Voice Acting!

Hey, Joshua Tomar here. It's my first time posting on TIGSource, so if I say anything particularly ignorant, I don't expect your forgiveness, but at least you'll know why. I'll start by saying I am "a little bit of game developer", though the only "finished" game I have to show for it is this: http://www.newgrounds.com/portal/view/465205. All of my experience so far is with Flash/AS3 and XNA/C#, and while I love game design and programming, I could certainly use some more practice.

Right now, however, I want to talk about voice acting. First and foremost, I love it. Recently, I've found that more and more of my voice jobs are coming from the independent game scene, and it's been fantastic. Not only has it proven to be a great community (at least from my limited taste thus far), but it's really helped me to appreciate the amazing power and creative capacity of small 1-to-10-man teams.

I'll concede outright that some games just don't warrant voice acting. I totally get that. Sometimes voice acting even diminishes some of the value of an otherwise decent game. Has anyone gotten a chance to play Trouble Witches Neo for XBLA? On that same token, though, I feel that many games have been enhanced through the use of good voice acting.

I feel like there must be some myth around that you need top-dollar union talent to get high quality voice acting in a game, and I COMPLETELY understand how this myth came to exist. I see very few indy-budget games with good voice acting, presumably because it's treated as a complete afterthought and the work is not given to experienced performers. The good news is that talented amateur and semi-pro voice actors are on the rise, and many of them, myself included, would love to offer developers access to pro-quality voice-over at Indy-budget rates. Sometimes even for free given the right circumstances. Why? Because we love the work, we love the art, we love the exposure and frankly we feel it's going to pay off some day when you devs are kicking ass on a whole new level.

I feel like I've made my intended point and so would like to conclude, shamelessly, with some self-promotion. I'm very flexible and animated. I have played many roles, from the extremely Zany to the gravely serious, though I confess to preferring the former. My voice demos can be heard directly from http://www.joshtomar.com and some of the independent games I've voiced for include the following:

Road of The Dead - as the Main Character

Alice is Dead 2 - as The Mad Hatter
Alice is Dead 3 - as The Mad Hatter, The Queen, her henchman and The March Hare

Nobuyuki Forces 4 - as some soldiers and the commander

You Only Live Once - as Jemaine and some lackeys

Mastermind: Word Conqueror - as Most minions, Mandible, Lord Garth and Radiel

And lots more. http://www.tomamoto.com has a more comprehensive list of both games and cartoons, all of which are flash-based.

If you're interested in using my voice in your games, or are just looking for someone to talk to about voice over, please feel free to hit me up, either on this thread (I promise I won't fly-by-night) or at whatever contact options I'm able to list in my profile. To anyone that made it through this post, thanks a ton for your time and interest!