Curriculum

The Character Acting Program (CAP) and the Voice Acting Mastermind (VAM) are both designed as a full-year hybrid experience: a combination of live online classes with working professionals and top professors; live guided practice sessions on-the-mic with your TAs in your small assigned cohorts; and self-guided study on-demand with our vast video library. 

CAP students have the opportunity to interact with 6 live touch points per month.  VAM students have that plus Inner Circle office hours with Eliza Jane, personalized career mentorship, advanced classes, and guaranteed inclusion in the showcase at the end of the year.

We kick off the schoolyear with Yvonne Morley-Chisolm’s signature foundational character-building course currently entitled Manipulating Your Voice for Animation and Games with ZERO Damage.  It’s a live 6-week course Yvonne invites everyone to participate in, Sundays 12-2 Pacific.

Literally the next day at the same time we offer a livegroup vocal warmup to get everyone’s daily vocal warmup habit jump-started.  Mondays 12-12:30 Pacific.

We then follow two concurrent paths of study throughout the year –

1. A monthly regional focus for our accent and character development.
2. A quarterly progression through the 4 main genres of character voice work, in order of job accessibility. 

In the first quarter, we learn the 3-Prong Method of aquiring accents and developing authentic characters in tandem with three of the most universally marketable dialect regions as follows:

Month 1: The Auditory Springboard Looping Method with characters from the American South 

Month 2: The Visual Method of scoring copy with the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA), in an exploration of Regional British Dialects and Characters

Month 3: The Kinesthetic Method with Southern Hemisphere Characters and Accents.  We start to synergize the 3-Prong Method, working the unique central tongue muscles required for Australian long o’s and u’s, using the IPA and the Springboard Method to identify distinctions and similarities in New Zealand, Australian, and South African Accents and Character Voices.

Months 4 & 5, in the Accents and Dialects Master Class (ADMC) We’ll work the Mel Blanc classic New York City accent into scripts from Looney Tunes, Warner Brothers, and broad comedic Russian accents of my favorite villains, Boris & Natasha, in scripts from the recent remake of Rocky & Bullwinkle.  RIP June Foray.  

Months 6-8 we’ll cover German & Francophone Accents and characters, and begin to explore the various dialects of Ireland, at which point several of you will be invited to participate in our Asian, African, and/or Nordic Dialect surveys.

The Four Genres are:

1. AUDIOBOOKS 

We start with Audiobooks because they are the lowest hanging fruit when it comes to breaking into character voice acting and booking work for yourself. Whether you’re just starting out, or looking to subsidize your existing acting career and gain more control over your business by adding another revenue stream, audiobooks are a great way to network, build your reputation, and practice character development, all while getting paid. Also, conveniently, the bar is lowest in this genre for dialects and accents.  As an audiobook narrator, you can practice the six signature sounds of any given character’s accent without worrying about perfection or passing as a local, thus clocking mic time toward the 10,000 hours it takes to become an expert at voice acting while creating a body of work for which you can potentially be paid. 

Audiobooks Industry Experts/Guest Lecturers: Scott Brick, Pat Fraley, Lynn Norris, Cliff Miller, David H Lawrence XVII

ANIME and DUBBING

Next we delve into the wide world of Anime & Dubbing, another arena of character voice acting with multiple benefits.  In addition to being particularly friendly to non-union actors and unknown/developing talent, Anime and Dubbing are known for their voracious, loving, loyal, and attentive fans.  This is the kind of fan support you will need for longevity in your career.  When you have a slow year (like all actors do), with a strong Anime resume and a long-term strategy, you can tour the Cons to your heart’s content for a supplementary income signing autographs.  This potential lifestyle of international travel enables you to study the dialects and accents of the world in person as your career progresses.  Yay!

Anime Industry Experts: Crispin Freeman, Xanthe Nguyen, Mami Okeda, Sean Gann, Jamie Thomason, Tara Platt, Yuri Lowenthal, Abbi Trott, Steve Blum

INTERACTIVE/VIDEO GAMES

Thirdly, we tackle the vast array of work in Interactive genre (Video Games).  This is where you’ll find the most abundant work in character voice acting.  Video game gigs, by their very nature, have exponential story lines and scripts and can keep you employed for decades.  For example, in the Pirates of the Caribbean franchise, the character Elizabeth Swann had 16 lines in the second film.  The same character had 44 pages of dialogue for the Pirates game based on that film.  And that was just one of many scale and double-scale offshoot projects Kiera Knightly couldn’t be bothered to come in for. More work for me!  And more work across the board for the scale or double-scale Utility Voice Actor, which is what you are preparing to become.

Emotional connection is key for booking video games.  In order to compete with the pros, you’re going to have to continuously train as actor and a vocal athlete.

So winter quarter is when we take the vocal building blocks we’ve been honing in our Fall classes for a spin in our acting classes.

At this point we get our newbies and CAP students grounded in all of the styles of acting they might’ve learned in theater school (Stanislavsky, Meisner, Adler, Strassberg, etc.), without the $90,000.00 price tag or the nonsensical, inapplicable theory and gruntwork.  Since EVERYTHING we do in Voice Acting is cold reading, ALL of the preparation most acting schools suggest you take the time to do for each role must actually be done in advance, prior to the audition.  You just have to have your character arsenal and perfected set of accents in your back pocket, ready to mix & match at a moments notice in order to compete with the professionals currently working in animation and games. That’s the reality.

So Professor Emeritus Micha Espinosa will concisely and compassionately guide you through the most relevant acting methods for our work, so you have the resources and vocabulary top voice directors expect to be able to use with their top booking actors.  And the VAM students are welcome and encouraged to drop in for a review of these acting fundamentals.

Interactive work boasts a wide aray of sub-genres and demographics, from the ultra-realism of AAA RPGs like Bioshock, to the heightened reality and quippy delivery of Skylanders, to the gibberish of a My Sims, we work in our small weekly cohorts on scripts from current projects to understand the various acting styles required to book those jobs.

For our Advanced students in the VAM, we have Casting Director Andrea Toyias, the voice director who built the voice acting department at Blizzard for over 20 years, teaching how she and the top working voice actors “Chase the Chills” with a six-week intensive series combining the elements of her famous Battle Chest program and the audition technique course top VO agency CESD hires her to teach their clientele.  You’re in excellent hands.  And the CAP students are invited behind the glass for a window into this exciting process, giving them a leg up when it’s time for them to audition for SAGAFTRA union work.

ANIMATION

Lastly we sink our teeth into the world of Animation.  This is the best and most coveted work in the business.  It is also the most competitive.  A-listers love to do this kind of work, for many reasons, not the least of which being that they don’t have to do hair & makeup or memorize lines, and can usually knock out a whole film or episode in one four-hour session.  Most of this work is union.  And yes, in order to have a career in this genre you will need to spend a few years in LA to establish yourself and your relationships.  In our Spring workout groups, we will work with scripts from Dreamworks, Pixar, Nickelodeon, Cartoon Network, Disney Sprout, Disney Character Voices (DCV), Fox, Comedy Central, Adult Swim, etc., and those who are ready will have the opportunity to work with a few different professional directors. 

Every week, you’ll spend time in small workout groups, practicing and going over the focus of the month. Between those sessions, you’ll be reading, researching, or working on the month’s focus in your booth. 

Once a month, usually the 3rd Saturday morning from 9:15 to 11:15 AM Pacific Time, the entire student body attends a Hotseat hosted by Eliza Jane. Those sessions are always fun and informative.

Also once a month we’ll have a live Industry Webinar with one of Eliza’s colleagues.  These industry pros will sit in with the whole class. They’ll share some insight about the VO world from their POV, take Q&A, and in some cases lead workshops. Every month, you’ll learn something to either advance in your skills, your networking & career strategy, and/or your business. 

Your month-by-month detailed activity view is available here.

Check back often, as we’re always working to give you more!

My Courses

This takes you to your registered courses.  Scroll to the bottom of the homepage in your Student Portal to see any courses you’ve started, but this menu item is a quick way to jump there. This is what your course list currently looks like:

• Three steps to learn or lose any accent -This is the Eliza Jane’s 3-prong methodology
• Accents and Dialects Master Class – This program builds on the last and introduces you to the accents from around the globe that are most sought after in gaming, animation, and audiobook work.
• Three separate collections of industry webinars – 
  • Navigating the Business of VO
  • Industry Expert Webinar Library
  • 2022-23 Industry Expert Webinar Library 
• Any additional courses, webinars and classes you’re registered for. This could be Yvonne’s Weekly Vocal Warmup, Acting Basics with Professor Espinosa, Andrea Toyias’ Monsters & Creatures, Battle Chest, or Audition Course, Asian Characters for American & English Actors, African Accents for American & English Actors, or individual Industry Webinars.
• We are actively reorganizing the Industry Webinars by genre, so keep an eye out for updates to the structure of the site! 
• We welcome feedback on your user experience.  Email Assistant@CompetitiveEdgeVoice.com to let us know how you’re experiencing the website!

Dialect Database

My Account

This is where you can see the billing, registration, and account details for your membership with Competitive Edge Voice.