Want to be a voice over artist? Want more voice over work? Learn the ropes! Dave Courvoisier of corvo.com, provides seven habits/tips that are overlooked on how to be a successful voice actor.
#1 Overlooked Daily Habit of Successful Voice Actor
Take care of your mind and body and soul. Health, good eating, sleep, exercise, and equanimity/moderation in all things. It’s the core. The center. Get off-kilter in any of those foundational concepts, and the strain starts to show elsewhere…like your reads!
#2 Overlooked Daily Habit of Successful Voice Actor
Relationships. Before we knew anything else, we were relational. Family, friends, acquaintances, work-mates, neighbors, and virtual/distant persons. Not just people in voice acting, but people from your past, your present, and relations-in-progress. This is the richness of life.
#3 Overlooked Daily Habit of Successful Voice Actor
Perspective. …also known as balance. Spend too much time on any one thing, and you miss the big picture (forest/trees?) Be a well-read, broadly-influenced, renaissance man/woman. Inspiration can be drawn from the most unexpected reaches of newly-discoverd corners.
#4 Overlooked Daily Habit of Successful Voice Actor
Career vs. Job I’ve mentioned this before on my blog. Jobs can be gotten. Careers are planned. Jobs pay the bills (sometimes). Careers set you up for life and retirement. Jobs can run your life and your schedule. When you have a career, you can more often choose time and place. A job will keep you in the trenches, with a career, you can at least choose which trench.
#5 Overlooked Daily Habit of Successful Voice Actor
See the broad/high/long view. Details are important. You can diligently build a beautiful house, but if you did so with the wrong plans, then your detail work is for naught. Keep the value of hard work, but look up from the plans long enough, and often enough, to make sure you’re following the right blueprints. In Driver’s Ed (remember Driver’s Ed?) they used to call that the broad view — keeping your eyes high and attentive.
#6 Overlooked Daily Habit of Successful Voice Actor
Surprise yourself. Restated: Stretch yourself. Sometimes you just have to ask yourself: “If I don’t do this, will I spend the rest of my life wondering if I should have?” But the admonition here is beyond challenging yourself. It’s choosing to place yourself in an uncomfortable position to reap the rewards of discovery. Did it work? Maybe not, But you learned something.
#7 Overlooked Daily Habit of Successful Voice Actor
Never underestimate practice, persistence, patience. Now it’s time to get into the trees. Application of desire and planning. Can you look yourself in the mirror at the end of the day and assure yourself that you did the WORK? Was there progress? Do you have the patience to build on today’s incremental success to achieve your goal in the long run?
What are you overlooking in your career that could make a difference?