forgotten Sands, Assassin’s Creed 2, and many more. He has provided voices for over 300 characters.

In 2018, he founded The Monster Factory, a company and talent agency dedicated to extreme vocal performance, vocal stunt work, and creature voice design. Through this platform, Sébastien also serves as a casting director and voice director on a variety of projects, further solidifying his position as a leading figure in the world of vocal extremes.

SEBASTIEN CROTEAU - Monster Voices Unleashed!

Screaming for a Living: How Sébastien Croteau Built the World’s Most Unusual Voice Acting Niche

The death metal singer turned creature voice specialist on Tibetan throat singing, why zombies don’t have backstories, and the case for treating monster vocalists like the stunt performers they are.

There are voice actors who specialise in corporate narration. There are voice actors who specialise in audiobooks, or commercials, or video games. And then there’s Sébastien Croteau, who gets paid to scream, growl, choke, and howl — and has been doing it for eighteen years across more than 400 titles.

As the founder of The Monster Factory, a company that provides creature and monster vocalisation for the video game, film, and animation industries, the French Canadian performer occupies what is arguably the most unusual niche in the entire voiceover world. His team of nearly eighty “vocal stunt performers” around the globe creates the sounds that most people never think about but instantly recognise: the guttural roar of an orc, the clicking menace of a giant spider, the choking death rattle of a poisoned guard in Assassin’s Creed.

In a recent episode of Voice Acting Unplugged, the podcast hosted by Margaret Ashley and Anthony Rudd, Croteau joined to share his extraordinary journey from death metal vocalist to creature voice pioneer, explain the vocal mechanics behind the sounds he produces, and offer his characteristically measured take on AI in an industry where animal sound libraries and voice-modifying plugins have been the norm long before artificial intelligence entered the conversation.

What followed was one of the most fascinating — and frequently startling — conversations the podcast has produced.

A Wonderful Accident

Sébastien Croteau’s path into creature vocalisation began, as he put it, as “a wonderful accident” — though one with roots stretching back to 1991, when he first started performing as a death metal vocalist with his band Necrotic Mutation.

For years, extreme metal vocals were enough. But eventually, Croteau found himself wanting to explore what else his voice could do. The answer came from an unexpected direction: Tibetan throat singing.

“I heard Tibetan throat singing, Tuvan throat singing, Mongolian throat singing, and Inuit throat singing,” he said. “And I was immediately interested in their capacity to produce the sounds they were producing.”

He was fortunate enough to find one of the rare Tibetan throat singing teachers in Montreal, and learned the technique quickly enough to become the teacher’s assistant. Together, they organised the first throat singing festival in Montreal, bringing in Tibetan monks, Tuvan singers, and world-renowned specialists including Steve Sklar and Tran Quang Hai.

For anyone unfamiliar with these traditions, Croteau offered a brief — and spine-tingling — live demonstration during the podcast, shifting between the deep, resonant tones of Tibetan throat singing and the higher, almost whistling overtones of Tuvan technique. The sounds are produced using ventricular folds — mucus membranes located just above the vocal folds — which vibrate at two to three times less the frequency of the vocal folds themselves, generating sub-harmonics that sit an entire octave below the note actually being sung.

“If I do this,” Croteau said, producing a clear tone, “that’s the note I’m actually singing. But this” — and his voice plummeted into something that seemed to come from beneath the floor — “is a sub-harmonic. Because I’m activating the ventricular folds.”

It’s the kind of vocal demonstration that’s difficult to convey in text and impossible to forget in person. And it was this extraordinary toolkit — death metal screaming combined with throat singing techniques from multiple traditions — that would eventually lead to a career nobody had quite imagined before.

The Call from Ubisoft

In 2005, a friend of Croteau’s named Alexan began working at Ubisoft Montreal. The studio was looking for something unusual: someone who could produce creature and monster sounds for a game called Far Cry Instinct. Alexan knew exactly who to call.

“He was like, ‘Yeah, I know a guy who can do weird voices — you should contact him,'” Croteau recalled.

The audio director invited Croteau to Ubisoft’s Montreal office and showed him sketches of the various monsters and creatures in the game. Croteau offered suggestions for what vocal approach might suit each one. Then he went home.

And heard nothing for eight months.

“I thought I’d blown it,” he said. “But I wasn’t aware back then of the time it takes to actually produce a video game.”

When the call finally came, Croteau approached it with the confidence — and the stamina expectations — of a death metal performer. He booked himself for eight hours of screaming per day, across two days.

“It was quick for me to realise that eight hours of screaming was too much,” he said.

But the work got done, and it led to more. Ubisoft called him back to provide the choking death sounds for Assassin’s Creed II — “when you poison people with a poison blade and the person is choking in their mucus, that’s my voice.” Then came Prince of Persia. Then other Montreal-based studios began hearing about the metal vocalist who could voice their creatures and monsters.

As the demand grew, so did the need for variety. Not every creature needed Croteau’s particular vocal quality — there were female characters, different tonal ranges, different types of monsters. He began bringing in other metal vocalists he knew in Montreal, friends whose voices offered different textures and capabilities.

“The team that we have now was built up over years of just introducing people,” he said.

The Monster Factory Is Born

For eighteen years, Croteau provided creature and monster vocalisation as a freelancer alongside his day job. But in 2021, a health crisis forced a reckoning.

During the pandemic, Croteau wasn’t struck by COVID but by the consequences of workplace stress. His previous employer had laid off significant numbers of staff, and those who remained were expected to absorb the additional workload. Croteau developed stomach ulcers and other stress-related conditions that kept him off work for six months.

When it was time to return, his employer wanted him back full-time immediately. His doctor disagreed. And Croteau found himself at a crossroads.

“I was like, okay — I’m going to go back to a job that might make me sick again, or take a leap of faith and try to make this work,” he said. “I’m forty-nine now, so I have a more limited window of time to make it work.”

He recalled hearing Elvis Presley’s “It’s Now or Never” at the moment he made his decision. The symbolism wasn’t lost on him.

“Of course, it’s a lot of sacrifice,” he said. “I quit a well-paid job for financial insecurity, which is the case of most people working in voiceover anyway.”

The Monster Factory was born — and it now provides creature and monster vocalisation for games, films, and animation worldwide, with a team of close to eighty voice talent across multiple countries. When localisation is required — because yes, some monsters do have scripted dialogue — Croteau can draw on performers in the appropriate languages.

Do Monsters Have Backstories?

One of the most illuminating parts of the conversation was Croteau’s explanation of how creature voice acting differs fundamentally from traditional character work — and why much of the standard voice acting methodology simply doesn’t apply.

He illustrated the point with a vivid thought experiment.

“Let’s say you’re a human character in a zombie apocalypse,” he said. “You’re a young adult. You saw your parents die when you were a kid. You had to kill some loved ones who turned zombie. All those elements would impact your personality — this is the kind of background information you’d use to build a character.”

He paused.

“If that person is bitten and becomes a zombie, do you think it’s going to be the sad zombie? The melancholic zombie? No. It just wants to eat your brain. Those elements no longer apply.”

The same principle holds for the vast majority of creature work. A spider that communicates through clicking sounds isn’t going to be influenced by a detailed character biography. A dog, a generic monster, an alien predator — their vocal identities are driven by physical characteristics, movement patterns, and what Croteau calls “vocal archetypes” rather than psychological backstories.

“If I have to voice a spider and the vocal effect is a clicky sound, even if you tell me the whole story of that species, it’s not going to influence a lot of the sound I’m producing,” he said.

The exceptions are creatures with intelligence and scripted dialogue — orcs, trolls, certain aliens. There, the character background becomes relevant because the creature is effectively a character in the traditional sense, just one that happens to communicate through an extreme vocal register.

“All those background elements can have an influence when there’s actual script lines,” Croteau acknowledged. “But when it’s a dog, an animal, or other kinds of creature, the background information that would be useful for a human character is just not that useful.”

The Evolution of the Zombie Voice: A Brief History

Croteau offered a fascinating mini-lecture on how zombie vocalisations have evolved across decades of film and gaming — a trajectory that reveals how creative needs drive vocal innovation.

It began with silence. In the early black-and-white era of voodoo zombies, the creatures were largely mute. George Romero’s Night of the Living Dead introduced the iconic moan — low, directionless, unsettling. Day of the Dead built on this with the character of Bub, a zombie showing flickers of residual humanity, whose vocalisations carried a haunting quality that Croteau clearly adores (he owns a T-shirt with Bub’s face on it).

The Resident Evil games on PlayStation continued in the moaning tradition. But then came a seismic shift: Danny Boyle’s 28 Days Later and Zack Snyder’s Dawn of the Dead remake introduced running infected and running zombies, respectively.

“A running zombie doing ‘Ooooh’ — it’s not working,” Croteau said, mimicking the mismatch between a slow, ponderous moan and a sprinting, rage-filled creature.

The solution was a shift toward something far more aggressive — screaming, snarling, guttural attacks. The vocal archetype for zombies had to evolve because the physical reality of the character had changed. You can’t sprint at someone while moaning gently.

It’s a small example that illustrates a larger truth about creature vocalisation: the sounds aren’t arbitrary. They’re driven by the physical design, movement, and narrative context of the creature, and they’ve evolved over time as those contexts have changed.

We All Have the Same Parts

One of the most reassuring — and perhaps surprising — things Croteau shared was that the ability to produce extreme vocal effects isn’t a genetic gift. It’s a skill.

“One of the big myths people ask me about is: am I a mutant?” he said. “Do I have extra parts in my vocal tract that allow me to create those sounds? The answer is no.”

Apart from people who’ve had surgery — one of his friends had his uvula removed, making uvula vibration impossible — every human being has the same vocal anatomy. Ventricular folds, aryepiglottic folds, vocal folds, the soft palate — the parts are universal. There may be minor individual variations in thickness or prominence, but nothing that fundamentally changes what’s possible.

“The capacity to produce those sounds is within everyone,” Croteau said.

He pointed to the most basic evidence: babies. From birth, human beings are capable of producing vocal distortion. Screaming is innate. It’s only through the process of language acquisition and social conditioning — parents telling children to be quiet — that we lose touch with those capabilities.

“After being able to scream, we are told not to,” Croteau said. “So of course there’s a whole process to get back to it.”

That process, however, takes years. Like any athletic discipline, creature vocalisation requires sustained, deliberate training — not just to produce the sounds, but to sustain them safely over the kind of sessions that the industry demands.

Vocal Stunt Performance: The Term That Reframes Everything

Croteau has a specific term for what he and his team do, and it’s one he’s chosen deliberately: “vocal stunt performance.”

The analogy is drawn from the film industry. In movies, highly specialised stunt performers are hired to do things that actors can’t safely do themselves — falls, fights, car chases. No reasonable production would ask an untrained actor to perform a dangerous physical stunt (Tom Cruise, Croteau noted with a laugh, being the single exception).

And yet in voice acting, untrained performers are routinely asked to scream, roar, and produce extreme vocal effects for hours at a time.

“Unfortunately, in voice acting, we are asking voiceover talent who are not trained properly to produce those sounds,” Croteau said. “If we think about stunt performance in movies, I think we are doing the equivalent in voice acting. This is why I call what we do vocal stunt performance.”

The implication is clear: only trained vocal stunt performers should be doing vocal stunt work. The consequences of getting it wrong aren’t just a bad take — they’re potential vocal damage that can end careers.

“As you can hear, I’ve been screaming and producing these sounds for thirty-five years now,” Croteau said. “Does my voice sound damaged? No. There’s a way to sustain that, but it’s hard work.”

AI in the Monster World: It’s Already Here

On the question of artificial intelligence, Croteau brought a perspective that was uniquely informed by the realities of his niche — and significantly different from the anxiety that dominates most voiceover industry discussions.

The reason? In creature and monster vocalisation, AI isn’t the primary threat. The market was already dominated by non-human alternatives long before AI entered the picture.

“The reality of the creature voice acting market is that the vast majority of sounds for creatures and monsters are done with animal sound libraries or software that modifies the voice in real time,” Croteau explained. “If you listen to any Hollywood blockbuster, there’s a villain with a huge voice — that’s plugins. It’s already a market dominated by animal libraries and plugins.”

He estimated that less than one percent of creature and monster sounds in major games and films are produced by human performers. The Monster Factory exists to prove that human voices can do the job better — but the competitive landscape was already tilted toward technology before AI arrived.

“AI software could do exactly the same as the plugins that already exist,” Croteau said. “So the market is already taken over. What I’m trying to do is prove that human beings are actually better.”

As for whether AI companies are likely to target the creature vocalisation niche specifically, Croteau was sanguine.

“If you look at AI companies, what they are mainly targeting is regular voiceover jobs, because that’s where the money is for them,” he said. “The money is not in a tiny market of less than one percent. This is why I’m not worried about it for the moment.”

Consent, Control, Compensation

Where Croteau’s AI perspective became most interesting — and most likely to provoke debate — was in his broader philosophical stance. Unlike many in the voiceover community who advocate for outright resistance to AI voice technology, Croteau takes a more pragmatic position.

“For me, the whole thing about AI boils down to three things,” he said. “Are you consenting? Do you still have control over what it’s going to be used for? And are you being compensated?”

If those three conditions are met, he argued, AI could potentially open new possibilities for voice talent rather than simply threatening them.

“I might be crucified for this,” he acknowledged, “but I’m not on the side of ‘burn it with fire.'”

His reasoning is strategic rather than ideological. AI technology is already here and already being used. Companies are going to develop it regardless of whether voice actors engage with the process. The question, in Croteau’s view, is whether voice talent participates in shaping how it’s developed — or stands on the sidelines while it’s built without their input.

“If you tell those companies, ‘We don’t need you, burn it,’ they’re going to go, ‘Okay, we’ll build our stuff without their input,'” he said. “And this is why, for me, you either try to influence the model towards something that is sustainable for voice talent, or you remain on the side of ‘burn it with fire’ — and therefore they’re not going to hear what you have to say.”

He was quick to acknowledge the legitimate grievances. Companies scraping voice data without consent, requiring full 3D scans just to audition, building AI models from performers’ work without permission or payment — all of this, Croteau said plainly, is “the dumb stuff.”

“When I said consent, control, and compensation are key — when you look at the negotiation that SAG-AFTRA did with one company in the States, it’s all about putting a legal framework around the usage of AI,” he said. “It’s a first framework that we can build off. But of course, some people are abusing it. That is dumb. You don’t do that.”

His position is nuanced enough to sit uncomfortably with people on both sides of the debate — which may be a sign that it’s closer to the truth than the more polarised positions.

Training the Next Generation of Monsters

For the growing number of voice actors and aspiring performers interested in creature vocalisation — many of whom, Croteau noted, are congregating on Discord and Reddit — his advice begins and ends with training.

“The number one thing is learning how to activate the different parts that we use in creating monster and creature voice,” he said. “And the second thing, which is equally huge, is the capacity to sustain those vocal effects for a long period of time.”

In professional AAA game production, recording sessions run a minimum of two hours. That means maintaining a specific vocal effect — a particular growl, rasp, or scream — consistently and safely for two hours straight. If you can produce the sound for thirty seconds but lose it after a minute, you don’t have a usable skill.

“If you can no longer sustain that vocal effect, you lose the character,” Croteau said. “That’s it. The vocal effect is part of the character’s identity. It’s intimately tied to who that creature is.”

He pushed back firmly against the assumption that creature vocalisation is simply “noises.”

“Sometimes I see people say, ‘I don’t have a creature voice reel, but I can do noises.’ If your understanding of creature vocalisation is that it’s just noises, you’re missing the point.”

The Monster Factory offers training through multiple channels. Croteau has delivered over fifty workshops in the past three years, including sessions at OMUK in London with Mark Eastdale and voice therapist Karen Esposito, as well as through Skills Hub, the App Network, and Real Voice LA. His approach mirrors that of a sports coach: before any training begins, he conducts a vocal assessment to understand what each individual is already capable of and what their goals are.

“If I was a coach and I wanted to train an athlete to go to the Olympics, but I had no idea what they were capable of, could I build an accurate, custom-made training programme?” he said. “No. A good coach does a physical assessment and builds a training programme accordingly. I have the same approach for creature voices and vocal stunt work.”

The training path is long — years, not weeks. But Croteau believes it represents a genuine competitive advantage for voice actors willing to put in the work.

“Creature voice acting can be one of those things that other people don’t have that might give you an edge,” he said.

The Future: Diversify or Die (Metaphorically)

When asked where the creature vocalisation niche — and the broader voiceover industry — is heading, Croteau’s answer combined optimism with hard-headed realism.

The optimism came from a simple observation: every form of live human performance that has ever existed has survived the arrival of new technology. Theatre survived cinema. Live concerts survived recorded music. The human appetite for authentic, embodied performance is deep and durable.

“We’re still doing theatre despite the fact that we have TV and cinema,” Croteau said. “People still go to concerts because that’s where it’s happening — we see people live. There will always be a place for human beings.”

The realism came from his insistence that survival requires diversification. The Monster Factory itself is a testament to this philosophy: Croteau doesn’t just perform creature voices. He teaches, directs, records, designs sounds, gives conference talks, and runs a global network of vocal stunt performers.

“I have to do a whole bunch of things to make it work,” he said. “I do believe that in order to adapt to what is coming — all the modifications that we still don’t know a lot about — people need to be able to diversify what they’re doing.”

It’s advice that applies well beyond the creature niche. In an industry facing simultaneous disruption from AI, changing client expectations, and shifting media formats, the performers and businesses most likely to thrive are those with the widest range of skills and the deepest commitment to their craft.

Or, as Croteau put it with characteristic good humour when contemplating his eventual demise: “If heaven and hell exist, I’m going to be a vocal coach in hell, training people how to scream properly.”

This blog post is based on an episode of Voice Acting Unplugged, hosted by Margaret Ashley and Anthony Rudd. To learn more about Sébastien Croteau, The Monster Factory, and creature vocalisation training opportunities, visit themonsterfactory.com. For more episodes of the podcast, subscribe and follow Voice Acting Unplugged on your preferred platform.

Join Margaret & Anthony next time on Voice Acting Unplugged.

February 26, 2026February 26, 2026

SCOTT TUNNIX

SCOTT TUNNIX – The Voiceover Revolution!

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Scott Tunnix

Scott Tunnix is a multi-award winning voice actor, and winner of ‘Male Voiceover artist of the Year’ at the 2024 One Voice Awards. His work has been heard all over the world – from commercials, corporate films and explainers to television shows, video games and everything in between. His previous clients include Warner Brothers, Amazon, Nestle, Electronic Arts, Garmin, Kellogg’s, Microsoft, and Discovery+, to name a few. He also works as a voiceover showreel producer and casting director, through his production company ‘Unreel Audio’.

www.TunnixVO.com

www.UnreelAudio.com

Scott@TunnixVO.com

SCOTT TUNNIX – The Voiceover Revolution!

From a £30 Phone Greeting to 250 Video Games: How Scott Tunnix Built a Voice Acting Career Without Sending a Single Marketing Email

The One Voice Awards Male Voiceover Artist of the Year on cutting his teeth through pay-to-play, why indie gaming is a goldmine for voice actors, and the uncomfortable truth about where AI really hurts most.

There’s a particular kind of career origin story that the voiceover industry produces with remarkable regularity: someone stumbles across the work almost by accident, records something on a cheap microphone for a laugh, gets paid, and thinks — wait, people do this for a living?

Scott Tunnix’s story follows that template almost exactly. What makes it unusual is what happened next. Within two years, he’d gone from a casual side hustle to full-time voice acting. Within six years, he’d voiced over 250 video games, launched his own audio production company, signed with a specialist gaming agent, and won Male Voiceover Artist of the Year at the One Voice Awards 2024 — all without ever sending a single direct marketing email.

In a recent episode of Voice Acting Unplugged, the podcast hosted by Margaret Ashley and Anthony Rudd, Tunnix joined to talk about his unconventional path into the industry, his honest assessment of pay-to-play platforms (including the ones most voice actors love to hate), why indie gaming represents an extraordinary opportunity for voice talent, and his nuanced — and at times surprisingly enthusiastic — take on artificial intelligence.

The £30 That Changed Everything

In 2018, Scott Tunnix was working a corporate job in local government and browsing a freelancing website called Freelancer.com — not for voiceover work, but for a web developer to help with a completely unrelated business idea.

Then he noticed a small advert in the sidebar. Someone needed a voice to record a phone greeting for their company. Tunnix had a cheap USB microphone lying around from some old YouTube videos. On a whim, he recorded the script and hit send.

Two hours later, an email arrived. His files had been selected. There was money in his account.

“I just stopped and thought — have I just been paid to say something?” Tunnix recalled.

The moment triggered something that every voice actor will recognise: the dawning realisation that an entire industry exists around the human voice, hiding in plain sight.

“Until you either work in the industry or learn about it, you don’t really think about it as an industry,” Tunnix said. “I looked into it and the more I did, the more I realised there’s this huge industry with tens of thousands of voice actors across the country.”

He fell in love with it immediately. Within six months, the side hustle was generating what he considered “really good money” alongside his day job. He dropped to four days a week. Six months later, three days. By 2020, he’d made the leap to full-time.

“It was one of those moments where you realise that voiceover — this new thing I’d found and had so much passion for — I was only able to give it fifty percent of my commitment,” he said. “And my corporate job, I wasn’t able to give that the commitment it needed because my heart wasn’t in it anymore.”

He’s never looked back.

“It’s like a hobby that you can do for a living,” he said. “It’s incredible.”

The Pay-to-Play Path: No Apologies

In an industry where the mention of certain platform names can provoke visceral reactions, Tunnix’s frankness about his reliance on pay-to-play sites was refreshing — and potentially controversial.

After his initial discovery on Freelancer.com, he quickly found his way to Voices.com and Voice123. He remembers the moment he saw the Voices.com membership fee — around $400 — and the internal calculation that followed.

“I remember thinking, God, that’s a huge investment,” he said. “But then I thought, even if I only make $400 in a year, I’ll see that as good experience. Because you’re auditioning hundreds of scripts throughout the year, and that’s all practice — it helps practice your editing and your recording skills.”

He made his membership back within two weeks, across two jobs.

From there, Tunnix built his career almost entirely through pay-to-play platforms, agent submissions, repeat clients, and word of mouth. The direct marketing emails that form the backbone of many voice actors’ business strategies? He’s never sent one.

“I know everyone will say, ‘What are you doing? You need to be marketing,'” he acknowledged. “But it’s kind of felt like I’ve not needed to at any point. It’s just not something I’ve ever done.”

He’s aware it’s an unconventional position, and he plans to explore direct marketing in 2025. But his success without it raises an interesting question about whether the industry’s conventional wisdom about marketing — that cold outreach is essential and non-negotiable — is quite as universal as it’s often presented.

Tunnix was also characteristically measured about the spam risk that aggressive email marketing carries — a concern that’s rarely discussed openly.

“All it takes is ten or fifteen of those companies to hit ‘mark as spam’ and your email address is then flagged,” he said. “Which is a nightmare for the normal business emails you’re trying to send.”

In Defence of Fiverr

If pay-to-play platforms provoke strong reactions, Fiverr provokes something closer to existential horror in many voiceover circles. Tunnix is well aware of this — and disagrees with the consensus.

“You mention the word and people will recoil in fear,” he said. “But the platform’s changed a lot now.”

His argument is pragmatic rather than ideological. Fiverr isn’t a $5 platform anymore — voice actors can charge whatever they want, including rates of $200, $300, or more. The platform’s functionality is increasingly mirroring what dedicated voiceover marketplaces offer, and vice versa. And its marketing budget dwarfs anything a voiceover-specific platform can match.

“If you type ‘voiceover’ into Google, it’s probably one of the first things that pops up,” Tunnix noted.

His analogy for the marketplace ecosystem was characteristically down-to-earth.

“If you’re going out for a fancy anniversary meal, you might want a high-end restaurant. Sometimes you just fancy a cheeseburger and chips, and there’s a McDonald’s for that,” he said. “I think there’s a market for everything.”

He doesn’t advocate for any single platform. His point is simpler: understand the tools available, use them in a way that aligns with your values and business model, and don’t dismiss something out of hand because of outdated perceptions.

“It’s just learning how to use the tools that are out there, but in a way that aligns with your beliefs and your ethos within the industry,” he said.

250 Games and Counting: Why Indie Gaming Is the Opportunity Most Voice Actors Miss

The most eye-catching line on Tunnix’s CV is the number: over 250 video games voiced in a career that’s still only a few years old. For anyone imagining that means 250 blockbuster AAA titles, Tunnix was quick to set the record straight — and in doing so, revealed an opportunity that many voice actors overlook entirely.

“A lot of them — we’re not talking AAA games,” he said. “But the good thing about gaming jobs is that a lot of the time, a gaming job will pay the same rate for a AAA game as it will for AA or even smaller games, because the gaming rates are set by Equity or SAG.”

The economics of indie gaming are compelling. Thousands of games are released every month, and the vast majority are indie titles. But “indie” no longer means obscure or unprofitable. Platforms like Steam have democratised distribution, allowing tiny development teams to put their games in front of millions of potential players.

“Indie games in the current day and age have such a huge audience,” Tunnix said. “The way the platforms are structured just allows really small developers to get their games out in front of millions of people. And often with a very small team, they build a huge following around these games with tiny budgets — but they’re made with love and passion.”

He drew a sharp contrast with the AAA end of the market, where increasingly lavish graphics are paired with gameplay that players find stale and uninspired.

“Every time a new Call of Duty comes out or a new FIFA, people might marvel at the graphics, but the same complaints are there every time — the gameplay is so stale, there’s no innovation, there’s no passion from the developers,” Tunnix said. “So what you find is there are so many more games now that might graphically not look great at all — a lot of them are just fun pixel art style — but if the gameplay is fun, people love them.”

For voice actors, this means the gaming market is vastly larger than most people assume. The AAA titles that dominate headlines and marketing budgets represent perhaps ten percent of the total landscape. The other ninety percent is a sprawling ecosystem of indie and mid-tier studios, many of which need voice talent and are willing to pay standard rates for it.

The Social Media Advantage of Gaming Work

Beyond the sheer volume of opportunities, Tunnix identified another advantage that gaming work offers voice actors: it’s inherently shareable.

“If you voice a corporate explainer, it might be the best corporate explainer that’s ever been voiced,” he said. “But if you’re putting that out on social media, they’re not very exciting to watch.”

Video games and animation, by contrast, are entertainment. They come with visuals, characters, and emotional stakes that make people want to watch, share, and engage. A clip of a character you voiced in a game will generate more attention than even the most polished corporate showreel — simply because it’s more fun to consume.

That visibility creates a virtuous cycle. Developers who hear your work in other games think of you for their own projects. Studios you’ve worked with remember you when they’re casting their next title. Your social media posts reach further because the content is inherently more engaging.

“A lot of these developers are massive gamers themselves,” Tunnix said. “They’ll play all sorts of video games. So they might hear you in something and think of you when they come to developing their next game.”

It’s a model of organic marketing that doesn’t require cold emails or aggressive outreach — which may help explain how Tunnix has built a thriving career without ever sending a marketing email.

Unreal Audio: From Voice Actor to Producer and Casting Director

Tunnix’s ambitions extend beyond the microphone. In 2022, he founded Unreal Audio (spelled “Unreel,” as in voice reel), an audio production company specialising in video game and animation showreels for other voice actors.

The business has evolved organically. Clients who’d hired Tunnix as a voice actor began asking if he could help with casting for their other characters. One casting request became two, then five, then entire rosters of characters. Some clients now ask him to direct and produce the audio as well.

“It kind of started out just doing the odd sort of casting,” he said. “And now it’s at the point where sometimes they’ll come to me and say, ‘We’ve got five or six, seven characters — can you do the casting for them?'”

But Tunnix is careful not to let the production side of the business overshadow his primary identity. Voice acting, he emphasised, takes up ninety-five percent of his time — and that’s deliberate.

“You’ve got to remember that voiceover is my bread and butter,” he said. “You’ve got to take a step back from some of these other areas that are fun to do and nice to do.”

It’s a discipline that many freelancers struggle with: the temptation to diversify into adjacent services is strong, but the risk of diluting your core offering — and your time — is real.

AI: Terrified and Excited in Equal Measure

On the subject of artificial intelligence, Tunnix offered something rare in voiceover industry discourse: genuine ambivalence. Not the performative kind that masks anxiety with false confidence, but the honest kind that comes from someone who loves technology and is simultaneously threatened by it.

“I love technology and I get really excited about technology,” he said. “This just so happens to be a piece of technology that is threatening our very livelihoods. So it’s a mixed bag for me.”

Where his perspective diverged most sharply from the standard industry line was in his discussion of AI’s potential in gaming — specifically, the emerging possibility of AI-powered non-player characters (NPCs) that players can have real-time conversations with.

“Imagine being able to walk up to a random character on the street in a game and say, ‘Hey, I’m looking for this building — do you know where it is?’ And they can give you a genuine conversation,” Tunnix said, his enthusiasm audible. “You could ask them about their home life. You could ask them anything, and on the fly they’ll generate a response that makes sense within the context of the game, in that character’s voice.”

He referenced a tech demo built in Unreal Engine, based on The Matrix, where players could wander a city having conversations with AI-driven NPCs. The results, he acknowledged, are still rough — “the voices aren’t great and it’s a bit slow and clunky” — but the potential is undeniable.

“It opens so many possibilities,” he said.

But Tunnix was equally clear-eyed about the threats. He’s watched AI voices improve dramatically over the past two years, and he believes they’ve already begun hoovering up the entry-level work that allowed him and others to build their careers.

“When I first started, I was able to cut my teeth on a lot of that really low-level corporate stuff — explainer videos from companies that no one’s ever heard of and have probably gone bust since,” he said. “That gave me experience not only in reading scripts, but working with clients, editing, voiceover editing to picture — all those basic skills. I imagine now a lot of that lower-end work is being hoovered up by AI voices.”

It’s a concern that carries real structural implications for the industry. If the bottom rungs of the career ladder are removed, how do new voice actors develop the skills and experience they need to reach the higher rungs?

Anthony Rudd suggested that audiobooks may be emerging as a new entry point, since extended AI narration remains noticeably artificial and listeners won’t tolerate it for the duration of a full book. It’s a plausible theory — though one that doesn’t fully replace the variety of experience that entry-level commercial and corporate work once provided.

Why Big Brands Won’t Touch AI (Yet)

Despite his concerns about the lower end of the market, Tunnix was notably confident that major brands and AAA game studios will continue to use human voice actors — not out of sentimentality, but out of self-interest.

“If Coca-Cola run an ad campaign and they’ve used some AI voices, and it turns out those voices were sourced illegally — used from voice actors without their consent — and Coca-Cola have run a multimillion-pound campaign without the proper rights and usage, it’s a recipe for disaster,” he said.

The legal uncertainty alone, he argued, makes AI voices too risky for any company with significant brand equity to protect. The potential savings are trivial compared to the potential liability.

He also pointed out something that’s often overlooked in AI discussions: voice actors aren’t the only people whose jobs depend on human performers being in the room. Directors, sound engineers, editors, and producers all have a stake in keeping human talent at the centre of the process.

“If companies start wanting to use AI voices, the director is going to have no one to direct. The sound engineer is going to have no one to record. The editors are going to have nothing to edit,” Tunnix said. “It’s not just us that’s going to be pushing back. You’ve got a whole raft of people whose jobs revolve around working with us, who are also going to be pushing back.”

And then there’s the question of creative control. Any client who’s ever sat in a live session and asked for “a little more emphasis on that word” or “just slightly more emotion here” knows the value of real-time human responsiveness.

“Even if an AI was able to do that level of nuance, that’s going to be so much work trying to program that in,” Tunnix said. “It’s just going to be so much easier, so much more fun, and so much more intimate to use a human.”

The Imposter in the Room

For all his success — the award, the games credits, the production company, the agent — Tunnix was disarmingly honest about the psychological reality of freelance voice acting.

“Like everyone, I suffer with imposter syndrome,” he said. “You’ll be voicing something and you’re just thinking, ‘Why have they chosen me? I’m not good for this. I can think of ten people right now who would be a much better fit.'”

It comes in waves, he explained — periods of confidence alternating with lulls where nothing feels right. It’s a pattern that Anthony Rudd immediately recognised and that, research consistently shows, affects even the most established performers.

Tunnix shared a quote from Mike Myers that had resonated with him: the actor has written about being “absolutely terrified” every time he releases a new film, convinced that “his game’s up” and people will discover he’s a fraud.

“There are so many big names that still suffer with imposter syndrome,” Tunnix said. “I don’t think you can escape it, really. I think it’s a very natural thing.”

Winning the One Voice Award helped — not as a cure for self-doubt, but as a moment of genuine connection with the community.

“When your name is called and you hear people cheering for you — that in itself, for me, is the reward,” he said. “It just feels so nice to be reminded that this is a room full of your peers and, for the most part, everyone is super supportive.”

He was quick to distinguish between the warmth of the moment and any lasting transformation. The imposter syndrome hasn’t gone away. But the experience of being celebrated by colleagues — “hearing your voiceover friends and colleagues cheering with you” — was something he clearly treasures.

The Agency Chapter

After two years with Excellent Talent, Tunnix recently moved to Voice Fox, a specialist agency with a strong focus on gaming and animation — the areas where his career is most concentrated. Though he’d only been with them for a couple of months at the time of recording, the work was already flowing, with a London recording session booked for the following day.

The move reflects a broader trend in the voiceover industry: as gaming and animation work becomes more prominent and more specialised, voice actors are increasingly seeking representation from agents who understand those specific markets rather than generalist agencies that handle everything from corporate narration to radio commercials.

For Tunnix, the alignment between his niche and his agent’s expertise has been seamless.

The Voiceover Community: Competitive but Kind

Throughout the conversation, Tunnix returned repeatedly to the supportive nature of the voiceover community — a quality that clearly matters to him.

“The voiceover industry is a very nice, genuinely caring industry,” Margaret Ashley observed. “Everybody does try to help everybody else.”

Tunnix agreed, while acknowledging the inherent tension that sits beneath the camaraderie: everyone is, ultimately, competing for the same roles.

He admitted to one particular sting that even the most generous-spirited voice actor can’t entirely shake: hearing a commercial on air that you auditioned for — voiced by someone else.

“That always hits a little bit,” he said. “Especially if you think it wasn’t the best read.”

The saving grace? If the final version sounds completely different from what you offered, you can rationalise it as a creative direction change. If it sounds very similar to your audition but not quite — well, that’s harder to process.

“If it’s very similar to you but not quite, then you’re more thinking, ‘Oh, why didn’t I get that? What did I do wrong?'” he said.

Margaret Ashley completed the thought with the phrase every voice actor knows by heart: “I’m sorry, but we went in a different direction.”

Final Thoughts

Scott Tunnix’s appearance on Voice Acting Unplugged was a masterclass in pragmatic optimism — the kind of perspective that’s built not on theory or wishful thinking, but on the lived experience of someone who started with nothing, made no excuses, and figured things out as he went.

His career defies several of the voiceover industry’s most firmly held orthodoxies. You don’t have to do direct marketing to build a successful business. Fiverr isn’t necessarily the villain it’s painted as. Pay-to-play platforms, used strategically, can be the foundation of a full-time career. And the gaming industry — specifically the vast, underappreciated indie sector — represents an opportunity that most voice actors are barely scratching the surface of.

His honesty about imposter syndrome, his nuanced take on AI (excited by the technology, clear-eyed about the threat, realistic about where the damage falls hardest), and his unshakeable enthusiasm for the craft itself made for a conversation that was as encouraging as it was informative.

“It’s like a hobby that you can do for a living,” Tunnix said early in the conversation. It’s the kind of line that could sound naive — except that he’s backed it up with years of hard work, hundreds of games, a national award, and a career that’s still accelerating.

Not bad for a bloke who once recorded a phone greeting for a laugh.

This blog post is based on an episode of Voice Acting Unplugged, hosted by Margaret Ashley and Anthony Rudd. To learn more about Scott Tunnix’s voice acting work, visit tunnixvo.com. For video game and animation showreel production through Unreal Audio, visit unreelaudio.com. For more episodes of the podcast, subscribe and follow Voice Acting Unplugged on your preferred platform.

Join Margaret & Anthony next time on Voice Acting Unplugged.

February 26, 2026February 26, 2026

ADAM VENTON

ADAM VENTON - The Art of Audio Branding

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Adam Venton

Adam Venton is an award-winning imaging producer with over 15 years of experience crafting distinctive station sound for radio brands in the UK and internationally. Starting at GWR/Heart Bristol under Ben Marks, he went on to shape the sound of Worthy FM at Glastonbury Festival and served as Group Imaging Producer at UKRD, where his work contributed to KLFM’s Station of the Year GOLD wins in 2012 and 2013. He was named to the Radio Academy 30 Under 30 list in 2013.

Adam has freelanced for Benztown, helped launch IMGR at Wise Buddah, and founded Little Monster Media, initially as a side project and now a full-time audio branding studio. His recent work includes contributions to BBC Radio 1Xtra’s ARIA-winning station sound and multiple Audio Production Award honours, including three SILVER wins for Best Station Sound (2022–2024).

littlemonstermedia.co.uk

ADAM VENTON - The Art of Audio Branding

The Sound Between the Songs: How Audio Imaging Producer Adam Venton Builds the Identities of Britain’s Biggest Radio Stations

The founder of Little Monster Media on his accidental route into radio imaging, why you can’t bake a brilliant cake with crap ingredients, and the honest realities of building a creative business in an industry that’s changing fast.

If you’ve ever listened to BBC Radio 1, Radio 2, Kiss, or Hits Radio, you’ve heard Adam Venton’s work — even if you didn’t know it. Not the songs. Not the presenters. The bits in between: the swooshes, the drops, the sonic textures that tell your brain which station you’re listening to before a single word is spoken. The sound of the brand itself.

It’s called audio imaging, and most people have never heard the term, let alone thought about the craft behind it. Venton has spent over a decade thinking about almost nothing else.

As the founder and creative director of Little Monster Media, a Bristol-based audio production company, Venton creates the sonic identities of radio stations, podcasts, and audio brands for clients across the UK and beyond. His work has been heard on some of the biggest stations in British radio, and he’s collaborated with industry-leading imaging libraries including IMGR, Benztown, Reel World, and the Mix Group. On the side — when two small children, a production music catalogue, and a football coaching commitment allow — he also writes and produces music for production libraries.

In a recent episode of Voice Acting Unplugged, the podcast hosted by Margaret Ashley and Anthony Rudd, Venton joined to shed light on an area of the audio world that most voice actors know exists but few truly understand. What followed was an illuminating conversation about how radio stations get their sound, where the industry is heading, how AI is both helping and threatening the craft, and the surprisingly simple advice he’d give to anyone trying to break in.

A Happy Accident

Like many of the best careers in audio, Adam Venton’s didn’t begin with a master plan. It began with a misunderstanding about the word “logic.”

Growing up, Venton was musical — playing guitar, performing in bands at school — and driven by a simple principle: he wanted a job he enjoyed. That meant either sports or music. He enrolled in Creative Music Technology at the University of the West of England in Bristol, having somehow “blagged” his way onto the course with nothing more than a Music Performance A-level and the good fortune of it being the programme’s inaugural year.

“On day one, I turned up and they were in the studio talking about Logic — the music program — and I was that green that I thought they were talking about mental logic,” Venton recalled. “I didn’t even know it was a program. I had no idea.”

He made it through the course. But upon graduating, he found himself at a familiar crossroads: trained in music technology, with no clear path into a specific career. What he did have was a fascination with radio — though not the kind most people mean.

“I always used to listen to the radio and think about the bits between the songs,” he said, “and thought, ‘Somebody needs to make those.’ I had no idea it was called imaging.”

Black Thunder to Audio Branding

Venton’s way in came through the most unglamorous of doors. He got a job as a “Black Thunder” at GWR, a local radio station in Bristol — essentially driving around in a branded vehicle, handing out stickers and mugs at events, and being the public face of the station.

“Dicking around in a car giving out stickers and mugs,” was how Venton summarised the role. “It was great fun.”

He wasn’t hired for his production skills. In fact, the marketing manager, Annemarie, told him directly that he wasn’t really outgoing enough for the role. But she noticed something on his CV: music technology experience. The station’s producer, she mentioned, was “a bit stressed.” Would he like to have a chat and see if he could help out?

That producer was Ben Marks — who would go on to co-found Reel World, one of the biggest names in radio imaging globally. Marks sat down with the young Black Thunder and explained, over the course of a couple of hours, exactly what radio imaging was and how it worked.

“When I left that day,” Venton said, “I was like, that’s a million percent what I need to be doing.”

Marks offered him a deal: come in and help with vox pops and small audio tasks for free, and in return, Marks would give him time each week to learn production under his guidance. It was, in effect, an informal apprenticeship — unpaid, lasting two years, supplemented by Black Thundering shifts and evening work as a waiter.

“Kind of an apprenticeship, really,” Venton said. “And then I’d spend my other time working as a waiter to kind of get by.”

It’s the kind of origin story that barely exists anymore. The closure of regional radio stations across the UK has eliminated many of the entry points that allowed someone like Venton to stumble into the industry through proximity and persistence. But the relationships he built during those years — and the deep understanding of the craft he absorbed — became the foundation of everything that followed.

What Audio Imaging Actually Is

For listeners of Voice Acting Unplugged — and for anyone outside the radio industry — Venton offered a clear explanation of what audio imaging actually involves.

“Fundamentally, it’s the sound and identity of a station,” he said. “The tone and voice, the selection of voiceover, the selection of music, sound effects — all of that.”

He illustrated the point with a simple thought experiment: imagine hearing Smooth Radio and Kiss FM side by side, with the music stripped out. Even without the songs, you’d immediately recognise which was which — and the reason is imaging. It’s the sonic equivalent of a brand’s visual identity: the colours, fonts, and design language that tell you whether you’re looking at a luxury brand or a budget retailer, translated into audio.

The scope of the work has expanded significantly since Venton started. What was once strictly “radio imaging” has broadened into “audio branding” — encompassing podcasts, social media content, and any audio-first platform that needs a distinctive sonic identity.

When asked about his own aesthetic preferences, Venton was refreshingly candid.

“I go against the grain here and people will hate on me for it, but I really don’t like jingles,” he said. “I never have.”

While he acknowledged that sung jingles remain a viable market — Capital Radio still uses them, and companies like TM Studios and Chris Stevens continue to produce them — Venton’s taste runs in a different direction entirely.

“I much prefer cool-sounding imaging with drops and things rather than big sung jingles,” he said. His gold standard? The Kiss FM imaging from around 2008 to 2012, under the creative leadership of Matt Lomax, Palframan, and Andy Roberts. “Their imaging was just stellar. That was what I always aspired to be like.”

The Role of Voiceover in Imaging

For voice actors, one of the most important questions was how voiceover fits into the imaging world — and whether there are opportunities to be found there.

Venton’s answer was honest, if not entirely what aspiring station voices wanted to hear.

“Everything I do has a voiceover,” he confirmed. “The difference is, I’d say ninety to ninety-five percent of our work comes in with a voiceover attached. By that I mean stations have a station voice that they provide when we build things for them.”

In other words, the vast majority of the time, the voice has already been chosen by the station before Venton ever begins production. The occasions when he needs to go out and find a voice himself are “few and far between.”

That said, Venton did offer a characteristically practical piece of advice for voice actors hoping to catch the attention of radio stations — advice that applies as much to the psychology of standing out as to the mechanics of getting hired.

“I always used voiceovers.co.uk rather than an agency, just because you can jump on, search by keyword, and find people,” he said. “But on the rare occasion I do need a voice, generally I know somebody from networking over the years.”

The takeaway is clear: in the imaging world, relationships and visibility matter more than cold submissions. A demo landing in a busy producer’s inbox is likely to be filed under “I’ll look at that another day” — or simply deleted. Not because the voice isn’t good, but because it’s one of many, and the producer is already working.

Venton’s creative suggestion for breaking through that noise was one of the most original pieces of advice in the entire conversation: make a bespoke demo tailored to a specific station.

“If you’re pitching to a particular station, maybe make a demo at home where you’re pretending to work on that station,” he said. “The production doesn’t need to be great — that’s not what they’re listening to. They’re listening to your voice. But all of a sudden, even if they say you’re not the right fit, at least you’ve shown what you would do.”

It’s a simple concept, but a powerful one. Instead of sending a generic showreel, you’re showing the client exactly how you’d sound in their world. The worst that can happen is a polite no. The best? They hear something they hadn’t known they were looking for.

Building Little Monster Media

Venton’s decision to launch Little Monster Media was driven by the same instinct that has guided his career from the start: a desire to do work he enjoys, on his own terms.

In the early days, that meant taking on every client who came through the door — a necessary phase of growth that occasionally meant working with people who were, as he diplomatically put it, “more tricky.” As the business matured and the reputation grew, he was able to become more selective.

“That’s one of the real benefits of being an independent,” he said. “If someone’s not very good to work with and I can afford not to, then I can say no.”

Today, his client roster includes the BBC, NRK in Norway, P5 (also Norway), RTE in Ireland, and numerous other stations across the UK and Europe. The relationships tend to be long-standing: the BBC, for instance, simply sends a brief and trusts him to deliver, with approval and tweaks at the end rather than micromanagement throughout.

But Venton was candid about the tension that every independent creative faces: the constant pull between doing the work and growing the business.

“When I’m busy working on projects, I’m not doing the other things I should be doing — marketing, outreach, all of that,” he said. “Until the work pipeline dries up a little bit. And if it doesn’t dry up, I tend to be working for the same stations regularly.”

He’s working with a business coach who keeps encouraging him to post on LinkedIn and reach out to potential clients. His response, delivered with a self-deprecating laugh: “I’m just like, okay.”

The honest ambivalence was refreshing. Venton has clearly thought carefully about what he wants Little Monster Media to be — and what he doesn’t want it to become.

“I had to sit down and have a little think about what I wanted Little Monster Media to be,” he said. “Did I want to try and grow as fast as I could and compete with the likes of Reel World and Benztown and have loads of staff? Or did I want to make a living that was enough for the family and do work with clients that I enjoy?”

With a five-month-old and a five-year-old at home, the answer was clear. Growth is welcome, but not at the expense of being present for the years that matter most.

“When they’re fifteen, sixteen, and don’t want to spend any time with me, then maybe I’ll push for some more work,” he said.

The Studio: Lean and In the Box

For the gear enthusiasts, Venton’s setup might come as a surprise for someone whose work is heard on stations with millions of listeners. There are no banks of synthesizers or walls of outboard equipment.

“Most of it’s in the box,” he said — meaning software-based, running on his computer. He has an Arturia MicroFreak hardware synthesizer that he uses for sound design, a couple of guitars “gathering dust,” and a 61-key keyboard tucked under a shelf. But the core of his production happens digitally.

It’s a setup that reflects both the realities of modern audio production and the practical advantages of portability. When you need to work remotely or on the move, “in the box” is king.

Sound design, however, is where Venton’s craft shows its depth. He creates all his own sound design packages from scratch — the bespoke sonic elements that give each station’s imaging its unique character. For drops and other production elements, there’s still a decidedly old-school process: mining acapellas, cutting out anything that sounds relevant, and filing it away for future use.

“Same old way of mining acapellas and cutting out anything that sounds relevant and sticking it in a folder for a later date,” he said.

AI: Tool, Threat, and Everything in Between

On the subject of artificial intelligence, Venton struck a balance between pragmatism and genuine concern — neither dismissive nor apocalyptic, but clear-eyed about the risks.

In his own work, he’s found AI useful as a tool for specific tasks — particularly analysing music to identify key signatures and BPM at the click of a button, a process that previously required significant music theory knowledge.

“I spent a lot of time learning about keys and BPMs and analysing music,” he said. “But you don’t necessarily have to do the music theory these days to produce. You’ve got tools you can use.”

For scripting, though, he draws a firm line. “A lot of people are starting to use it for scripting, and I don’t agree with that because it’s very obvious. Idea generation, sure — you could use ChatGPT or something like that. But I still think it needs a human touch to be relevant and customised to the client.”

He’s also sceptical of AI-generated audio — particularly AI-produced “listener drops” (the short audio clips of real people that give stations a sense of community and authenticity). While he acknowledged not knowing enough about specific implementations to comment in detail, his instinct was clear.

“I’d question the authenticity of something like that because it’s not a real person,” he said. “Real people will always give you something that AI can’t.”

But Venton’s concerns extend beyond his own studio. He spoke movingly about his friend and mentor Colin McGinness, a composer who creates film scores and epic trailers — and who sees AI as an existential threat to his livelihood.

“Every time I see him, he’s like, ‘I’ve only got a couple of years left of this because of what’s happening with AI,'” Venton said. “The fear is real.”

When asked whether his own job could be at risk, Venton didn’t sugarcoat it.

“Theoretically, my job could be extinct in five to ten years if AI becomes good enough,” he said. “I don’t think the quality would be the same. But if the quality gets to a point where it’s ‘good enough’ and larger companies go, ‘This is good enough — our listeners aren’t going to care and we can save a ton of money,’ then they’ll do it. Because that’s what they’ve done with everything so far. Wrapping up all the stations was exactly that — saving money.”

He also raised a point that often gets lost in AI discussions: the vulnerability of creative professionals’ existing work. The sheer volume of audio that voice actors, producers, and composers put online — showreels, demos, sample tracks — represents a vast training resource for AI systems, regardless of whether the creators consented to that use.

“There’s a morality element to it — AI shouldn’t be going to absorb that and copy it,” Venton said. “But I guarantee somewhere, somewhere will.”

His conclusion was measured but firm: the future depends on regulation. Without government-level safeguards to ensure AI is used as a tool to enhance human creativity rather than replace it, the industry faces genuine peril.

“We just need to make sure that the powers that be put the right regulations in place,” he said.

The Podcast Opportunity — and the Education Gap

With radio consolidation squeezing traditional imaging budgets, Venton acknowledged that podcasting represents a significant growth area for audio branding. The problem? Most podcast creators don’t want to pay for quality audio.

“People just don’t want to pay,” he said plainly. “If you’re starting a podcast, people don’t want to pay for music. They’ll get free music off the internet. They’ll get free effects from somewhere and put it together.”

It’s a frustration familiar to anyone who works in audio production — and one that Venton encapsulated with a memorable analogy.

“You can’t bake a brilliant cake with crap ingredients,” he said. “The end cake is going to be as good as the ingredients you use. And it’s exactly the same with audio. If you use run-of-the-mill stuff, you’re going to get a run-of-the-mill sound.”

The gap, as he sees it, is one of education. Many podcast creators — particularly those who aren’t audio professionals by background — simply don’t understand the difference that professional imaging makes, or the value it adds to their content. Closing that gap is something Venton has considered addressing through Little Monster Media, though the time to develop proper educational resources remains elusive.

In the meantime, he directs aspiring producers to WizzFX, a competing independent company run by Chris Nickel and Sam Parker, which offers masterclass content for people learning production. It’s a recommendation that speaks to something Venton clearly values: the imaging community’s culture of mutual support.

“On the face of it, you could say Wizz are a competing independent company,” he said. “But that’s the beauty of the radio imaging and audio branding community — there isn’t really any of that. Everyone helps everybody.”

Staying Relevant: The Producer’s Dilemma

One of the more reflective moments in the conversation came when Venton was asked where he sees the industry in ten to twelve years — and whether he sees himself still in it.

His answer was disarmingly honest.

“A lot of my work at the moment is stations like Radio 1,” he said. “And do I see myself doing that when I’m sixty? My skillset is not going to be in line with the modern cutting-edge techniques at that time.”

It’s a concern that applies to any creative professional in a fast-moving field. When you’re immersed in the daily work, it’s easy to miss the gradual shifts happening around you — the same way, as Venton put it, you don’t notice your children growing taller because you see them every day.

“You need to be growing and developing as a producer and not becoming reliant on templates and the same old tricks,” he said. “It’s really difficult to be doing that when you’ve got a heavy workload and you’re doing other things as well. It’s one of my biggest challenges.”

The honest acknowledgement of that tension — between delivering today’s work and staying equipped for tomorrow’s — was one of the most valuable takeaways of the conversation. It’s a challenge that voice actors, composers, and producers all share, and there are no easy answers.

Advice for Getting In

For anyone hoping to break into audio imaging — whether as a producer, a voice actor, or in any other capacity — Venton’s advice was rooted in human connection rather than credentials.

The traditional entry point of working at a local radio station is largely gone, he acknowledged. But opportunities still exist through community stations, which continue to grow, and through independent companies like his own and WizzFX.

His strongest recommendation, though, was simpler than any course or qualification.

“Research the companies like mine, like Chris’s, and the producers that work at the bigger stations,” he said. “Find out who they are and reach out to them. Just ask to meet them. See if you can develop a relationship.”

The logic is straightforward: it costs nothing, it puts you on someone’s radar, and when a job does come up, you’re not a stranger — you’re someone they’ve already met and liked.

“If I had to fill a role tomorrow and I had two producers here — one was brilliant but I didn’t click with him as a person, and one was average but hungry and really nice to work with and had a good outlook on life — I’m taking him all day long,” Venton said. “You can learn this stuff. Human connection and old-school reaching out to people is what I’d recommend.”

For the younger generation considering the field, Venton had an even simpler message: follow your passion. The path won’t be easy, but the alternative — sitting in an office and “just existing” — is worse.

“If it all goes wrong, you can go and get a job you need to get to survive,” he said. “I worked as a waiter. I didn’t enjoy it, but it served a purpose for a couple of years.”

Final Thoughts

Adam Venton’s appearance on Voice Acting Unplugged pulled back the curtain on a corner of the audio world that most people — including many professional voice actors — rarely get to see from the inside. The craft of audio imaging is one of those invisible arts: when it’s done well, you don’t consciously notice it. You simply know which station you’re listening to, and it feels right.

What came through most clearly in the conversation was Venton’s deep respect for the work and the community around it — a community where competitors freely recommend each other, where mentorship happens informally over years of unpaid apprenticeship, and where the measure of a good collaborator isn’t just their technical skill but whether they’re someone you’d actually want in the room.

His honesty about the challenges ahead — AI, industry consolidation, the difficulty of staying relevant in a field that moves faster than you do — was delivered without self-pity or false optimism. It was the perspective of someone who loves what he does, knows how precarious creative careers can be, and has made deliberate choices about what kind of life and business he wants to build.

And at the heart of it all, a principle so obvious it’s easy to forget: you can’t bake a brilliant cake with crap ingredients. Whether you’re building a radio station’s sonic identity, a podcast’s audio brand, or a voice acting career, the quality of what you put in determines the quality of what comes out.

This blog post is based on an episode of Voice Acting Unplugged, hosted by Margaret Ashley and Anthony Rudd. To learn more about Adam Venton’s work or to enquire about audio imaging and branding services, visit littlemonstermedia.co.uk. For more episodes of the podcast, subscribe and follow Voice Acting Unplugged on your preferred platform.

Join Margaret & Anthony next time on Voice Acting Unplugged.

February 26, 2026February 26, 2026

CHRIS TESTER

CHRIS TESTER – How to Stand Out

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Chris Tester

Chris is an award-winning actor and voiceover artist with a home studio based in London, UK. After three years of classical training at the Royal Central School of Speech and Drama, he accidentally became an influencer in my 40s, with over 750,000 social media followers.

Chris has been nominated for 30 awards, winning Best Male at the 2024 VOX Awards and Best Promo at One Voice 2025. He has worked on major campaigns with BMW, Google and Net-A-Porter, various games from Dark Souls to Warhammer 40k and recorded audiobooks with Penguin Random House and Harper Collins.

chris@naturallyrp.co.uk

www.naturallyrp.co.uk

www.linkedin.com/in/chrisgtester/
www.instagram.com/chrisnaturallyrp/
www.tiktok.com/@chrisnaturallyrp

CHRIS TESTER - How to Stand Out

Paint on the Suit: How Chris Tester Built a Voice Acting Brand Through Social Media, Strategy, and Stubborn Consistency

The voice actor behind Naturally RP on building an audience of three-quarters of a million, why your mum might be your most important first follower, and the uncomfortable truths about AI that the industry doesn’t want to hear.

There’s a particular kind of voice actor who makes you stop scrolling. Not because they’re shouting, not because they’ve done something gimmicky, but because something about the way they perform — even in a fifteen-second social media clip — makes you think: I want to hear more of that.

Chris Tester is one of those voice actors. Known online as Naturally RP, he’s built a social media following of over 750,000 across platforms, carved out a distinctive brand in an industry where most people’s headshots feature a microphone and a sweater, and turned the unglamorous daily discipline of vocal practice into a content engine that generates work, audience, and creative satisfaction in roughly equal measure.

In a recent episode of Voice Acting Unplugged, the podcast hosted by Margaret Ashley and Anthony Rudd, Tester joined as the first guest of the show’s second season to talk about how he built his social media presence from nothing, his honest assessment of pay-to-play platforms, the branding decision that involved covering a blue suit in paint, and his characteristically nuanced — and at times uncomfortable — take on artificial intelligence and who it threatens most.

The Long Road to an Overnight Success

Chris Tester has been an actor since 2008 and a full-time voice actor since around 2017. But the social media presence that many people now associate him with didn’t materialise quickly or easily.

“With a lot of people, when you’re trying to run your own business, you are aware that social media is a thing and it may be a thing that could help your business, but you don’t know how at all,” Tester said. “At the same time, the vast majority of us want to spend less time on social media.”

For the first four or five years of his voice acting career, Tester built his business primarily through freelancing sites and direct marketing — cold emails, outreach, the traditional grind. He took courses on social media strategy and tried to apply what he learned. The results were consistent: nothing.

“It would promptly fall on its arse,” he said cheerfully.

The problem, as he came to understand it, wasn’t necessarily the advice he was getting. It was that not all businesses and services are suited to the same social platforms or the same approaches. What works for a lifestyle brand or a product business doesn’t automatically translate to a solo voice actor trying to get hired.

More fundamentally, Tester realised that the standard approach of sharing clips of completed work — the bread and butter of most voice actors’ social feeds — wasn’t resonating. Not because the work wasn’t good, but because other voice actors’ showreels simply aren’t compelling content for most people.

“When I see a fellow voice actor share an example of their work, I may love that other voice actor, but I’ll listen to about five seconds of it and then flick on to something else,” he admitted. “Because they got the gig and I didn’t, probably. Or because I’m not the audience for it.”

The Zeus Monologue: Six Minutes That Changed Everything

The breakthrough, when it finally came, defied every piece of conventional social media wisdom Tester had ever been given.

It wasn’t a snappy ten-second hook. It wasn’t a trending audio clip. It was a six-minute monologue.

Written by his friend and theatre collaborator Ross McGregor, the piece imagined the Greek god Zeus ranting about having created the internet. Tester recorded it simply because he thought it was a brilliant piece of writing — not because he expected it to perform. It was posted on TikTok, a platform where received wisdom says anything over sixty seconds is death.

It got 300,000 views.

“You’ve gotta be, you know, a minute or ten seconds or thirty seconds long and short and punchy and memorable and blah, blah, blah,” Tester said, mimicking the standard advice. “Anyway — yeah, so that happened.”

The success of the Zeus video validated something Tester had been groping toward for months: that the most effective social media content for a voice actor isn’t a showreel clip or a trending audio meme. It’s a performance — something that showcases not just the voice, but the person behind it.

The System: Content That Serves Multiple Purposes

What sets Tester’s approach apart from the scattergun posting that many voice actors default to is his insistence that every piece of content must serve more than one purpose.

“My whole approach is that I want to de-risk my business as much as possible,” he explained. “If I’m spending time creating stuff, it can’t just purely serve ‘I’m creating content.’ It’s also got to serve something else for me.”

His primary content format is deceptively simple: cold readings of speeches from film, theatre, animation, video games, and books. He records them, posts them across platforms, and moves on. But the act of creating that content simultaneously accomplishes several things that would otherwise require separate dedicated time:

Vocal warm-up. Every recording is a warm-up session. On days when his only paid work is a single corporate video, Tester knows he wouldn’t bother doing a proper warm-up. The content creation holds him accountable.

Cold reading practice. Sight-reading is a fundamental skill for voice actors, and daily practice keeps it sharp.

Emotional preparation. Performing material with genuine stakes — dramatic monologues, literary passages, game dialogue — exercises the emotional range that can atrophy when the daily work is mostly corporate narration.

Content library. Each video becomes a piece of content that can be repurposed — on TikTok, Instagram, LinkedIn, his newsletter, and his blog — improving his SEO and keeping him visible across platforms.

“Even if I didn’t get an audience from the stuff that I create — and for the first six months, I didn’t have an audience other than my mum — it was still worth doing,” Tester said.

That mention of his mum wasn’t a throwaway line. The content creation began during COVID, when Tester’s father had recently passed away and his mother couldn’t see him perform in plays. Posting performances on Instagram became a way for her to stay connected to his work.

“It was a big connection thing, in all honesty. Me performing, her sending me notes. The easiest thing to do was post it on Instagram, rather than trying to send it as a video and her going, ‘Oh, I don’t know how to open that.'”

It’s a reminder that the most sustainable creative habits are often rooted in something more personal than metrics.

Why Most Voice Actors’ Social Media Doesn’t Work

Tester was bracingly honest about the fundamental problem with how most voice actors approach social media: they’re not using their voice.

“Especially on Instagram, there was this thing where if you use the trending audio, you’re more likely to come up in people’s feeds — and you are,” he said. “But it also means if you’re using the trending audio, you’re not necessarily using your voice, which is the thing that you’re trying to sell. And I’m like, what’s the point of that?”

The insight is simple but powerful. Every form of voice actor marketing — cold emails, pay-to-play auditions, agent submissions — ultimately requires the client to hear your voice. With direct marketing, that means getting someone to click through to a website, then click on a showreel. That’s two clicks, each one an opportunity to lose them.

Social media, by contrast, is instantaneous.

“You’ll see me performing in my home studio and you’ll either want to listen — so your audio will be on — or it won’t be,” Tester said. “And that’s absolutely fine. But it’s the most direct way of using my voice in a non-salesy way.”

He’s not popping up in inboxes with desperate personal videos. He’s not cold-calling creative directors. He’s performing, publicly, every day — and the right people find him when they’re ready.

“Different clients are gonna hang out in different spaces,” he noted. “There are gonna be clients who will never be aware of my social media following, and that’s absolutely fine.”

He shared an anecdote that perfectly illustrated the point. A client once approached him about a Warhammer 40K project, explaining the franchise as though Tester had never heard of it. In reality, he’d already recorded around sixty videos, five audiobooks, and eight video games in that universe. But the client had found him through a completely different channel.

“That’s great,” Tester said. “Whatever.”

The Real Numbers: Time, Money, and Honesty

One of the most refreshing aspects of Tester’s approach is his willingness to be transparent about the actual investment social media requires — and to acknowledge that it’s not equally accessible to everyone.

He currently spends about an hour and a half to two hours per week selecting material and recording. He pays someone approximately fifty pounds per week to edit the videos. Add it all together, and it’s roughly three hours and fifty pounds of his working week dedicated to content creation.

“I can only afford to do that because of other jobs I’ve got,” he said plainly. “I appreciate that there are vast majorities of other people who’ve got kids to juggle, family to juggle with — trying to find even an extra half an hour, let alone an extra three hours, isn’t necessarily feasible.”

His advice isn’t “everyone should do what I do.” It’s more measured: identify all the different ways you could be building your business, track what’s actually working, and allocate your time accordingly.

“If you’re not comfortable about getting out there, you don’t have to do it,” he said. “If you can find other ways of earning the money, it’s about the life you want to lead, ultimately.”

He was equally candid about the difficulty of tracking return on investment from social media. Unlike direct email marketing, where you can trace a booking back to a specific outreach, social media’s influence is diffuse and often invisible.

“Occasionally people will drop into my DMs and come up with work, or they’ll say, ‘Oh yeah, I’ve seen you on LinkedIn.’ But is it easy to trace? No. It’s really difficult. And I think you either come to terms with that and trust the process, or if your bills aren’t getting paid, do the things that work better in the limited time you have.”

The one tracking habit he does insist on: always asking new clients how they found you.

“Being very clear about making sure that you ask people, ‘How did you find me?’ is super invaluable.”

The Branding Gamble: Paint on the Suit

For years, Tester’s visual brand was built around a blue suit and a teacup with a raised pinky — a tongue-in-cheek nod to the RP (Received Pronunciation) voice that is his stock in trade. It was memorable, distinctive, and served him well.

Then, after six years, he blew it up.

“I needed to disrupt it a little bit,” he said.

The new branding involved a photo shoot that was decidedly non-traditional — and resulted in images of Tester in his signature blue suit, splattered with bright orange paint. It was bold, unexpected, and deliberately designed to signal something about who he is as a performer: playful, willing to go outside the box, not taking himself too seriously.

The decision was informed by something Tester had noticed through what he called “accidental competitor analysis” — the process of looking at other voice actors’ websites when recommending colleagues for jobs he couldn’t take himself.

“I kept seeing a microphone and a sweater, and a microphone and a sweater, and a microphone and a sweater,” he said. “We’ve established what the mean is — what the average is. How could I be visually memorable as well?”

He was quick to add that he’s not suggesting everyone should cover themselves in paint. The point isn’t the specific choice but the principle behind it: if your job is to stop the scroll, to make a listener pause and actually listen, then every element of your presentation — visual and sonic — should work toward that goal.

“If you are dealing with creative people, you’ve got to deal on their creative terms,” he said. Then, with characteristic self-awareness: “At the same time, if I need someone to unblock my toilet, I don’t care about their branding. I care about them turning up.”

Has the rebrand resulted in more work? Yes. Clients have specifically mentioned the branding. But Tester is honest about the limits of attribution: “It’s nigh on impossible for me to track that unless I’m asking people.”

Pay-to-Play: An Honest Assessment

When the conversation turned to pay-to-play platforms — subscription sites where voice actors pay to access audition opportunities — Tester was upfront about his limited recent experience. He hasn’t been on a pay-to-play platform for about seven or eight years, though he’s currently considering returning to one or two for variety.

His departure from the pay-to-play world was driven primarily by mental health.

“My whole acting sensibility of throwing stuff into the void and not hearing back — for my mental health, I hate that,” he said. “I’ve got an amazing agent in Voice Fox who sends me amazing opportunities, and that’s different because they’re of a certain higher quality. But when it’s like, ‘Oh, I need to send twenty auditions, or sixty auditions, or two hundred auditions to get that one’ — there are some people who can detach themselves better.”

For those who can treat it as a numbers game — calculating how many auditions they need to submit to book a certain amount of work — pay-to-play can be a viable strategy. Tester simply knows it doesn’t suit his temperament.

When pressed for his views on specific platforms, he offered a characteristically frank rundown. Bodalgo, the German-based platform, hadn’t yielded anything worthwhile in his brief experience. Voice123 he credited with at least being transparent and willing to engage with the voice acting community, despite its controversial tiered pricing system. And Voices.com he described as “probably the Death Star — which has almost no transparency and behaves incredibly unethically, but is so all-pervading that, especially in the American market, it still seems to be doing good business.”

His advice for anyone considering pay-to-play: try them yourself. Different platforms suit different voices, different markets, and different business models. And remember that the tiered pricing systems — where paying more gets you earlier or better access to auditions — carry inherent ethical tensions.

“The hint is in the name,” he said. “Pay to play.”

The Newsletter and Email Marketing: Know the Difference

Tester also discussed his newsletter — a tool he uses not to generate direct leads, but to stay visible and share his thinking with people who’ve opted in.

He was emphatic about one distinction: a newsletter is not the same as email marketing, and conflating the two is a fast track to alienating potential clients.

“What I don’t do is write to people and then, regardless of whether or not they say we’re interested or we’re not interested, sign them up to a newsletter. I do not do that,” he said. “Because that’s the quickest way of pissing people off.”

His newsletter is purely opt-in — promoted via links at the end of LinkedIn posts and in email signatures, but never foisted on anyone who hasn’t asked for it. The content is largely repurposed from his LinkedIn posts and other social media, which ties back to his core principle: everything you create should serve multiple purposes.

For email marketing — the separate practice of following up with prospective clients — Tester recommended a cadence of roughly once every two to three months for existing contacts. Frequent enough to stay on the radar; infrequent enough not to become irritating.

“You keep people in the loop about what you’re up to and your availability and what cool things you’ve done — without getting ridiculously irritating,” he said.

AI: The Nuanced View Nobody Wants to Hear

It would have been easy for Tester to deliver a safe, crowd-pleasing answer on artificial intelligence. He chose not to.

“Of course it’s a threat,” he said bluntly. “It’s idiotic to say that it’s not. There are those people who say, ‘Oh, it won’t affect my level of work.’ Well, you don’t know that. You don’t know that at all.”

But Tester’s position isn’t simply anti-AI. He was disarmingly open about having explored the possibility of monetising an AI version of his own voice.

“I found that there is, at the moment, no obvious good, effective way of doing that with a supplier,” he said. “Having an AI version of my voice that I can market to people, getting me twelve pounds fifty every six months in the background — and my voice is potentially everywhere doing a pretty crap job — that makes no sense.”

He has, by his own admission, lost clients to AI. The casualties are predictable: explainer videos, straightforward content work — “anything where ‘good enough’ is sufficient” and where the client is “price led as opposed to quality led.”

But the part of the conversation that cut deepest was Tester’s challenge to the industry’s comfortable narrative about AI — the one that says “just get good” and you’ll always outperform the machines.

“That’s normally a talking point made by someone who is already incredibly well established in the industry, probably for about twenty-plus years,” Tester observed. “They tend to be male. They tend to be white. They tend to be from America.”

He doesn’t disagree with the premise — you absolutely need to be better than the machine. But he sees a wider structural issue that the “just get good” crowd overlooks.

“One of the wonderful things about home studios is that they brought a variety of different voices and different demographics and better representation,” he said. “What AI does is put that barrier to entry back in for people just starting out or people who’ve been doing it for a couple of years and are thinking, ‘Maybe I can go full-time.'”

If AI continues to erode the entry-level and mid-range work that allows new voice actors to build a career, the industry risks going full circle — from a democratised landscape back to a small, select group of established names and those who can bring an existing audience.

“We go from ‘Home studios are great because they’ve broadened out this huge potential’ to ‘Actually, no — it’s the same small select group of people, or just those people who can bring an audience,'” Tester said.

He acknowledged the tension in his own position. He benefits from his social media following in ways that most voice actors can’t replicate. He believes in authentic performance and the best person getting the job. He also knows that his platform gives him leverage that has nothing to do with acting ability.

“I’m playing both ends of it,” he admitted. “And I’ll say it should be about the best person and the most authentic voice. At the same time, I fundamentally believe that actors innately have to be transformational — it’s not just about playing ourselves, because that way is the death of art and creativity.”

It’s messy and contradictory. It’s also honest in a way that most industry commentary on AI conspicuously isn’t.

The Uncomfortable Truth About the Voiceover Economy

Throughout the conversation, Tester repeatedly pushed back against the sanitised version of the voice acting business that sometimes gets presented at conferences and in marketing materials.

“To say, ‘Oh, well, it’s fine because I only deal in big-ticket clients’ — well, that’s a very small minority of the voiceover world,” he said. “For the vast majority of voiceover talent, it’s not like that at all. We’ll have the occasional big payday if we’re lucky, but we’ll be incredibly grateful for the five IVR messages and that explainer video we got at the end of the week, which kind of made ends meet.”

He started on Fiverr. He still has a profile on Fiverr. He’s scaled his rates up as his skills and reputation have grown, but he doesn’t pretend that his career has been a seamless ascent from premium gig to premium gig.

That honesty — about money, about mental health, about the realities of freelance life — is arguably what makes his social media content resonate beyond the voice acting community. People follow him not because he’s selling a fantasy of effortless success, but because he’s visibly working through the same challenges they are, in real time, with humour and without illusions.

Social Media as Unexpected Career Catalyst

One of the most interesting revelations in the conversation was how social media has opened doors to genres of work Tester had never pursued — or had actively avoided.

“I’ve sworn off doing any animation,” he said, “because I can’t do all of the varied, heightened voices. Not that I’m saying animation is all about that — I know there’s a craft behind it — but I’m not an animation talent.”

And yet, through social media, that’s exactly the kind of work that has found him. Clients who’ve watched his performances online approach him with specific roles already in mind — roles suited to what he actually does, rather than what a generic audition brief might ask for.

“People know who I am, what it is that I can do. And so they’ve come to me with a particular role in mind already, rather than me trying to crowbar myself into something going, ‘I can still play a teen.’ No, you can’t, Chris. Get over it.”

It’s a model that inverts the traditional audition dynamic. Instead of voice actors chasing roles and trying to fit themselves into someone else’s vision, the right clients come to them — because they’ve already seen the performance.

Audiobooks, too, came to Tester through social media — a genre he might never have explored otherwise, and one that now represents a significant strand of his work.

Final Thoughts

Chris Tester’s appearance on Voice Acting Unplugged was a masterclass in strategic honesty — the kind of conversation that’s valuable precisely because it refuses to be comfortable.

His approach to social media is neither evangelical nor dismissive. It works for him because he’s found a way to align content creation with craft development, making the time investment serve multiple purposes simultaneously. But he’s the first to acknowledge that it’s not for everyone, that it requires resources not everyone has, and that its returns are maddeningly difficult to measure.

His take on AI resists easy categorisation. He’s neither a Luddite nor a cheerful adopter. He’s someone who has looked at the technology honestly, explored its potential, measured its risks, and arrived at a position that’s more complex — and more useful — than either “the robots are coming” or “just get good.”

And his branding — the paint-splattered suit, the raised-pinky teacup, the whole Naturally RP persona — is a case study in what happens when a voice actor stops trying to be a blank slate and starts being unapologetically, memorably themselves.

“The whole job is to stop the scroll,” Tester said, “or make a listener stop and really listen.”

In a feed full of microphones and sweaters, a blue suit covered in orange paint does exactly that.

This blog post is based on an episode of Voice Acting Unplugged, hosted by Margaret Ashley and Anthony Rudd. To learn more about Chris Tester’s work, training offerings, and social media content, visit naturallyrp.co.uk. For more episodes of the podcast, subscribe and follow Voice Acting Unplugged on your preferred platform.

Join Margaret & Anthony next time on Voice Acting Unplugged.

February 26, 2026February 26, 2026

EVERETT OLIVER

EVERETT OLIVER - How To Get Into Cartoons

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Everett Oliver

Everett’s personal journey has taken him from the Big Apple (as a kid) to Georgia where he graduated from Clark Atlanta University, and then to Los Angeles. He has been working in the Voiceover industry for over three decades as an International Voice Acting Director and has worked with talent in Africa. Australia, Canada, Europe and Japan.

Everett has worked on hit animated primetime shows including: The Simpsons, King of the Hill, Men in Black, Jackie Chan Adventures, Hellboy, and X-Men Evolution, (just to name a few), and has worked with animation industry titans, such as Disney, Columbia Tri-Star, and Film Roman/Starz. One of the most valuable experiences that Everett brings to the table is his time as a Booth-Director for an LA based talent agency.

Also nominated for Best Performance Animation Demo Reel for the One Voice Awards 2025 – produced by Everett Oliver.

www.voiceactingdirector.com

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EVERETT OLIVER - How To Get Into Cartoons

From Shipping Simpsons Artwork to Directing the Next Generation: Everett Oliver on 30 Years Inside Animation Casting

The veteran voiceover director, casting expert, and coach shares the tricks, truths, and hard-won lessons of a career that started at the very bottom of the animation production line.

There are people who talk about the animation industry from the outside, and there are people who have lived inside it — from the photocopy room to the casting suite to the talent agency floor. Everett Oliver is firmly in the second category.

Over a career spanning three decades, Oliver has occupied nearly every seat in the animation production chain. He started as the shipping assistant on The Simpsons, xeroxing artwork until two in the morning. He moved into casting, where he listened to thousands of auditions on CD. He crossed over to the agency side, where he directed actors and submitted talent to buyers. And then he took everything he’d learned and built his own business, coaching and directing voice actors around the world.

In a recent episode of Voice Acting Unplugged, the podcast hosted by Margaret Ashley and Anthony Rudd, Oliver brought his characteristic energy and bluntness to a wide-ranging conversation about how animation casting really works, what separates the actors who book from those who don’t, and why “doing voices” without acting training is a recipe for disappointment.

Starting at the Very Bottom

Everett Oliver knew two things early in life: he wanted to live in California, and he wanted to work in entertainment. After moving to Los Angeles in the mid-nineties, he made a few phone calls, connected with a mentor in animation, and landed his first role — at the absolute bottom of the production ladder.

“I started basically at the bottom in animation, learning everything about the animation production,” he said.

His first major gig was on The Simpsons, where his job was decidedly unglamorous: he was the shipper, responsible for xerox-copying every single piece of animation artwork — backgrounds, character layouts, the lot — before sending it overseas to Korea, where the actual animation was drawn and shot on camera.

“I can’t even tell you what my Friday nights were,” Oliver recalled. “You start at nine and I didn’t go home until almost two AM.”

The Korean studios operated with three rotating teams — A, B, and C — and Oliver was shipping artwork every Friday for whichever episode was in production. With 23 episodes per season and multiple directors each handling three shows, it was a relentless, revolving door of paper.

He was there during the production of one of the show’s most iconic episodes: “Who Shot Mr. Burns?” The production team was so secretive that they created six different endings, and despite being the person physically handling all the artwork, Oliver genuinely didn’t know the answer.

“Everybody would ask me, ‘Who shot him?’ And I was like, no — because I really wasn’t paying attention. I was too involved in my work.”

The Shift from Paper to Pixels

Oliver’s early career gave him a front-row seat to one of the most significant technological transitions in animation history: the move from 2D hand-drawn production to digital.

“I come from a world of 2D, so everybody was drawing on paper,” he said. “We wasted a lot of paper back then. I mean, everything was all on paper.”

When the industry began shifting to digital production, it wasn’t a smooth transition. Artists who had spent their careers working with pencil and paper suddenly had to learn computer-based tools. But the change ultimately made the process faster and more efficient — a shift that would have ripple effects throughout every stage of production, including casting.

Inside the Casting Machine

After his time in production, Oliver was moved into casting — a world he knew nothing about but learned quickly, thanks to what he describes as being “a quick study.”

His description of the casting process in the pre-digital era is a fascinating time capsule. When sides — the script excerpts actors audition with — went out to agents, the agents would have their actors record auditions at the agency. The recordings were burned onto CDs. Drivers would physically collect the CDs from the agencies and deliver them to the casting office. The casting team would then duplicate the CDs — one set for casting, one for the producers, one for the director — and everyone would retreat to their individual offices to listen.

“If you’re talking about maybe ten to fifteen agents, that’s how many CDs we received,” Oliver said. “So we got between maybe fifty to a hundred CDs. We would listen to all the auditions and then we would have a list. Then we’d go back to a meeting and decide.”

The sheer volume was staggering. And the decisions weren’t made on vocal ability alone. On-camera recognition played a significant role, particularly for direct-to-video projects where an actor’s name on the cover could drive sales.

“If we’re gonna put your name on that credit, then most likely that’s gonna sell — rather than somebody who was a no-name,” Oliver explained. “So that process, you’re listening to thousands and thousands of auditions.”

Crossing to the Agency Side

After his years in casting, Oliver followed the advice of his mentor, Charlie Adler — a top animation casting director and producer in Los Angeles — and moved to the agency side of the business. It was, by his own admission, a jarring transition.

“I was the buyer, and now I’m the seller — selling actors to casting people,” he said. “It’s a whole new different ballgame.”

The pace was relentless. Sides would pour in for commercials, promos, and animation projects, each with different turnaround times. Commercial auditions might need to be submitted within hours. Animation allowed a little more breathing room — two to three days to develop characters — but the volume was crushing regardless.

“If it was five to six projects a day, I would probably listen to over 130 auditions a day,” Oliver said. “You come in between nine and nine thirty. You’re done by six o’clock. Your ear is shot. You can’t even process anymore.”

He did it for five years.

During that time, Oliver also served as a booth director — directing actors on their auditions at the agency before submissions went out. It was here that he developed the sharp ear and direct coaching style that would become the foundation of his later career.

Taking It on the Road

When Oliver eventually left the agency world to start his own business, he took with him a panoramic understanding of animation that few people possess: production, marketing, development, casting, agency representation, and directing.

“I took everything,” he said. “I went on the road and gave actors the perspective of the animation background process, the casting process, the agency process. I gave them the whole full dynamics of how the system works.”

But it wasn’t just about information transfer. Oliver discovered that he had an unusual ability to assess an actor’s strengths and weaknesses — and, crucially, to identify which market they were suited to.

“I would size up and say, ‘You’re much more of a New York actor as opposed to an actor in Los Angeles,’ because the acting styles are different across the board,” he explained.

East Coast vs. West Coast: Two Different Worlds

One of the most illuminating parts of the conversation was Oliver’s breakdown of the fundamental differences between East Coast and West Coast animation acting styles — a distinction that many voice actors, particularly those outside the United States, may not be aware of.

“The West Coast acting is a lot more — you are allowed to play more,” Oliver said. “They allow you to bring your personality to whatever you’re reading, depending on the genre. The East Coast read is almost like you’re in school — you have to obey the rules. You can’t improv on the East Coast reads.”

The practical implication is significant: an actor trained or working on the East Coast may deliver auditions that sound technically competent but lack the spontaneity and personality that West Coast casting directors are looking for. And vice versa — a freewheeling West Coast performance might feel undisciplined to East Coast ears.

“All the actors are confused as to what to do,” Oliver said. “Some coaches say you can do this, others say you can’t. It’s all of those dynamics.”

For international voice actors — particularly those in the UK — the differences add yet another layer of complexity. Understanding which market you’re auditioning for, and what that market expects, is essential.

The Biggest Problem: Voices Without Acting

If there was one message Oliver returned to again and again throughout the conversation, it was this: doing a funny voice is not the same as acting.

“Everybody’s like, ‘Oh, my grandmother said I can do characters,'” Oliver said. “Yeah, your grandmother probably did say that. But what she didn’t know was it also involves acting — not you just doing a voice.”

It’s a problem that has intensified since the pandemic, when lockdowns opened the floodgates to a wave of new entrants to the voiceover industry. Many arrived without formal training, drawn by the appealing (and misleading) notion that voice acting could be done from a spare bedroom with minimal preparation.

“What happened was it was opened up,” Oliver said. “Everyone said, ‘Oh, now the animation world is all open.’ And that’s when all the influx of voices came. But then when you’re getting in front of the casting people and the producers, they’re like, ‘You’re not acting. You’re just creating these voices, and that’s not what we do.'”

Oliver hears the same issue constantly in coaching sessions. Actors who sound technically capable but emotionally flat. Performers who can create character voices but can’t inhabit them. Auditions that are, as he put it bluntly, “one note.”

“What I hear is, you sound like everybody else sounds,” he said, describing a recent callback he directed. “You’re not connecting to that specific character. And you’re not bringing you into the character.”

The Audition Tricks That Actually Work

Oliver’s years on both sides of the casting table have given him a toolkit of practical strategies — some of them surprisingly simple — that can make the difference between blending in and standing out.

One of his favourite examples involves women auditioning for boy characters. In American animation, it’s long been common practice for adult women to voice young male characters. Oliver’s trick? Have them slate — the brief self-introduction at the beginning of an audition — as the boy character, not as themselves.

“I made them slate like a boy, and I fooled my agent,” he said. “My agent was looking on the roster going, ‘Who is this boy?’ And I said, ‘Oh, that’s so-and-so.’ And she’s like, ‘That was brilliant.'”

The principle behind the trick is broader than one specific scenario: if you can make the listener forget who you really are — even for a moment — you’ve already gained an advantage.

“If you can trick an agent, or if you can trick a producer, that’s one step in the door,” Oliver said. “People don’t think like that.”

For those working in markets where slating isn’t standard practice — the UK, for instance — the underlying lesson still applies. If you’re playing a child, the audition should sound like a child from the very first syllable. Oliver’s advice for nailing the cadence? Go to the source.

“If you have nieces, nephews, grandchildren, neighbours — record them,” he said. “Have a conversation. Ask them questions: ‘What do you like to eat? What’s your favourite subject in school?’ Allow the kid to talk and pick up the cadence of how kids speak.”

Advice for International Actors: Versatility Is Everything

For voice actors outside the United States looking to break into American animation, Oliver had a clear and somewhat challenging message: versatility isn’t optional.

“You need to know the market,” he said. “You can’t just come in and expect it to work.”

The central issue for many international actors, particularly British ones, is accent. American casting directors hiring for American-market animation will, understandably, default to American-based talent for American-sounding roles. If a British actor can’t deliver a convincing American accent, the question becomes: why would a producer hire someone overseas when they have thousands of options domestically?

Oliver’s advice is pragmatic. Learn to do a credible American accent — and if you can, don’t immediately reveal that you’re British.

“The new thing to me now is, if you can switch up and have an American accent and not tell the producers or anyone that you’re a Brit — then later, ‘Oh, we didn’t know.’ And you never know, they might be developing another show that requires a British accent.”

He cited Idris Elba as a prime example. Oliver first encountered Elba in an American film and assumed he was American. It was only when friends pointed him toward Luther that he heard the actor’s natural British accent.

“Then it clicked,” Oliver said. “But he could be versatile.”

Toni Collette — an Australian actress who has played countless American roles — was another example. The common thread: actors who can move seamlessly between their natural voice and the accent the market requires, without either sounding forced.

Oliver also flagged a growing demand for bilingual performers, particularly in Latin American markets. Actors of Latino heritage who can’t speak Spanish, he noted with evident frustration, are missing out on opportunities that are specifically designed for them.

“They’re looking for bilinguals,” he said. “And I have actors who come from that background who are not bilingual. And I have to say, I don’t know what else to tell you. I can’t help you if you don’t have that specific skillset.”

The Changing Landscape: Youth, Streaming, and Shrinking Margins

Oliver didn’t shy away from discussing the pressures reshaping the animation industry — many of which are making life harder for both established and emerging talent.

One major shift is generational. Networks and studios are increasingly handing creative control to younger executives — typically in their thirties — who bring fresh ideas but often lack experience in animation-specific production processes. The solution, Oliver has observed, is to pair them with veteran professionals. The result is sometimes productive, sometimes frustrating.

“The younger generation doesn’t understand the process of what we used to do,” he said. “And we know, ‘Oh, this is how we do it to make it go faster.’ Whereas they’re trying to figure out the dynamic.”

Another complication: live-action casting directors being brought in to cast animation, despite the two disciplines requiring fundamentally different skill sets.

“Live-action casting is a whole different world from what we do in animation,” Oliver said. “They’re trying to cut costs by bringing in a director for on-camera work, and we’re like, ‘Well, this is — we don’t do it that way.'”

The rise of streaming has further muddied the waters. Where traditional television provided clear, weekly ratings data — Oliver referenced the old Nielsen box system — streaming platforms operate with far less transparency about viewership. For an industry where a show’s survival depends on proving its audience, the lack of reliable metrics creates uncertainty at every level.

“It’s a different way of putting out content,” Oliver said. “And at the end of the day, it’s all about money and ratings.”

The Anime Question: Go to Texas

For actors interested in anime dubbing specifically, Oliver had a simple geographical directive: Texas.

“The majority of the anime is done in Texas,” he said. “That seems to be that market.”

The anime dubbing industry in the United States has long been concentrated around studios in the Dallas-Fort Worth area, particularly Funimation (now Crunchyroll) and related operations. While some anime work has begun trickling into Los Angeles in recent years, the Texas studios have largely locked down the market — and the talent pool.

“The Texans have closed that market to just people who live in Texas,” Oliver said. “So if you want to do anime, that’s where you need to go.”

It’s a practical reality that aspiring anime voice actors need to understand: no amount of training or demo production will overcome the basic logistical requirement of being where the work is recorded.

The Non-Union Path

For non-union voice actors looking to build a career in animation, Oliver’s advice was grounded and realistic. The overwhelming majority of professional animation work — “about 98 to 99 percent,” by his estimate — is union. But there are legitimate entry points for non-union performers.

“There are a lot of web series for animation,” he said. “I would look for animation online, web series.”

Beyond seeking out non-union projects, Oliver stressed the importance of training alongside union actors. Attending the same classes, studying the same material, and absorbing the same standards helps non-union performers close the gap and prepare for the day they’re ready to join.

He also recommended something that many voice actors overlook: research. Not just practising auditions, but actively listening to professional animation demos, studying how working actors approach characters, and understanding the competitive landscape.

“You’re competing against each other,” Oliver said — a truth he delivers at conferences to rooms full of actors who, by his account, react like deer in headlights. “We can all be friends and colleagues, but at the end of the day, we’re all competing against each other. So you have to study. That has to be part of your regimen every day.”

Coaching with Honesty

Today, the bulk of Oliver’s work involves private coaching, audition direction, and demo production. His approach is direct — some might say bracingly so — and rooted in the philosophy that flattery helps no one.

“I’m not the one that’s gonna blow smoke,” he said. “I’m from the Bronx.”

His method begins with getting to know the actor as a person. Background, experiences, personality — all of it becomes material that Oliver can draw on during coaching sessions to help unlock more authentic performances.

“When they tell me a little bit about themselves and their backgrounds, I use all of what they’ve said to me and I throw it at them while they’re actually auditioning,” he explained. “Because they need some sort of familiarity — familiarity of them knowing who they are.”

Oliver is also a visual thinker, and he’s noticed that many actors respond better to imagery than to abstract direction. When a script arrives without accompanying artwork — as voice acting scripts often do — he’ll paint the picture himself, helping the actor visualise the character, the scene, and the world before they ever open their mouth.

“Once I show them that visual and that picture, it just comes to them,” he said. “They go automatically into that character without even processing or thinking about it. They’re like, ‘Oh — okay, I got it.'”

It’s a technique born from years of observing what actually works in the booth — and what doesn’t. Too many actors, Oliver believes, approach animation scripts intellectually when what’s needed is instinct. The job of a good director or coach is to create the conditions where instinct can take over.

The Actors Who Stay Stuck

One of the more sobering themes in the conversation was Oliver’s account of experienced actors who come to him because they’ve stopped booking — and don’t understand why.

“They come to me and say, ‘I’m not booking like I used to,'” he said. “And they haven’t followed up with the new style. They’re still basing their stuff on their acting style from the early two thousands.”

The industry moves. Trends in delivery, character development, and even the pace of dialogue shift over time, and actors who don’t stay current risk becoming relics of a previous era — technically skilled but sonically dated.

Oliver’s prescription is continuous education: ongoing classes, new coaches, exposure to current work, and an honest assessment of whether your approach still matches what the market is buying.

“You don’t even know what the new trends are,” he said of the actors who come to him stuck. “You don’t even know what’s happening.”

Putting Yourself Out There

Beyond training, Oliver emphasised the growing importance of self-promotion — something that the younger generation of voice actors tends to do instinctively but that many established performers neglect.

“The younger generation, when they book stuff, they’re posting all over social media,” he observed. “The old generation doesn’t do that.”

In a market where agencies “can only do but so much,” Oliver believes actors have to take ownership of their careers in ways that go beyond honing their craft.

“You have to take the initiative of your career,” he said. “It’s your career. And if you’re not taking initiative of your career, I don’t know what to tell you.”

Final Thoughts

Everett Oliver’s appearance on Voice Acting Unplugged was a masterclass in unvarnished industry truth — delivered with warmth, humour, and the particular authority that only comes from having done every job in the building.

His journey from xeroxing Simpsons artwork at two in the morning to coaching voice actors around the world is a testament to the value of curiosity, hard work, and a willingness to keep learning at every stage. And his message to aspiring animation voice actors is as clear as it is challenging: this is a craft, not a hobby. It requires acting, not just voices. It demands versatility, not just talent. And it rewards those who treat it like the fiercely competitive profession it is.

“How bad do you want it?” Oliver asked. It’s a simple question. But for anyone serious about a career in animation voice acting, it’s the only one that matters.

This blog post is based on an episode of Voice Acting Unplugged, hosted by Margaret Ashley and Anthony Rudd. To connect with Everett Oliver for coaching, audition direction, or demo production, reach him at eo@voiceactingdirector.com. For more episodes of the podcast, subscribe and follow Voice Acting Unplugged on your preferred platform.

Join Margaret & Anthony next time on Voice Acting Unplugged.

February 26, 2026February 26, 2026

EMILY DEAN

EMILY DEAN – How to OutFox Ai

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Emily Dean

“Fingers in lots of pies, her favourite being cherry” Having co-founded the first ever agency to represent actors for Motion & Performance capture & later merging the roster with her already established agency, Voicefox, Emily is always looking for innovative & exciting ways to help actors achieve their dreams within the industry. Emily is super proud of all the talent she represents through Voicefox & enjoys helping them to get noticed within all areas of the industry. Emily & her FOXY actors have become particularly known within the gaming & animation sector for both Voiceover & MOCAP. Emily has helped enable her talented roster to work in many high-profile projects including Baldur’s Gate 3, Gladiator II, Metaphor, Black Myth Wukong, Lego Fortnite, Sea of Thieves: The Legend of Monkey Island, Dead Island 2. The future’s bright, the future’s FOXY!

www.voicefox.co.uk

@voicefox_voiceover_agency

https://www.facebook.com/voicefoxagency

EMILY DEAN – How to OutFox Ai

From SyncSquirrel to Voice Fox: How Agent Emily Dean Is Shaping the Future of Gaming Voice and Performance Capture

The founder of Voice Fox on why motion capture is transforming the industry, what makes an audition stand out, and why voice actors shouldn’t panic about AI — yet.

The voiceover industry is changing fast. Nowhere is that more evident than in the world of video games, where the line between voice acting and full-body performance is blurring rapidly — and where the agents who represent talent need to be as adaptable and forward-thinking as the performers themselves.

Emily Dean is exactly that kind of agent. As the founder of Voice Fox, a talent agency specialising in gaming and animation voice work and motion performance capture, Dean has carved out a distinctive niche in an industry that didn’t always know it needed one. She was the first agent in the UK to represent actors specifically for motion capture — and she’s been watching the gaming world evolve in real time ever since.

In a recent episode of Voice Acting Unplugged, the podcast hosted by Margaret Ashley and Anthony Rudd, Dean sat down to share her unconventional journey into agenting, her insights into what makes a voice actor bookable, her thoughts on the rise of performance capture, and why she believes the gaming world may be one of the safest corners of the industry when it comes to AI.

A Wonky Path to Agenting

Emily Dean is the first to admit that her route into talent representation was anything but traditional. Where many agents come from acting backgrounds, Dean’s roots are firmly planted in the music industry.

After finishing school, she pursued media studies, fell in love with the technical side of audio recording, and moved from her hometown in Suffolk to London to study music — covering everything from recording and composition to music law. That last subject, she noted, has proved unexpectedly useful in her current career: “Being able to read contracts — quite handy now.”

From there, Dean worked as an assistant engineer at some of London’s most prestigious studios, including Air Studios. The work was exhilarating but punishing.

“I would start at ten in the morning and quite often I wouldn’t finish till four in the morning,” she recalled, “and then do it all over again.”

She eventually gravitated toward audio editing, mastering Pro Tools and landing a role at Music State, one of the first online platforms to license music from composers for film, advertising, and corporate use. When that company dissolved after its co-founders fell out, Dean and a colleague launched their own venture: SyncSquirrel, a music licensing and composer representation business.

It was through SyncSquirrel that the seeds of Voice Fox were planted. While managing the rapper and performer Professor Elemental, Dean secured him some voiceover work for Disney. He loved it and wanted more. Rather than passing him to an existing voice agent, Dean saw an opportunity.

“A lot of the clients I dealt with not only wanted to license music, but they obviously wanted voiceovers for their projects as well,” she explained. “So I thought, I’ll just start representing a few people to see if I can push them for voiceover.”

Voice Fox was born in 2016 as SyncSquirrel’s sister company. Within a few years, it had grown so successfully that Dean shut down SyncSquirrel entirely to focus on it full-time.

“It’s a kind of wonky path,” she said, “but I feel that with my audio background, my contacts, and my experience managing performers, it all came together.”

Specialising in Gaming: Following the Passion

While Voice Fox started as a generalist voiceover agency, Dean made a deliberate decision about five years ago to specialise in gaming and animation. The catalyst was her pioneering move into motion performance capture representation — the first agency in the UK to do so.

The decision was driven partly by opportunity and partly by something more personal: a desire to get her actors work they genuinely loved.

“The reason I’m an agent is because I love to help actors achieve their dreams and their passions,” Dean said. “I felt that getting a really cool character voiceover part in a computer game was way more fun and interesting for the actor than, I don’t know, a bit of e-learning.”

Today, Voice Fox represents around 300 actors across two rosters — one for voice work and one specifically for motion capture performance. Dean knows them all intimately.

“They’re like a family to me,” she said. “If someone sends me a brief, I’ll automatically think, ‘Oh, that person will be good for that,’ because I get to know them through auditioning. I can hear what their strengths are and what I think they’re good at.”

The Rise of Performance Capture

One of the most fascinating parts of the conversation was Dean’s account of how performance capture has evolved in the gaming industry — and where it’s heading next.

When she first started representing actors for motion capture, the work was largely segmented. Studios would use one performer for the big physical movements — leaping off buildings, fight sequences — and a different person for the voice, and sometimes yet another for the finer movements and facial expressions. The industry had a name for this patchwork approach: “Frankenstein.”

That’s changing rapidly.

“Since Baldur’s Gate Three, for example, where they used over 200 actors all for performance capture, it’s not just about using motion capture for those Spider-Man moves,” Dean explained. “They’re actually wanting people to act normally, as they would in a film, and capturing those nuances as an actual performer.”

The shift toward full performance capture — combining voice, body movement, and facial expression in a single performer — is reshaping how games are cast and produced. Dean has noticed the trend accelerating in the briefs she receives.

“A lot of briefs I’m getting now, it’s not just about having the voice. Some people say, ‘Actually, we’d like a video audition because we’re toying with the idea of potentially doing motion capture.’ And I’ve noticed a lot of casting directors and game studios setting up their own mini volumes so they can capture the data themselves.”

For those unfamiliar with the terminology, Dean offered a concise explanation. A “volume” is essentially a studio filled with cameras pointing at the performer, who wears a tight-fitting suit covered in precisely placed markers. As the performer moves, the cameras capture the data, which is then used to animate the digital character.

“They put markers on your face to capture your facial expressions — your smile, your frown, whatever,” she said. “And then you’ve got the voiceover side as well. So it’s basically capturing the whole performance of the actor, digitally.”

The beauty of the process, Dean emphasised, is that it ultimately comes down to acting. While some knowledge of the technical jargon — like knowing what a “T-pose” is — can help ease first-day nerves, it’s not a prerequisite.

“There’s loads of tech people there who can show you and tell you what to do,” she said. “All you’ve got to do is do what you do well, which is being an actor and acting. You don’t have to worry about facing one camera because you’ve got cameras all around. You just be your natural self and act as if you were performing.”

What Makes an Audition Stand Out

For voice actors wondering what catches an agent’s ear, Dean had some invaluable — and perhaps uncomfortable — truths to share.

The biggest issue? Too many auditions sound the same.

“You’d be surprised,” she said. “Even though the actors think they’re being completely different and wild, you’re listening and thinking, ‘They all sound the same — same inflections, delivering it in the same way.'”

The performers who book the work, Dean has observed, are the ones who take a risk.

“The people that tend to secure the jobs are the ones that put a little bit of a twist on it or stand out in a certain way. It’s really important — more so than ever — to not play it safe. Otherwise you will merge into all of the other actors auditioning for the same role, and you won’t stand out.”

When pressed on what specifically makes a read compelling, Dean acknowledged the difficulty of pinpointing it precisely, but offered some concrete guidance.

“It’s about thinking about what’s not written in the script more than what’s there,” she said. “Your breath. The pace of how you’re reading. The emotion behind it. Whether your breath cracks slightly through some bit of emotion, or a little giggle, or something that brings it to life.”

In voice acting, she pointed out, you don’t have costumes, sets, or physical presence to lean on. “When you are just relying on your voice to create that character, you need those little nuances to make you stand out and to build that character, essentially.”

As for how many takes to submit? Dean’s answer was refreshingly clear: no more than two or three, maximum.

“They haven’t got time to listen to three or four takes from each actor,” she said. “If you put your best at the beginning, they can usually tell within the first few seconds if you’re the right actor for the part. It’s the same as when people are listening to a reel — they can get an idea straight away.”

Do You Actually Need an Agent?

It’s the question every aspiring voice actor asks first: Do I need an agent? Dean’s answer might surprise some.

“You don’t need an agent. You don’t need me,” she said plainly.

Her advice, particularly for newcomers, is to invest time in building a portfolio and learning the business side of voiceover before seeking representation.

“I think it’s really good to learn how to find that work initially for yourself, because there’s more to voiceover work than just having a really good voice and learning those skills,” she said. “Having that portfolio to be able to get a really good agent is super important. It’s proving to them that you’re good at your job, that you’re hireable, and that you’ve got experience in that world.”

Dean acknowledged that there are exceptions — particularly for younger performers who can’t reasonably be expected to have built up a body of work. But for everyone else, the message was clear: do the groundwork first.

“If you’ve put yourself out there and worked really hard and shown your passion — that means a lot to me.”

Thinking Outside the Box — Literally

One of the most entertaining moments in the podcast came when Dean described her unconventional approach to marketing Voice Fox.

Rather than relying solely on industry networking and cold calls, Dean has a flair for the theatrical. Her most memorable stunt? Organising a professional wrestling match within earshot of one of the UK’s biggest gaming conferences.

“I had two of my mocap wrestlers fighting — one dressed in a Voice Fox wrestling costume, the other in an AI costume,” she said. “The idea was that Voice Fox was going to get rid of AI forever.”

Complete with branded cheerleader outfits (orange, naturally), the event generated exactly the kind of buzz Dean was after. “Even if they weren’t at the wrestling, they’d hear about it,” she said.

It’s a philosophy she believes voice actors themselves should adopt: find creative, unexpected ways to get noticed rather than relying solely on traditional routes.

The AI Question: Cautious Optimism

On the inevitable topic of artificial intelligence, Dean struck a notably measured — even cautiously optimistic — tone, particularly regarding her specialist area of gaming.

“I personally feel it’s going to be okay. It’s going to level out,” she said. “I think everyone’s panicking, but just through seeing a lot of feedback that the general public is saying about AI — they’re starting to get irritated by it. They don’t feel it’s genuine. They don’t feel it’s real.”

Her confidence is particularly strong when it comes to gaming, where the relationship between performer and character extends far beyond the recording booth.

“With gaming, it’s treated a little more like being an actor in a film,” she explained. “Not only do the directors want to direct you and get all of those nuances — those past experiences and emotions that you just can’t get with AI — but you also have the actor behind the character who then goes off to Comic-Con and helps promote the game.”

It’s a compelling point: in an industry where fan culture and personal connection between audiences and performers are central to marketing, replacing human actors with synthetic voices carries risks that go well beyond audio quality.

That said, Dean was realistic about other sectors of the voiceover world. She acknowledged that AI is likely to eat into the lower end of the market — corporate narration, dry e-learning reads, some commercial work.

“I think unfortunately AI is gonna take out the sort of low-hanging fruit,” she said. “But even e-learning has changed. People were wanting more realistic performances even before AI became a thing. It’s become much more actor-driven.”

As for major brands using AI voices in their advertising, Dean was sceptical. “If I had a brand, I wouldn’t want to cheapen it with someone knowing — or the threat of someone knowing — that I’d used AI to voice my adverts.”

Advice for Newcomers: Find Your Passion and Never Stop Learning

For actors looking to break into gaming voiceover or motion capture, Dean’s advice centred on authenticity and long-term commitment rather than quick fixes.

“If you have a real passion for something, you’ll naturally seek out ways to do it,” she said.

She cautioned against the temptation to tick boxes without genuine depth. Taking a short stage combat course, for instance, won’t make someone competitive for mocap roles when they’re up against performers who’ve been practising martial arts since childhood.

“It’s about finding where your passion lies and what you truly want to do,” she said. “Look at your skillset from a young age to where you are now — there’ll be a pattern. Hone in on those passions and those skillsets.”

For voiceover specifically, she strongly recommended acting training — something she undertook herself, not to become a performer, but to understand what actors go through.

“I wanted a whole 360-degree view,” she said. “It makes me a little more empathetic, because I realise how really hard it is.”

Beyond initial training, Dean emphasised that learning should never stop — regardless of how experienced or successful a performer becomes.

“Even people I represent who are doing really, really well — they still do workshops. They’re still learning,” she said. “Trends change. What people were looking for five years ago is completely different to what someone’s looking for now.”

She also highlighted the value of casting director workshops as a dual opportunity: not only do they provide education, but they allow performers to demonstrate their talent and professionalism to the people who hire.

“There’s a lot of risk involved when casting a new performer they’ve never worked with before,” Dean explained. “Sometimes they’ll play it safe and go with someone they know they can direct and who’s reliable. So workshops are a good way of showing them that you are reliable and easy to direct.”

What Voice Fox Is Looking For

For those wondering whether there’s room on the Voice Fox roster, Dean was candid: the books are essentially closed, with around 300 actors already represented. But there are exceptions.

“There are certain people I’ll say okay to,” she said. The criteria are specific: a gaming or animation reel, genuine passion for the genre, evidence of relevant workshops and training, and — ideally — UK-based.

The geographical requirement is practical rather than arbitrary. Most of Dean’s gaming clients require in-person studio attendance, and international representation brings complications around time zones and payment processing. “I want to make sure the actors are getting all of the money, as opposed to some being deducted through transfer and conversion fees,” she explained.

In terms of gaps on the roster, Dean identified a particular need for actors of East Asian heritage — especially Japanese and Korean — who can deliver a range of accents beyond their native language. Strong American accents from non-American performers also remain in high demand.

“They’re like gold dust, really,” she said.

Final Thoughts

Emily Dean’s appearance on Voice Acting Unplugged was a masterclass in what it looks like to build something from the ground up through passion, creativity, and a genuine love for the people you represent. From her early days editing audio in London’s music studios to wrestling matches staged outside gaming conferences, Dean has never taken the conventional route — and her actors are better off for it.

Her insights into the evolving world of performance capture paint a picture of an industry in the midst of a profound transformation, one where the most successful performers will be those who can deliver not just a voice, but a complete, embodied performance. And her measured take on AI — neither dismissive nor alarmist — offers a much-needed dose of perspective for an industry prone to existential anxiety.

Perhaps most importantly, her advice to aspiring voice actors is rooted in something refreshingly simple: know who you are, invest in what you love, never stop learning, and don’t be afraid to stand out.

As Dean herself put it: “The people that tend to secure the jobs are the ones that put a little bit of a twist on it.”

In an industry increasingly crowded with voices — both human and artificial — that twist might just be the thing that makes all the difference.

This blog post is based on an episode of Voice Acting Unplugged, hosted by Margaret Ashley and Anthony Rudd. To learn more about Voice Fox and Emily Dean’s work in gaming and performance capture representation, or to explore the full back catalogue of the podcast, subscribe and follow Voice Acting Unplugged on your preferred platform.

Join Margaret & Anthony next time on Voice Acting Unplugged.

February 26, 2026February 26, 2026

JOHN CASSARAS

JOHN CASSARAS - Exploring Health Narratives

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JOHN CASSARAS

John Cassaras is Senior Director, Creative Production, WebMD/Medscape. He has been a producer, director, writer, editor, and storyteller for 20 years, combining these roles to craft content that engages and informs.

John draws on versatility in both visual and narrative skills to drive storytelling projects from conception through final edit. With a strong portfolio of work, he is involved in all phases of production—idea generation, writing, directing, editing—and collaborates across teams to bring projects to life.

www.webmd.com

www.medscape.com

https://www.linkedin.com/in/johncassaras/

JOHN CASSARAS - Exploring Health Narratives

How WebMD Turns Complex Health Information into Trusted Content

John Cassaras, Senior Director of Creative Production at WebMD, shares how his team produces over a thousand videos a year — and why the human voice still matters in an age of AI and misinformation.

In a media landscape increasingly polluted by health misinformation, there are people quietly doing the unglamorous but vital work of making verified medical information accessible to millions. John Cassaras is one of them.

As Senior Director of Creative Production at WebMD — and more recently overseeing video production for Medscape, its sister platform for medical professionals — Cassaras leads a team responsible for producing a staggering volume of content: over a thousand videos a year across both platforms, in formats ranging from animated explainers and doctor-to-camera pieces to documentary-style patient stories.

In a recent episode of Voice Acting Unplugged, the podcast hosted by Margaret Ashley and Anthony Rudd, Cassaras sat down to discuss his journey into media production, how his team creates medical content from concept to screen, the role voice actors play in the process, and his nuanced perspective on AI voices. What emerged was a portrait of a producer who cares deeply about both the craft of storytelling and the people his work is designed to help.

From Radio Dreams to Medical Realities

Like many people in media production, John Cassaras didn’t set out on a straight path to where he ended up. His original ambition was to become a radio DJ.

“I’m really into music,” he explained, “so that was what I thought.”

A stint at a college radio station changed his mind — not because it was a bad experience, but because it revealed a fundamental tension between personal passion and professional reality. The station assigned him to a genre he didn’t love. In hindsight, he’s grateful for the mismatch.

“If it had been the other thing, I might’ve kept going down that road and then, after I graduated college, realized what the real world was like.”

Instead, Cassaras gravitated toward video production classes, which led to a role at CNN, where he cut his teeth as a field producer — “basically directing out there, interviewing people, and everything.” From there, he moved to WebMD, where he’s now spent eleven years and counting, constantly evolving his approach as the media landscape shifts beneath his feet.

Why Video? Why Now?

WebMD has been around since the early days of the internet — long enough, Cassaras noted with a wry smile, to be considered “a legacy old brand.” But the platform has never stood still. As audiences have migrated from desktop articles to mobile video to social media, the content strategy has had to follow.

“You kind of gotta follow what the audience is looking for and giving them that information in formats that they’re going to gravitate to,” Cassaras said.

When he first arrived, the video output was largely traditional: doctors talking to camera in a newsy, reporter-style format. Over the years, the team has expanded into a rich variety of formats — animated explainers, text-on-screen pieces with B-roll, documentary-style patient stories, and creative concepts that push the boundaries of what medical content can look like.

The shift to vertical video for social media has been one of the more recent upheavals. “Everything used to be horizontal,” Cassaras said. “Now it’s like, well, this is horizontal and this is vertical, and maybe you’re shooting things so that you can clip it for social media.”

Through it all, one thing hasn’t changed: every single piece of content is reviewed by doctors before it goes out.

“I sit next to doctors at work,” Cassaras said. “They watch every video that I make, they review it. Every article, they review it. Not all of these places have that.”

The Power of Trusted Information in an Age of Misinformation

When asked whether WebMD actively tries to counter the tide of health misinformation — a topic made all the more urgent by recent years’ events — Cassaras was careful but clear.

“I don’t want to speak on behalf of the company, because there’s a lot of people that make a lot of decisions,” he said. “For me, we just want to make sure we’re reaching people with facts and solid information. That’s at a premium these days.”

The response from both patients and medical professionals has validated that approach. Cassaras described the deeply rewarding experience of hearing from people whose lives have been genuinely helped by WebMD’s content.

“People will say, ‘WebMD really helped me — I Googled it, found the website, and it really helped me through this diagnosis.’ And then the doctors say, ‘I send people to you.’ There’s maybe two websites they’ll recommend. They know patients are going to do research. They want them to come to us.”

It’s this feedback loop — the knowledge that the work has real human impact — that keeps Cassaras motivated after more than a decade. “It gives a little more worth outside of just making cool videos,” he said.

One particularly striking moment came when podcast host Margaret Ashley shared her own experience with septicemia — a condition she nearly died from, and one that Cassaras admitted was new to him despite his years working in medical media.

“I just wrote that down,” he said, reaching for his notes. It was a perfect illustration of his approach: always learning, always looking for the next story that could make a difference.

Collaborating with Voice Actors: More Than Just a Read

For voice actors listening to the podcast — and the show’s core audience — one of the most valuable parts of the conversation was Cassaras’s candid breakdown of how he works with voiceover artists.

The nature of the collaboration, he explained, depends entirely on the type of video being produced.

For straightforward informational pieces — content explaining a serious medical condition, for instance — the requirement is relatively simple: “You’re looking for more of a straight read. You’re not looking for anything flashy. It could be a very serious condition, and you just want the information to be delivered in a nice way.”

But for more creative projects, the relationship is entirely different. Cassaras illustrated this with the story of how he came to work with Anthony Rudd on one of his most ambitious productions: Life of a Flu Virus.

The concept was inspired by Cassaras’s love of nature documentaries. “I was like, what if we had the inside of the body like a nature documentary? We’ve gone to space, we’ve gone to the bottom of the ocean. We haven’t gone inside the body.”

The idea was to follow a flu virus through its life cycle with the same detached wonder that a wildlife film might bring to a baby seal — not demonising the virus, but observing it, and in doing so, helping viewers understand how to better protect themselves.

And his first choice for narrator? Sir David Attenborough.

“I reached out to his people,” Cassaras admitted, “and they said that he only narrates things that he has a personal knowledge of. I thought, what a classy way to turn me down.”

Undeterred, Cassaras went searching for a voice that could carry the same gravitas without resorting to imitation. “There were people that were just doing a David Attenborough voice,” he said. “I’m not looking for that. I want an authentic voice.”

He found what he was looking for in Anthony Rudd — and the resulting collaboration went far beyond the transactional. “It wasn’t just sending a script. We’re talking about it. Anthony was very bought into the idea, and that’s what you want in a collaboration with a voiceover artist on something like that.”

Finding the Right Voice

When it comes to sourcing voice talent, Cassaras described a pragmatic approach shaped by the realities of producing content at scale.

WebMD has a roster of trusted voiceover artists who handle the bulk of standard reads — reliable professionals who understand the tone and can deliver consistently. But when a project calls for something specific, Cassaras goes looking.

“Sometimes I will just do a good old Google search if I’m looking for a different vibe,” he said.

He gave the example of another creative project — The Weird World of Oral Hygiene — which required a very specific vintage newsreel style of delivery: “An old-timey news reel kind of thing, where it’s like the film thing goes and then someone’s narrating, ‘Back in 1950…’ So that was another one where it was looking for a very specific type of VO artist.”

The takeaway for voice actors is clear: range and specificity both matter. Sometimes a client needs a warm, authoritative presence for a medical explainer. Sometimes they need someone who can inhabit a character or bring a creative concept to life. And sometimes the most important quality isn’t the voice itself, but the willingness to collaborate — to invest in the idea and bring something to it that a script alone can’t convey.

The AI Question: Pragmatic, but Cautious

On the subject of AI voices — a question that looms over the voiceover industry like a gathering storm — Cassaras offered one of the more thoughtful and balanced perspectives you’re likely to hear from a client-side producer.

He was upfront: WebMD has used AI voices for some social media content, where the sheer volume of output makes it impractical to hire voice talent for every short clip. But for the platform’s core content, he’s firmly resistant.

His reasoning is both principled and strategic.

“All of our work has a rigorous medical process. It’s researched by humans. Doctors who are humans are checking it,” he said. “The last thing I want to do is slap an AI voiceover on it. Now it’s like, ‘Oh, was this whole thing AI?’ I’m really careful about that. When humans are doing everything, I don’t want to just shortcut at the end.”

It’s a compelling argument — one that goes beyond sentimentality about “the human touch” to address a very real brand trust issue. In an era when audiences are increasingly sceptical about the provenance of online content, anything that makes medical information look automated risks undermining the very credibility that sets WebMD apart.

That said, Cassaras isn’t naive about the trajectory of the technology. When asked whether he could see himself moving to AI voices once they become indistinguishable from human ones, he was honest.

“That’s something that all of us need to keep an eye on. It’s, you know — today you, tomorrow me.”

He shared a quote that has stuck with him: “You’re not going to lose your job to AI. You’re going to lose your job to someone who uses AI.”

“I’m not sure that applies to everybody equally,” he added, “but it motivates me to find out how I make myself better using AI versus fighting it, because you’re not going to be able to fight it.”

At the same time, he sees a coming “correction” toward authentic, human-made content — and believes voice actors have a real role to play in that shift.

The One Thing AI Can’t Replicate

Perhaps the most powerful moment in the conversation came when Cassaras talked about patient stories — the documentary-style videos where real people share their experiences with illness, treatment, and recovery.

“Patient videos — I see that as something AI cannot take from us,” he said firmly. “What it really can’t do is tell a patient’s personal journey as a human. That’s something I’m really latching onto, to make sure that we are leaders in that area. Because that is an area that computers can’t take away — the human experience, no matter how good the technology gets.”

It was a statement that resonated deeply with Margaret Ashley, who had just shared her own harrowing brush with septicemia — a condition she and her daughter both survived, and one that had left a lasting impression on her sense of how important accessible health information truly is.

In a world where AI can increasingly mimic tone, inflection, and even emotion, the irreducible value of genuine human experience — of a real person telling you what it felt like to receive a diagnosis, to undergo treatment, to come out the other side — remains something no algorithm can replicate.

Behind the Scenes: How a WebMD Video Gets Made

For those curious about the mechanics of medical video production, Cassaras pulled back the curtain on the process.

It begins with brainstorming sessions — three times a week — where the production team meets with WebMD’s in-house doctors. The doctors identify topics that need coverage, and the team gets to work developing concepts.

“We slice things thin,” Cassaras explained. “We don’t say, ‘Here’s everything about multiple sclerosis’ — that would be a documentary. We find very thin slivers.”

Those slivers might take a lifestyle angle — “Let’s talk about exercising with MS and give tips” — or a practical demonstration: “Someone actually demonstrating exercises and showing how to use a chair for balance.”

Each format has a defined timeline and budget. Animated videos, for instance, take roughly forty business days from approval to completion, including rounds of medical review. Simpler formats can be turned around in thirty. Every step is mapped out.

“We kind of have it down to a science,” Cassaras said. “At kickoff, we’re ready to hit the ground running.”

The scale is remarkable: between WebMD and Medscape, the team produces well over a thousand videos annually — all of them free to access, all of them medically verified.

“I would love for people to understand, with how much things cost out there these days and all these subscription services — this is all free, rigorously medically verified information, available to everyone,” Cassaras said.

Lessons for Voice Actors

While Cassaras’s world is far removed from the traditional voiceover studio, his insights carry clear implications for voice actors looking to work in medical and educational content:

Understand the tone spectrum. Medical content spans everything from warm and conversational to serious and authoritative. Being able to deliver information clearly and sensitively — without being clinical or cold — is a prized skill.

Be ready to collaborate. For creative projects, Cassaras values voice actors who invest in the concept, not just the script. The Life of a Flu Virus project succeeded because the narrator understood and shared the creative vision.

Pronunciation matters — but so does communication. Medical terminology is a minefield. Cassaras acknowledged that he sometimes forgets how unfamiliar certain words are to people outside the field. Good producers will help; good voice actors will ask.

The human element is your superpower. In an industry increasingly tempted by AI shortcuts, the ability to bring genuine warmth, empathy, and personality to a read is more valuable than ever — especially in content designed to reach people at some of the most vulnerable moments of their lives.

Final Thoughts

John Cassaras’s appearance on Voice Acting Unplugged offered a rare and illuminating window into the world of medical media production — a space where the stakes are higher than selling a product, and where getting the information right can genuinely save lives.

His pragmatic but principled approach to AI, his deep respect for the collaborative process with voice actors, and his unwavering commitment to verified, accessible health information paint a picture of a producer who understands that the best content is built on trust — trust between creators and audiences, between writers and performers, between the people who make the content and the doctors who ensure its accuracy.

In a media landscape that often feels chaotic and unreliable, it’s reassuring to know that people like Cassaras are quietly, methodically doing the work that matters.

And if you ever find yourself Googling a health concern at two in the morning — as we all have — you could do a lot worse than landing on a WebMD video. Behind it, there’s a team of humans who care about getting it right.

This blog post is based on an episode of Voice Acting Unplugged, hosted by Margaret Ashley and Anthony Rudd. To watch the Life of a Flu Virus animation or explore WebMD’s video content, visit webmd.com. For more episodes of the podcast, subscribe and follow Voice Acting Unplugged on your preferred platform.

Join Margaret & Anthony next time on Voice Acting Unplugged.

February 25, 2026February 25, 2026

ALLY LANG

ALLY LANG - Authenticity in a Virtual World

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Ally Lang

As Head of Maple Street Creative, Ally sits across a preferred voice-over talent pool of around 150 voices, working with brands across international and domestic markets, and in both long and short form content. Prior to 2018, he spent over a decade at Europe’s most listened-to radio station, producing audio across the BBC. He’s a multi-award-winning copywriter and producer and was invited to be a Cannes Lions Judge for the Audio and Radio category, in 2020 and 2021.

https://www.maplestreetcreative.co.uk/

ALLY LANG - Authenticity in a Virtual World

The Person Behind the Brief: Ally Lang on Running a Roster, Fighting for Authenticity, and Why AI Won’t Win on His Watch

The head of Maple Street Creative talks about what he really wants from voiceover artists, why Scouse accents are impossible to find, and the one habit that drives him absolutely mad.

Every voiceover artist has been on the receiving end of a brief. But few get to hear what it’s like on the other side — the person commissioning the voice, curating the roster, pushing back on lazy scripts, and deciding which five voices out of 150 get put in front of a client for every single job.

On the latest episode of Voice Acting Unplugged, hosts Margaret Ashley and Anthony Rudd sat down with Ally Lang, Head of Maple Street Creative, for an unusually candid conversation about what life looks like from the client’s chair. From the surprising gaps in his voice roster to the creative crisis he sees in commercial radio, and from the specific technique he believes will future-proof voiceover artists against AI, Ally pulled no punches — and threw in a heartwarming story about under-10s football for good measure.

From BBC Radio 2 to Maple Street: The Long Way Round

Ally describes his career path with characteristic self-deprecation — “like the British way of doing things, scratching your left ear with your right hand.”

He spent 20 years at the BBC, much of it making promos and working in station sound, with a significant stretch at Radio 2. “They were heady days,” he says simply, before noting that the Radio 2 he knew is very different from today’s incarnation.

“I spent years at Radio Two and thought we were a music station. We weren’t. We were a personality station. We had a tertiary relationship with our audience — very multilayered.”

He joined Maple Street Creative about seven years ago and now leads a team of writers and producers, overseeing a preferred talent roster of just over 150 voices — including Margaret herself — and a production output of more than 500 ads a year from what he describes as a small team.

“We more than punch above our weight.”

Managing 150 Voices: The Art of the Ruthless Audit

One of the most illuminating parts of the conversation was Ally’s explanation of how he manages the Maple Street roster. It’s not just about finding good voices — it’s about balance, diversity, and making sure everybody earns.

“We obviously want the best voiceovers we can get. We also need a diverse range — and I mean diversity in every single aspect, from accent to gender.”

He conducts regular audits, identifying pinch points where certain regions are underrepresented and areas where the roster is bloated. And he’s honest about the maths.

“There are some really good voices out there, some wonderful voices, that we don’t have on the site. I’d have them on tomorrow. But the issue becomes that the money doesn’t go around to everyone and nobody’s earning enough money if we’ve got too many voices.”

When he first arrived at Maple Street, things were rather different. The roster had ballooned with voices recruited largely through social settings — “people meeting people and saying, ‘Oh, you’ve got a nice voice.'”

What he inherited, in his own words, was “a ragtag bunch of people that couldn’t do it.”

What followed? “It was like the night of the long knives. There was a very serious cull going on.”

He was particularly merciless, he admitted, with one demographic: “I was very mean to the large proportion of white middle-aged men. So I’m sorry.”

Anthony, who fits that description and came out of BBC radio with a presentation style he’s still working to shed, took it on the chin: “It’s something I’ve struggled with. I came out of radio with a BBC presentation style, and I’m only now really fixing that.”

Ally was sympathetic — but realistic. “You’re in probably the largest proportion of people who are looking for voiceover work to begin with. That also makes it the most competitive.”

The Biggest Bugbear: People Who Listen to Their Own Voice

When the conversation turned to what Ally struggles with most in voiceover artists — new and established alike — his answer was immediate and emphatic.

“The biggest thing I struggle with is those people that have been told they’ve got a nice voice. And they are not reading the words — they are listening to their own voice in their head.”

It’s a trap, he said, that people at every stage fall into.

“The idea of speech is to communicate the words and the meaning. And if you are just delivering the words, thinking how nice your voice sounds in your head — no. That’s absolutely not the way to do it.”

Margaret asked whether this was primarily a problem with younger voices or newcomers. Ally’s response: it’s everyone.

“There are voices out there who probably earn half a decent living who do it as well. It’s just a trap that people fall into.”

The Gaps You’d Never Expect: Scousers and the Southwest

Anthony asked Ally where the roster is most underrepresented. The answer surprised everyone.

“Scouses.”

Margaret was incredulous. “You can’t get any people from Liverpool? That’s really strange.”

The Southwest was the other gap — but for a different reason. “The market of those generally tends to be flooded by people doing caricatures. Which is absolutely fine for some instances, but if it’s a recruitment ad, for example, we should be as authentic as possible.”

Ally made a broader point about the limits of accent work. There are voiceover artists who can nail accents brilliantly, he acknowledged, but “probably 90% of the time, you can hear it’s wrong. And it’ll be in the vowels. They’ll say one of the vowels and you’ll hear it’s not authentic.”

For clients who want to be authentic in a particular region, Ally insists on the real thing. “We should be authentic with it. I think we should also be cautious about sending up people by their accent.”

He also noted that “the busiest voices are going to be the most versatile ones” — pointing to a Welsh voice on the roster who has actively gone to improve their Welsh language skills to access more work.

Leading Clients, Not Just Serving Them

One of the most striking themes of the conversation was Ally’s philosophy about the relationship between a production house and its clients. Maple Street doesn’t just take briefs and execute them — they push back, educate, and guide.

“A client sends a script and says, ‘We want no accent.’ Well, what you mean by ‘no accent’ is somebody from the south of England. That’s your interpretation of it.”

Or: “They say we want an ‘urban voice.’ Which they just mean — I don’t know why they can’t say — we’d like a black person to voiceover.”

“It’s really important that a production house is leading clients. So that the voices that work on their brands truly represent their customer base or their potential customer base. We try and get them to aspire to be as inclusive as possible.”

This extends to practical considerations too. Ally shared research that Maple Street presents to clients about words per minute: once you exceed 80-85 words in a 30-second ad, people start switching off. “If you are going to have someone who delivers a script in a slightly low-key way, that’s fine. But just go slowly. I would say you’re probably looking at around 75 words per 30 seconds. And make them good words.”

Anthony offered a memorable analogy from Bill Menti, a radio guru he used to work with: “A radio ad is like a rhinoceros. It only makes one point, but it makes it very forcefully.”

AI: Already Here, Already Taking Jobs — But Not Unbeatable

Anthony raised the inevitable question about artificial intelligence. Ally’s answer was more nuanced — and more alarming in places — than the usual industry hand-wringing.

“Voiceovers would be wrong in thinking that it isn’t a threat. They’d be wrong in thinking that it isn’t here already and already taking jobs.”

He didn’t deal in hypotheticals. “There are radio networks that are already using AI voices for campaigns under a certain level. They’re already doing it, and I’m not even sure clients are aware of it a lot of the time.”

Maple Street has even had clients come to them asking for help after going the AI route: “We’ve had instances of clients coming to us saying, ‘We got this AI voice though — can you fix it, please?'”

The Problem: We Made It Easy for AI

Ally’s diagnosis of why AI poses a threat was bracingly honest — and it put some of the blame squarely on the industry itself.

“For years, voiceover directors have got voiceovers to deliver scripts in the same way. And clients have said, you’ve got to write a script like this: ‘I’m going to tell you what I’m going to tell you. This is me telling you what I’m telling you. And there — I’ve told you that thing I’ve just told you.’ And voiceover directors get the voiceover to do it in a 15-minute window. And it’s all quite sing-songy.”

“What we’ve done is we’ve created this kind of bastard child of creativity that it’s very easy for AI to duplicate. It can do it well, and it can do it cheaply. We’ve made it easy.”

The Solution: Unpredictability

Ally ran a workshop on how voiceovers can tackle AI, speaking to creatives, tech people, and prominent voice artists including Phil Rowe, Tanya Rich, and Katie Moore.

His biggest takeaway: AI can’t do nuance, mixed emotions, niche accents, or unpredictability.

“What we’re trying to do at Maple Street is something slightly different — a slightly unpredictable read. It has much more light and shade to it. I sort of liken it to the way a podcast presenter sounds.”

He tested this approach with voice artists Dave Bed and Katie Flaming, both of whom “absolutely nailed it.” In both cases, the client — who was on the session — chose the unpredictable read over the conventional one.

“And that is something AI could not do tomorrow.”

Ally credited Katie Moore with crystallizing the concept: “This notion of unpredictability, of delivering scripts in a slightly unpredictable way. The way I’m talking to you now — my voice is sort of drawing you in because it has hesitation and nuance. It was entirely Katie Moore’s idea. Love her.”

His Line in the Sand

Ally was emphatic about where Maple Street stands: “I’m not saying that Maple Street will not use AI voices in the future. But if it does, it won’t be on my watch.”

His other major concern about AI is structural: “My biggest bugbear with AI is it’s not led by creatives. It’s led by techies. And the biggest threat is that techies are not interested in a paper trail.”

He revealed that some voiceover agencies are now asking voice artists to sign contracts allowing their voice to be used for AI — ostensibly with a consent process for each job, but in practice creating “an underbelly, a black market” for cheaper voice work.

Margaret’s reaction: “It’s not worth it for the voice actor to say yes. Use me properly.”

The Creative Crisis in Commercial Radio

The conversation took a passionate turn when Ally reflected on the state of commercial radio — a subject close to his heart after two decades at the BBC.

“Somebody was moaning to me the other day that they couldn’t listen to commercial radio because of the adverts. And I said, yeah, but if the presenters were better, you wouldn’t mind the ads.”

He drew a sharp distinction between what Radio 2 was — “a personality station” — and what much of commercial radio has become: homogenous noise controlled by Global and Bauer, two conglomerates he sees as prioritizing business over broadcasting.

“They’ve created a large audience not because they built it, but because they bought up other stations that already existed.”

He was particularly critical of Global’s decision to make almost their entire creative team redundant: “For someone like Global to go and make all of their creative team — all but like one or two people — redundant is an absolute nonsense. It says everything about where their ambitions and sincerity lie.”

Both Global and Bauer, he noted, are already using AI in their communications — “and they don’t need to. They’re just moving their money around.”

The Future: Cyclical, Hopefully

When Margaret asked where Ally sees radio and voiceover going in the next few years, his answer was cautiously optimistic.

“I would love to think that these things are cyclical.”

He pointed to the early days of Capital Radio, which launched in October 1973 with a drama department and a news team before pivoting to a more commercial format within months. He invoked Kenny Everett — “You wouldn’t get Kenny Everett today, I’ll tell you that for nothing” — and expressed hope for a future wave of creative, independent radio.

“I think it would probably be a long tail. A lot of small, independent stations.”

He also noted the rise of podcasts, whose listening habits “pretty much mirror peak times in radio.” His theory on why America is so far ahead in podcast listening: “It doesn’t have, or hasn’t had, the quality of radio industry that we’ve had here.”

And he flagged an intriguing venture: Podcast Radio, a linear station run by Jed Edwards that broadcasts podcasts on traditional radio. “It seems like a bit of a crazy business idea, but it’s a fantastic shop window for podcasts — and it’s still going.”

Ally also lamented the decline of community radio. He believes that none — or perhaps only one — of the community stations that launched in the early nineties are still operating, and he sees this as a failure of the wider industry.

“I don’t see why Global and Bauer and News International couldn’t be investing money into community radio. In the same way that in football, the FA distributes the wealth to grassroots football.”

Street Cred, Authenticity, and the Diction Dilemma

Margaret raised the trend of “street cred type voices” in advertising — voices so heavily accented or stylised that she sometimes can’t understand them even with captions.

Ally admitted he’d fallen foul of this himself early in his Maple Street career. He recorded an ad for a Manchester college, pushed the voice artist for better diction, and sent it to the client — who rejected it entirely and sent back a reference video of the delivery style they actually wanted.

“I said, well, why didn’t you share this before we recorded the ad? That would’ve really helped.”

He drew a wonderful historical parallel: the 1963 Barbara Windsor film Sparrows Can’t Sing was “the first English film that had to have subtitles in America” because the cockney was so thick that American audiences couldn’t follow it.

His advice to clients working with heavily stylised voices: keep the word count down, hit the important words, and “just go slowly, so that people can get it.”

Anthony, ever the pragmatist, pointed out: “They’re not aimed at you, though. The younger audience identifies with it very closely.”

Ally conceded the point — but with a caveat about research-backed best practice. There’s always one important word in every sentence. Hit it.

A Brief Detour Into Under-10s Football Management

In what might be the most delightful tangent in Voice Acting Unplugged history, the conversation veered into Ally’s two-year stint managing the Wargrave Wolves Under-10s football team.

He was essentially press-ganged into service: “They said if I didn’t coach, my son wouldn’t have a team.”

The first season was magical. “I had boys who’d never played football before. By the end of that season, every single boy had scored a goal, every single boy had been man of the match.”

He was also, he claims, “the first under-10s coach to play a false number nine” — a tactical innovation that presumably went over the heads of everyone present, including Margaret, who cheerfully admitted she had no idea what it meant.

The second season was less magical. Through an administrative reshuffling, his third-tier team was given a second-tier team’s name, which meant the East Berks FA placed them three leagues higher than they should have been.

“I got myself into a lot of trouble by being a bit too blunt with the East Berks FA.”

He walked at the end of that season. “It was horrendous.” But that first year? “It was wonderful. The parents just believed. It was great.”

A Shared History at Star FM (Of All Places)

In one of those small-world moments that Voice Acting Unplugged seems to specialise in, it emerged that both Anthony and Ally had connections to Star FM in Slough. Anthony was there from the launch. Ally spent two weeks there as a student journalist, during which time his main responsibility was calling up the police to see if anything had happened.

“Only to be told, yes, there’s a decapitated head in a bin.”

“Welcome to Slough,” Anthony replied.

Final Thoughts

Ally Lang is that rare thing in the voiceover industry: a client who genuinely cares about the craft, who fights for authenticity over convenience, who pushes back on lazy briefs, and who sees AI not as an inevitability to surrender to but as a challenge to outperform.

For voiceover artists, his message is clear and actionable:

Stop listening to your own voice. Communicate meaning, not sound.
Be authentic. If you can’t do an accent without it showing in the vowels, don’t claim it.
Be versatile. The busiest voices are the ones that can do the most.
Embrace unpredictability. The sing-songy, formulaic read is exactly what AI can replicate. Light, shade, hesitation, nuance — that’s what it can’t.
Understand that fewer voices on a roster means more work per voice. Quality over quantity isn’t just a cliché — it’s how production houses actually operate.

And if you’re a Scouse voiceover artist reading this? Ally Lang would very much like to hear from you.

Want to hear the full conversation? Check out this episode of Voice Acting Unplugged with hosts Margaret Ashley and Anthony Rudd, featuring Ally Lang, Head of Maple Street Creative. Links and further information can be found in the episode notes.

If you enjoyed this, please subscribe, leave a review, and tell your friends. We’ll see you next episode — which Margaret has suggested should probably be an hour long from now on. She may have a point.

Join Margaret & Anthony next time on Voice Acting Unplugged.

February 25, 2026February 25, 2026

PETE NOTTAGE

PETE NOTTAGE - The Accidental Announcer

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Pete Nottage

Pete Nottage is a voice over, presenter and writer – and one of the UK’s foremost experts in telling you that the news is next.

Over the last twenty years, he has become one of the most recognised voices in the country. He has written, voiced, recorded and broadcast thousands of hours of content across TV, radio and online for clients as varied as Peugeot, QVC, Manchester United and Noel Gallagher. He was one of the launch voices for the television channels More4 and 4Seven, introduced the television coverage of the London 2012 Paralympics and spent a decade as the station voice for BBC Radio 6Music.

His work as a Channel 4 announcer has consistently made headlines. He allowed his five-year-old to gatecrash an announcement, spent several months deliberately mispronouncing The Simpsons and most recently gained national plaudits for saying the phrase “…and Matt Hancock”.

His voiceover work stretches across multiple genres. From the comfort of his studio, he has voiced hundreds of commercials, explainer videos and promotional trailers, narrated enough brand case studies to satisfy anyone’s KPI and has learned how to pronounce more obscure medical words for eLearning modules than he cares to remember. He’s even been the voice of the Earth at the Science Museum. True story. He was opened by Prince Charles – and yes, we think that line sounds a bit rude too.

An experienced presenter, Pete has hosted multiple projects that have helped pay his mortgage. He drove across the world presenting content for Smart car, launched online promotional campaigns for Sony Ericsson and was part of the opening presenter lineup for StaffPad Radio.

He also creates online content. His Malcolm Tucker/Doctor Who mash-up video was featured on UK TV and in worldwide press, resulting in what all the experts agree was a ‘metric shit-tonne’ of views. His campaign against the low-balling of fees on the platform Fiverr was shared between members of the worldwide voiceover community – and his short-form web series The Curious Man’s Guide received very nice reviews although that was admittedly quite a while ago and we can’t find links to any of them any more so you’ll just have to trust us on that.

He has spoken about his work at the acclaimed One Voice Conference, has appeared on industry podcasts such as the Voiceover Social, Gravy For The Brain and The Media Podcast – and his work has helped win many BAFTA Craft and Sony Radio awards. Would it be a stretch to say that makes him an award-winner in his own right? Probably. Are we going to say it anyway? Of course we are.

https://petenottage.co.uk/

PETE NOTTAGE - The Accidental Announcer

The Voice Between the Shows: Pete Nottage on 20 Years of Continuity Announcing at Channel 4

He writes his own scripts, navigates live TV disasters with grace, and once described Channel 4’s entrance hall in terms we probably can’t repeat. Meet the man whose voice fills the gaps you never think about — until they’re gone.

It’s one of those jobs that most people don’t even know exists. You hear it every day — a warm, conversational voice easing you from one television program to the next, letting you know there’s strong language coming up, or gently directing you to a website. It sounds effortless, natural, like someone just chatting to you. Which is exactly the point.

On the latest episode of Voice Acting Unplugged, hosts Margaret Ashley and Anthony Rudd welcomed Pete Nottage, continuity announcer for Channel 4 for nearly two decades, for a brilliantly candid conversation about a corner of the broadcasting world that rarely gets the spotlight. From the skills nobody expects you to need, to the live TV moments that end up on social media within thirty seconds, Pete pulled back the curtain on what it really means to be the voice of a television channel.

But First: What Actually Is a Continuity Announcer?

Margaret has wanted to know the answer to this question since she was a schoolgirl, when she told a careers advisor that her backup plan to becoming an actress was becoming a continuity announcer — and received a blank stare in return.

Pete’s explanation came with a self-aware grin.

“How wanky do you want this? Because you could say that a continuity announcer is like a conduit joining the televisual ecosystem and the landscape together. Or — person that says the news is next. In a nutshell, that’s what it is.”

But it’s more than that. Continuity announcers introduce programs and provide contextual content warnings — if a show contains strong language, scenes of drug use, or anything potentially shocking, they’re there to prepare viewers. They direct audiences to other parts of a channel’s ecosystem: websites, giveaways, events. And when the channel is broadcasting live, they react to real-world events in real time.

“We are there live to react and to speak for the nation — without wanting to sound a little bit up my own.”

It’s Not Just Talking: Writing Is 90% of the Job

Here’s the thing that surprised everyone — and that apparently surprises quite a lot of professional voiceover artists too.

Continuity announcers write their own scripts.

“That is the key to good continuity,” Pete explained. “There is something innately human to reading your own words. You can’t sound more natural than your own words and your own voice.”

The writing process is far from casual. Scripts go through rounds of editing, are sent to commissioning editors, lawyers, and planning teams. What comes out of the announcer’s mouth — those seemingly breezy ten-second bridges between programs — is the result of a meticulous process.

“We’ve had real top-notch voiceover artists come in to try their hand at continuity, and quite a lot of them can’t do it. They’re really good at reading, but the writing skills aren’t necessarily there.”

The goal, paradoxically, is to make all that effort sound completely effortless.

“I try and sound like as polished an amateur as possible, if that makes sense.”

It does.

From Silk FM to Channel 4: A Career Built on Persistence (and Cigarettes)

Pete’s path into broadcasting started about as far from the glitz of national television as you can get. He came from a mining background in the north of England, and after finishing school with no clear plan, he started persistently knocking on the door of Silk FM, a local radio station in Macclesfield.

“One day they called me in and said, yes, you can tech up the Pepsi Chart as it was then. Which involved pushing a button once every three hours.”

From there, he built up gradually — creative producer, presenter, whatever would earn a few quid. And in those days, “a few quid” was generous.

“At one point I was getting paid a sandwich and a pack of cigarettes a day. And you know what? I was happy with that.”

The skills he developed in radio — writing quickly, shifting tone on a dime, producing content that reacted to events in real time — would prove invaluable. He recalled a charity event called “Bring a Pound to Work Day” where the entire borough contributed, raising thousands of pounds for Macmillan Cancer Support. The broadcast was reactive, flowing, evolving naturally throughout the day.

“At the end of the day, I remember cutting down a package going, this is what I have achieved today. And you think, that was a good nine to five.”

Eventually, though, the financial realities of local radio became unsustainable. Someone nudged him toward voiceover work, promising decent hourly rates — “before I realized the truth,” he added with a laugh.

Then, on a radio forum, someone sent him a message: Channel 4 was looking for continuity announcers. He thought he’d give it a go.

An Interview to Remember (For Several Reasons)

Pete’s interview for Channel 4 was originally scheduled for 7 July 2005 — the day of the London bombings.

“I was on the train on the way down. I had a phone call saying, yeah, don’t come down. I think the train stopped at Birmingham or something like that and went back.”

He went down the following day instead. “I think that must’ve been the safest day in London’s history.”

The whole experience was overwhelming — the massive Channel 4 building, the weight of what had just happened to the city, and the surreal discovery that two people at Channel 4 came from his little village near Macclesfield. “Hey Pete, how’s your mum?”

“It’s a very, very small world.”

And then there was the building itself. Pete offered a detail that, once heard, cannot be unheard.

“The entrance to Channel 4, if you look at it from above, is a massive — well. That is the resounding memory from my first interview day.”

Anthony’s diplomatic response: “Well, I suppose it made the interview a little easier.”

The Art of Changing Gears

Anthony asked whether the transition from radio to continuity was difficult. Pete said the core skill transferred naturally: the ability to change gears.

Channel 4’s output can swing wildly from hard-hitting documentary to lighthearted comedy in the space of minutes. A continuity announcer needs to navigate those shifts without giving the audience whiplash.

“What are the nice bridging phrases we can come up with that soften that gear shift between the two of them? It is possible. It’s hard, but it is possible. And having that kind of muscle memory from radio really does help.”

Anthony summed it up with a radio classic: “Death, murder and destruction. Here’s the Lighthouse Family.”

“Exactly.”

Live TV: Where Things Go Gloriously Wrong

No conversation about live broadcasting would be complete without the question of on-air disasters. Pete didn’t disappoint.

“You are not a proper announcer until you have successfully navigated your own balls-up.”

He keeps a personal collection of his blunders — because in the age of instant social media, if you don’t own the moment, someone else will.

“People can be very unforgiving. If there is a certain mistake, you can be guaranteed that’ll be on social media within 30 seconds. It’s up to you to try and get on that particular bandwagon by uploading it yourself.”

His favorite example? An E4 shift where the script was meant to fill ten seconds, and everything went sideways.

“I just ended up blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And I think I just went, you know what — the whole script is meant to be 10 seconds long. I’ve got no time at all to get out of it. So I’m just gonna go and have it done with it. Lean into it and love it.”

Far from being career-ending, these moments serve an important purpose. They remind viewers that what they’re hearing is live, and that there’s a real human being behind it.

“It kind of subtly reaffirms the fact that it is live. It’s a human thing to do. It makes people a little bit more empathetic. It’s not stuffy and unreachable. It’s just a guy who made a mistake in a booth, and we can all relate to that.”

The Accent Tightrope

The conversation took a fascinating turn when the topic of regional accents came up. Pete noted that Channel 4 was ahead of the curve, experimenting with diverse accents from the late 1990s and early 2000s — but always with the understanding that the announcer had to be brilliant at the job first.

“The thing with continuity — it’s got to be believable, otherwise it just falls over on its face. The person who does the job has to have the key skills regardless of whatever accent or anything they have. It’s just a little flourish at the end.”

Other channels, he suggested, sometimes put the cart before the horse — prioritizing a particular accent or regional representation without first ensuring the announcer had the fundamental skills. He recalled Channel 5 trying a very specific South Welsh accent that “really didn’t go well with the public” because it was quite thick.

“It’s a delicate tightrope to walk.”

Anthony mentioned Ali Bowman at the BBC — “a sort of RP-ish northern accent, somewhere in between” — as an example of how it can work beautifully. Pete agreed, noting that “there is a limit to how northern you’re allowed to go on some channels.”

Home Studios, Live Shifts, and the Pandemic Effect

Like so much of the broadcasting world, the pandemic changed how continuity works. Before COVID, everything happened from the building. Now, the balance has shifted.

“If I’m being honest, the bulk is now done from home.”

The peak evening hours — 6pm onwards — are still broadcast live, and Pete expects that to continue for the foreseeable future. But the daytime hours have become more prerecorded, a shift driven partly by viewing habits and partly by budget realities.

When it is live, though, every second requires attention. Emergency breakdowns can happen at any moment — a program falls off air, and the announcer has to step in instantly with calm reassurance while, behind the scenes, “the rest of the transmission suite is pretty much on fire with people running around shouting things like ‘red barrels,’ which is a very technical term.”

And there’s no downtime even when things are running smoothly. During live shifts, announcers are constantly writing ahead for the following day.

“There’s no sitting back on our laurels and having a cup of tea and just watching the telly. It’s constant push, push, push.”

Finding New Voices: Why They Don’t Want Trained Voiceovers

One of the most interesting revelations was Channel 4’s approach to finding new continuity announcers. With only 12 or 13 announcers on the roster, there’s always room for fresh voices — but the channel isn’t necessarily looking for polished voiceover professionals.

“Because we are not necessarily looking for people who are trained voiceovers — they come with a certain way of working. If you can get someone who is completely new to the thing, they can be molded into the continuity form a lot easier than having to unlearn certain skills and learn new ones.”

This makes continuity unusual in the voiceover world: raw talent and the right personality can matter more than a stacked CV.

Advice for Aspiring Continuity Announcers

When Margaret pressed Pete for practical advice (after his initial response of “don’t — it’s my job”), he offered something wonderfully simple.

“You are using your own words to describe a show. That’s the long and short of it. If you can communicate one-on-one — tell me what this program is about and why I should watch it — that’s it.”

Margaret recalled asking Pete for advice on behalf of a friend who was interviewing, and his guidance was even more distilled: “You’re just sitting down talking to your mum with a cup of tea.”

For those who want to take a more active approach:

Record yourself. Listen back. Identify what makes your delivery distinctive.
Watch the channel. Understand the tone, the vibe, the feel. Each broadcaster is different, and the only way to learn what a channel wants is to immerse yourself in its output.
Find the right person to send your work to. Look for the head of continuity or head of branding at your target channel.
Don’t nag. Once you’ve sent your material, wait for a response. Continuity teams are small, and making a nuisance of yourself will spread quickly.

As for formal training, Pete noted that there’s very little available outside the channels themselves. Gary Terza, a former Channel 4 announcer who did in-vision work for Central TV and Children’s ITV, has offered some training over the years. But because every channel has its own personality and expectations, a one-size-fits-all approach doesn’t really work.

“The only way you can learn about a channel is if you watch that channel and see the general feel that comes from it, and try and emulate that as much as possible.”

The Evolving Role: Accents, AI, and the Shift to Streaming

Pete reflected on how continuity has changed over his two decades. The role, he said, has always been about reflecting a channel’s output — and as that output has evolved, so has the announcing style.

“There used to be a series of shows which got called ‘poverty porn shows,’ where it was a little bit sneery. The continuity reflected that output. These days, those kind of programs wouldn’t even be commissioned.”

Looking ahead, Pete was refreshingly candid about the challenges facing his profession. The shift from linear television to streaming continues to accelerate, and he’s realistic about what that means.

“I don’t believe that continuity will have the same effect that it has had in five, ten years’ time. The shift to digital viewing — streaming — and away from traditional linear TV will continue to ramp up.”

As for AI, he acknowledged the elephant in the room without pretending to have all the answers.

“The whole AI thing — I don’t even know where to begin with that.”

The View From Here

When Margaret asked where Pete sees himself in ten years, his answer was honest, human, and — like the best continuity — completely unscripted.

“I’d like to have a lie-in. That’d be nice. A lie-in and a cup of tea.”

With his wife in politics and children at home (“they’re the enemy of productivity — everything just disappears”), the future is an open question. But for now, he’s still there every day: writing, editing, broadcasting, and making the spaces between television programs feel like a conversation with a friend.

Which is, when you think about it, a quietly extraordinary thing to do for a living.

Want to hear the full conversation? Check out this episode of Voice Acting Unplugged with hosts Margaret Ashley and Anthony Rudd, featuring guest Pete Nottage. Links to Pete’s (apparently fantastic) website and further information can be found in the episode notes.

If you enjoyed this, please subscribe, leave a review, and tell your friends. And next time you’re watching Channel 4, listen a little closer to the voice between the shows. It’s more carefully crafted than you ever imagined.

February 25, 2026February 25, 2026

PETER DICKSON

PETER DICKSON - Loud and Slightly Outrageous

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Peter Dickson

Peter Dickson is the UK’s most prolific voiceover artist. He has enjoyed a stellar career spanning almost 40 years.

His unique and powerful vocal delivery is the choice of global TV entertainment mogul Simon Cowell. His voice has featured on “Britain’s Got Talent” and “The X Factor” in the UK. In a national poll, he was voted as one of the top three iconic UK voices of the decade.

His voice has featured on over 30 major computer game titles including Fable I and II, Tin Tin, Blades of Time, Everybody’s Golf and Kinect Sports seasons I and II.

He has voiced thousands of TV and Radio commercials, anchored awards ceremonies for some of the world’s biggest brands, launched countless products, appeared in many BAFTA award winning TV and radio productions and he’s worked with most of the biggest producers and stars of UK entertainment.

He was the voice of the London 2012 Olympic Games and his voice features in “I Can’t Sing” – Harry Hill and Steve Brown’s new musical, at the London Palladium which is executive produced by Simon Cowell.

He has his own iphone app: “Peter Dickson’s Pocket Announcer” and his own website www.myruddyvoice.com where fans can get up close and personal. He also runs www.gravyforthebrain.com, a rapidly growing educational e learning platform.

From vocal work on radio and TV commercials, commentary for big international stadium events, blue chip corporates, multimedia games, animation and prime-time TV shows – Peter Dickson a.k.a “Voiceover Man” is at the top of everyone’s list.

Peter is represented by:

Voiceover Agent UK

Hobsons International London. 0208 996 5368

ann@hobsonsinternational.com

Voiceover Agent USA

Abrams Artists New York 001 646 486 4600

Jonathan Saul

Jonathan.saul@abramsartny.com

PETER DICKSON - Loud and Slightly Outrageous

35,000 Adverts and Counting: Peter Dickson on a Lifetime in Voiceover

The voice behind The X Factor, the man who channeled Patrick Allen, and the co-founder of Gravy for the Brain shares hard-won wisdom on building a career that lasts.

There are voices you hear once and forget, and then there are voices that become part of the cultural furniture — the ones that soundtrack Saturday night television, echo through channel promos, and boom out of radios with an authority that makes you sit up straighter in your chair. Peter Dickson owns one of those voices.

On the latest episode of Voice Acting Unplugged, hosts Margaret Ashley and Anthony Rudd welcomed the legendary voiceover artist for a conversation that spanned decades, continents, and at least one nuclear apocalypse contingency plan. From his beginnings in Northern Ireland to his iconic run on The X Factor, and from the realities of the current market to why he’ll never join TikTok, Peter held nothing back.

From County Down to Broadcasting House

Peter Dickson’s story begins in County Down, Northern Ireland — a place he describes with obvious affection, not least for its extraordinary patchwork of accents.

“Northern Ireland is a wonderful country. There’s only one and a half million people there, but there are so many accents. You just go down the road a few miles and it changes.”

His career started at BBC Radio Ulster in Belfast, where he worked as a radio presentation announcer before briefly — and by his own admission, not very successfully — trying his hand at journalism.

“I was terrible at it. A lot of my contemporaries went on to great things. I realized very soon that I was never going to make it as a journalist.”

So he went back to what he knew: radio presentation. That pivot eventually led him to BBC Radio 2 in London, where he spent nine or ten years as a radio announcer — reading the news, doing continuity, and presenting programs. It was there that he received what he calls “great training” in the days when the BBC still invested in properly developing its talent.

“That was a really great grounding for me. Great microphone training, presentation skill training. And then I left to become a freelance voice actor. And I’ve done nothing ever since.”

The Accent Question

Anthony was curious: did Peter ever have a strong Northern Irish accent, and did the BBC have a problem with it?

The answer reveals a fascinating slice of broadcasting history. In those days, the BBC took the view that strong regional dialects could hinder comprehension across different areas. Even within Northern Ireland, accents varied so dramatically — from the Scottish-influenced tones of County Antrim to the elongated vowels of Belfast to the distinctive speech patterns of Tyrone — that a neutral delivery was considered essential for on-air work.

Nationally, the story was similar. BBC Radio 4 and the other main networks favored Received Pronunciation, that “old-fashioned idea that nobody would understand you” if you had a strong accent — a notion Peter acknowledges seems “ridiculous nowadays.”

He suspects he was hired partly because his Northern Irish accent was slight enough to be acceptable, and partly because the BBC was beginning to diversify its announcing team. He found himself alongside the likes of James Alexander Gordon, the Scottish announcer famous for reading the football results with an intonation so distinctive that listeners could tell the score before he finished the sentence.

“Nowadays there are all kinds of accents across all networks and channels. You don’t have to have Received Pronunciation.”

No Favorites: The Case for Versatility

When Margaret asked Peter which area of voiceover is his favorite, his answer was immediate — and instructive for anyone building a career in the industry.

“I don’t have a favorite. I’ve always taken the view that in this business, because it’s so fickle and precarious at the best of times, you need to be almost good at all of it and enjoy all of it.”

Peter has watched his own career move in cycles over the decades. One year, clients want him for promos. The next, it’s commercials. Then video games. The key to survival, he argues, is versatility.

“One day you’ll be king of the hill in promo. Next week you are out. The creative director changes, new guy comes in, and you are out. If you’ve got nothing else to fall back on, life can be very difficult.”

His advice: keep as many plates spinning as possible. Be good at commercials, promos, gaming, character voices, audio books — the five main genres he identifies as essential for a sustainable career.

If pressed to choose a favorite, though? Commercials win — but only because of his self-confessed short attention span.

“Give me anything long form and I’m terrible at it. I’ve done two audio books and that was a nightmare.”

Even narrating his own book was painful, he admitted, because being more invested in the material somehow made it worse.

The Rise (and Strategic Decline) of Voiceover Man

To millions of television viewers, Peter Dickson is that voice — the bombastic, larger-than-life announcer who became a character in his own right. But the story of how “Voiceover Man” came to be is one of gradual evolution, not overnight invention.

It started on BBC Radio 1 with Steve Wright, where Peter created a character called Voiceover Man — a deliberate pastiche of the deep, heavily prosodic commercial voiceover style from the 1970s and ’80s.

“That very high prosody. ‘Yes, that’s right, there’s a bouncy castle for the kids!’ It still makes me laugh to do it.”

The character followed Steve Wright to television on Steve Wright’s People Show on BBC One, where Peter played Voiceover Man alongside other characters, including a floor manager that he remembers being “quite fun.”

Then came the call that changed everything.

The X Factor Years

Peter’s agent asked him to audition for a new show called The X Factor. He gave the pilot a “bombastic, larger-than-life character voice.” The producers loved it, and he was hired.

What followed was a masterclass in creative evolution. As the show itself grew more extravagant — morphing from a talent competition into what Peter describes as “more of a pantomime, a big behemoth of a thing” — he made an instinctive decision that nobody asked him to make: he’d grow with it.

“I just took the view that I had to move with it. So I started to make the voice bigger and bigger and more stupid and ridiculous.”

By series 16, things had reached a glorious extreme.

“I was shouting so loudly on that show that I was bleeding from my eyeballs, like a Bond villain. They had to cool the studio down to 15 degrees and I was literally in a very thin shirt because I was giving it so much.”

Channeling Patrick Allen

Around the same time, another opportunity arrived. Peter’s agent told him about a promo job on E4. The channel’s existing voice, the great Patrick Allen, was seriously ill (terminally, as it turned out) and they needed someone to take over.

For those unfamiliar with Patrick Allen, Peter offered a piece of broadcasting history that stopped both hosts in their tracks. Allen’s voice was used by Frankie Goes to Hollywood on their hit “Two Tribes” — but that recording wasn’t made for a pop single. It was lifted from an actual BBC contingency tape, stored in a safe, designed to be played in the event of nuclear war.

“In the event of the government telling the BBC to stop all broadcasting, this tape was to be played on Radio 4. The networks would all join Radio 4, the engineer would play this tape, and it was Patrick Allen’s voice saying, ‘You must take cover. This country is under attack.’“

Anthony’s reaction said it all: “That’s the last voice you would ever hear.”

“It may not have even got to the end of his talk,” Peter added dryly. “I’m being dramatic.”

When Peter went in to audition for E4, the producers played him examples of Patrick’s work and said, “We don’t want you to mimic him. We want you to channel his energy.” Having grown up listening to voices like Allen’s, Peter found something that clicked.

“They looked at me through the glass and said, ‘That’s just very good. Fantastic.’ And I got the gig.”

Before accepting, Peter reached out to Patrick Allen directly. “I said, ‘I hope you don’t mind. I’m going to be doing this.’ And he said, ‘Absolutely no problem. You have my blessing. Have fun.'”

The Double-Edged Sword of Fame

The X Factor, E4, and the Voiceover Man persona all collided to make Peter one of the most recognizable voices in British broadcasting. But he’s candid about the downside.

“In some ways it was a good thing. In some ways it was a curse. Because you get known for one thing, people think that’s all you do all day long. It can become quite dull.”

He’s actually pleased that era has largely passed, freeing him up for “more interesting work” — though the requests still come in from time to time.

The Changing Landscape: From Soho Studios to Home Booths

Margaret asked Peter how the industry has changed over the years, and the answer was stark. The days of running between studios in Soho are largely over.

“I very rarely go into Central London now. On the bigger jobs — the big TV commercials — I do go into the nice big studios where you get the free chocolates and the cappuccinos. But most of the time, it’s sitting in glorious isolation in our studios.”

Peter works from a custom-built home booth — built to his own specifications (“these hands have never done a day’s work in their life”) — complete with air conditioning, comfortable lighting, and everything set up to let him forget about the equipment and focus on the craft.

“It’s important to feel comfortable when you’re working. When everything’s working well, you forget about it and get on with the process of doing a good job interpreting other people’s scripts.”

And when he’s on holiday? He takes a travel rig — microphone, laptop, and everything he needs to put together a “fairly decent sounding studio” in a hotel room anywhere in the world.

The State of the Industry: Honest Talk About Tough Times

Anthony raised what many in the voiceover community are feeling: that 2024 has been extraordinarily tough. Peter didn’t sugarcoat it.

“I’m not going to deny it. It is tough. We all go through it. Why is my agent not ringing me this week? It’s nothing I’ve done wrong or you’ve done wrong. It’s the result of global financial difficulty.”

On AI: “Not the Major Panic Threat We Thought”

The conversation inevitably turned to artificial intelligence. Peter’s take was measured and, for many listeners, probably reassuring.

“I don’t actually think AI is a real threat in our industry. It is being addressed and will be addressed. It’s not the major panic threat that we all thought it was a year ago, when we were all running around like headless chickens saying the robots are coming.”

He pointed to multiple cases of clients who abandoned human voiceovers for AI, only to come back. “We’ve all heard them. They’re good, but they’re not that good.”

Margaret noted that AI voices are improving in some areas, and Peter acknowledged this — particularly for low-level applications like telephone systems and web explainer videos.

“On those low-level jobs, the low-hanging fruit is gone. For those people who just dabbled in our business and were happy doing everyday stuff for not very much money — just pocket money — AI has taken a whole layer away.”

But the middle and top tiers, he argued, remain intact — even if the overall volume of work has decreased. His prescription? The same versatility he’s been preaching all along.

“When one sector goes down, the other ones can keep you aloft.”

Advice for Newcomers: This Is Not a Get-Rich-Quick Scheme

Peter co-founded Gravy for the Brain with business partner Hugh Edwards thirteen years ago. What started as in-person classes for groups of ten in London studios has grown into the world’s largest content provider of voice acting training, operating in 52 countries and having trained thousands of actors worldwide.

So when it comes to advice, he has plenty — and it starts with a reality check.

“Voiceover is not a get-rich-quick scheme.”

He saw the COVID boom firsthand. People stuck at home, scanning the internet for new career possibilities, discovered voice acting and thought, “I can read. I can speak. I’ve got a mic. I’ll get onto that one.” Many joined Gravy for the Brain, took some training, and promptly gave up when they realized how difficult it actually is.

His essentials for success:

Be single-minded and determined
Develop thick skin
Be prepared to put in the hours
Learn to run a business (Margaret’s crucial addition)

On Finding Work Without an Agent

Peter pushes back against the anxiety many newcomers feel about not having representation.

“Everybody gets very concerned that they don’t have an agent. It shouldn’t be the first thing you do as a voice actor. You should be making your own way and finding your own work.”

That means maintaining a disciplined approach: using content management software to track clients (both current and prospective), managing demo reels, staying active on social media, and being “visible everywhere.”

“The more plates you spin, the more likely that jobs will come your way. But it has to be constant.”

He acknowledges this is hard for creative types. “We’re genuinely not very good at marketing ourselves, I don’t think.” You can hire people to help, but that requires income — “a bit of chicken and egg.”

On Pay-to-Play Sites

When Margaret raised pay-to-play platforms, Peter was diplomatic but honest.

“It’s a very disheartening and difficult way to get jobs. You may only hit one in a hundred. You do 99 auditions, you get one job. That one job may be great or it may not be.”

His alternative? Be more inventive. Contact businesses directly. Make your own opportunities. “I’ve done that in my earlier career — making opportunities.”

TikTok, Comic-Con, and the Evolving Voice Actor

TikTok: Not For Everyone (And That’s Fine)

Margaret pointed out that many younger voice actors are building careers through TikTok, getting discovered for animation and gaming roles through social media presence. Peter’s response was characteristically straightforward.

“I’m not on TikTok. I’ve looked into it. It’s not for me. I’m not going to do TikTok.”

He acknowledged it’s a legitimate route to business for many people, and that Gravy for the Brain has a TikTok presence. But personally? No.

Margaret shared her own experience of being cast in an animation called Gaslight District and being inundated with attention from fans who follow specific genres on TikTok and YouTube — a world she hadn’t previously been aware of.

The Comic-Con Opportunity

Peter revealed that he voices Emperor Zian in the Xenoblade Chronicles — a game he’s “never seen or played” but which is apparently beloved, particularly in Japan. He mused about potentially doing Comic-Cons in the later stages of his career, “turning up as Emperor Zian in costume.”

It’s a real phenomenon. As Margaret noted, many voice actors now achieve celebrity status through a single role in a beloved game, attending conventions where fans line up for photos and signed posters.

The Conference Circuit: Learn More in Three Days Than in a Year

Peter saved some of his greatest enthusiasm for the One Voice Conference, which he runs through Gravy for the Brain. Now in its eighth year in the UK and sixth in the USA, the next edition was heading to Dallas the following week — seven team members, hundreds of attendees from around the world, three rooms running in parallel for two days, and roughly 50 different classes, workshops, and talks.

Speakers include agents, producers, and voice actors at the top of their game. Peter’s pitch for attending is passionate and unequivocal:

“People say, what’s the quickest way to get an insight into this business? Come to one of our conferences and you will learn more in three days than you’ll learn in a year. And I genuinely mean that.”

Beyond the education, he emphasized the networking and community aspect. The voiceover industry, he said, is remarkably welcoming.

“People will welcome you in with open arms and share information about their careers with you, give you tips and insights. You’ll make lots of friends. One of the most important things you can do as an aspiring voice actor is get known in the community, be seen by the community, and learn from the community.”

And yes, there’s a social scene too. “We burn the candle at both ends, of course. But it’s only three days.”

Margaret’s footnote: “It takes about two or three weeks to recover.”

Retirement? What Retirement?

When Margaret asked if Peter sees himself retiring, his answer was philosophical — and probably relatable to anyone who loves what they do.

“I’ve never had any intention of retiring. In this industry, the world will retire you rather than you retire from it.”

He’s not chasing work as aggressively as he once did. His agent still brings him interesting projects, and he’s learned to prioritize lifestyle balance — taking more holidays, traveling with his portable studio setup, and enjoying the flexibility that decades of reputation-building have earned him.

“I like to take more time for myself these days. It’s lovely to be able to do that.”

Final Thoughts

Peter Dickson’s career is a masterclass in longevity, adaptability, and the quiet discipline behind a seemingly effortless gift. From BBC Radio Ulster to the bombastic heights of The X Factor, from channeling a voice literally designed for the end of the world to building a global training platform, his journey proves that success in voiceover isn’t about one big break — it’s about showing up, evolving, and keeping those plates spinning.

For newcomers, his message is clear: get trained, get versatile, get thick-skinned, and get visible. This isn’t easy money. But for those willing to put in the work, it’s a career unlike any other.

And for the love of all things, learn how to market yourself.

Want to hear the full conversation? Check out this episode of Voice Acting Unplugged with hosts Margaret Ashley and Anthony Rudd, featuring the one and only Peter Dickson. Links to Peter’s work, his book (yes, Margaret’s husband bought it for Christmas — it’s at the top of her reading pile), Gravy for the Brain, and the One Voice Conference can be found in the episode notes.

If you enjoyed this, please subscribe, leave a review, and tell your friends. See you next episode!

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