{"id":1002,"date":"2014-10-09T02:53:26","date_gmt":"2014-10-09T07:53:26","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.thevoicerealm.com\/blog\/?p=1002"},"modified":"2025-10-27T06:53:20","modified_gmt":"2025-10-27T11:53:20","slug":"behind-our-voice-actors-ethan-sawyer","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.thevoicerealm.com\/blog\/behind-our-voice-actors-ethan-sawyer\/","title":{"rendered":"Behind our Voice Actors:  Ethan Sawyer"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Ethan is versatile voice actor with hundreds of characters in his arsenal.&nbsp;&nbsp; Living in various parts of the world influenced him in creating those characters and made him the talented voice actor that he is today\u2026&nbsp; and having a degree and solid experience in acting didn&#8217;t hurt either.<\/p>\n<p>Let\u2019s learn more about our featured voiceover artist Ethan\u2026 you\u2019ll love the clip he shared with us today.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><strong>What got you started a career in the voiceover industry?<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>I grew up&nbsp;listening to my father do silly voices, imitating Nat King&nbsp;Cole and Humphrey Bogart, and I&#8217;d imitate him imitating them &#8212; so I suppose I&#8217;ve been doing&nbsp;silly voices my whole life.&nbsp; Then&nbsp;I studied acting at Northwestern University, and received an MFA from UC Irvine, but it wasn&#8217;t &#8217;til a few&nbsp;years ago that I gave up theatrical and on-camera acting to devote myself full-time to VO full-time.&nbsp; And why did I do that?&nbsp; &nbsp;In short, I found that VO pays better, there&#8217;s much less driving to auditions, and I don&#8217;t have to memorize any lines!<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><strong>How has your background in theatre and on cam acting helped you hone your craft as a voice actor?&nbsp; Is this something that you can recommend aspiring VO artists to do?<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Working in theater&nbsp;<strong>definitely<\/strong>&nbsp;helped. In fact, I think it&#8217;s how I became &#8220;instantly&#8221; successful when I started in VO.&nbsp; (Given that I&#8217;d been acting for 15 years and my last role was Hamlet in &#8220;Hamlet,&#8221; it would be inaccurate to say I was a beginner.)&nbsp; One thing my VO mentor has always said is that when you&#8217;re working with a new VO agent or client, you have to be able to go &#8220;80 miles per hour on the freeway.&#8221; The idea here is that in the VO world things move fast and if one can&#8217;t keep up one gets passed up&#8211;or, words, run over.&nbsp; I think that the 15 years of training I received&#8211;first in theater, then in VO&#8211;helped me to go 60 on the freeway&#8230; But I had (and still have) some distance to go&#8211;and some things to learn about the craft of VO&#8211;before being able to go 80 on the freeway.&nbsp; I suppose this is what experience brings.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><strong>Definitely being a Bilingual VO talent is an advantage, with your experience, what&#8217;s the best way to market yourself as a Bilingual artist?<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Honestly?&nbsp; I found a huge list of VO producers and voice sites and emailed them all individually with my English and Spanish reels, my training, and the fact that I&#8217;d booked 500 gigs in the past two years (which is true).&nbsp; People responded!<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><strong>Do you have a voiceover actor you look up to?&nbsp; Why?<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Mel Blanc.&nbsp; The man could do&nbsp;anything!<\/p>\n<div class=\"video-container\"><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"Mel Blanc, The Man of 1000 Voices [1981] - AMAZING TALENT !!\" width=\"720\" height=\"540\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/ZeAM1vwEcFg?feature=oembed&#038;wmode=opaque\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/div>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><strong>You mentioned in your <a title=\"The Voice Realm\" href=\"https:\/\/www.thevoicerealm.com\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">TVR<\/a> profile that you are now up to 300++ voice characters&#8230; are you aiming to go for a 1000 like Mel?&nbsp; What new things can we expect from a versatile talent like you?<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;m ALWAYS developing new characters.&nbsp; Last night I was working on a Disney audition for (I can&#8217;t say what) and came up with a new one&#8211;oh, and I&#8217;m hoping to develop my arsenal of creature voices (for video games).<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><strong>Do you have a particular type of voice work you love doing?&nbsp; Why?<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Anything that involves thick accents and deep characters.&nbsp; I love to disappear.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><strong>What is your most memorable project so far?<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>The gig I recorded a few days ago, which was just two lines long.&nbsp; And this won&#8217;t sound very romantic, but it was memorable because I couldn&#8217;t believe they were paying me that much money for just two lines.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><strong>What is your typical day like as a voiceover artist?<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>7:45am: wake up, go for a walk.<\/p>\n<p>8-10am: record gigs and auditions.<\/p>\n<p>11am-5pm:&nbsp;drive to in-studio sessions,&nbsp;record ASAP auditions, or work on other projects.<\/p>\n<p>5-7pm:&nbsp;record auditions or gigs, as needed.<\/p>\n<p>Always wrap by&nbsp;7pm, per wife&#8217;s request.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><strong>What do you recommend?&nbsp; Setting up a home studio or using a commercial recording facility?<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Home studio, as it is so much easier and it is cost\/time-effective.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><strong>How&#8217;s your experience so far with The Voice Realm?<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Great! The staff is great, the clients are great and the process has proved really&nbsp;efficient.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><strong>Can you recommend resources or training a serious voice actor should read\/take to help them improve in their field?<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>I recommend going to workshops with casting directors&nbsp;who actually will call you in. This last part is important. There are many workshops and classes led by folks who are likely to forget you.&nbsp; But I&#8217;ve found meeting the decision-makers to be productive and lucrative.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><strong>What is your advice to aspiring voice over artists?<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>As you begin, set a monthly goal (example: find a regular work-out group), then do one thing each day toward that goal, and track it on a document on your computer.&nbsp; Doing one thing each day is important.&nbsp; Once that goal is accomplished, set a new goal (Example: find an amazing demo producer, or secure an agent.)&nbsp; I found I needed a daily reminder to get me in the habit.&nbsp; Now the work finds me.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>Book&nbsp;Ethan&nbsp;on your next project.&nbsp; Visit his&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.thevoicerealm.com\/view-profile-artist.php?artist_id=814\">voice over profile<\/a> for a free audition or direct hire.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Ethan is versatile voice actor with hundreds of characters in his arsenal.&nbsp;&nbsp; Living in various parts of the world influenced him in creating those&#46;&#46;&#46;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1018,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[427,425],"tags":[188,292,44],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thevoicerealm.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1002"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thevoicerealm.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thevoicerealm.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thevoicerealm.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thevoicerealm.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1002"}],"version-history":[{"count":15,"href":"https:\/\/www.thevoicerealm.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1002\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4695,"href":"https:\/\/www.thevoicerealm.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1002\/revisions\/4695"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thevoicerealm.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1018"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thevoicerealm.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1002"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thevoicerealm.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1002"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thevoicerealm.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1002"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}