Voice acting can be a very fulfilling career. You get to work with a variety of clients and projects and hone your creative skills while finding your niche as a unique voice actor. 

But finding your voice can be difficult. When you're just starting out, you might have a tendency to develop a wide swath of unique voice "sounds" to appeal to many clients.

There are more effective methods to get into voice acting, though. If you want to find your artistic voice, we've compiled a handy, short guide of three ways to be a unique voice actor. Read on to find out more!

1. Finding Your Voice

The best thing a fledgling voice artist can do for themselves when developing your portfolio is to work on one distinct voice.

Having a single signature voice will get you more work in the long run. It will be your money-maker and will make finding your niche much easier.

Start by evaluating your natural speaking voice. Do you have a deep gravitas, or a more light and friendly tone? This is where you will focus your efforts, and hone in on developing your inflections and pronunciations into something consistent.

Listening to recordings of yourself can help you also identify how your personality comes through in your voice. Let's say you have a deep, authoritative voice, but a playful personality. Work with this to develop it into something that comes naturally.

2. Make It Natural

Often when doing voice acting work, you will be reading a script cold with little-to-no preparation in advance. Even if you do prepare beforehand, there's something about being in front of a microphone that can make you freeze up and over-act. 

Finding your voice and practicing it before this happens will make these script readings go much smoother and sound very in-character.

Good voice actors sound natural, not rehearsed or forced. The more that you work on your voice, the better you will flow during a recording session.

Work on reading all kinds of scripts out loud, and record yourself to make sure that you are staying consistent from reading to reading. You want your signature voice to become second nature, without having to focus on maintaining it. 

3. The Acting in Voice Acting

Even if you are chosen to record a script for a voice acting role, your signature voice is only a portion of the job. The other part is the actual acting.

And acting is difficult. We've all heard voice actors whose delivery sounds a little forced. This is why making sure your voice comes naturally is important: it frees up brain bandwidth to focus on staying in-character. 

If you have a tendency to over- or under-act, even a distinct voice won't get you the job. Constantly recording and evaluating your performance, and even working with a voice acting coach, can ensure that your acting skills are as desirable as your voice.

Jump-Start Your Career

If you are just getting started finding your voice, make sure to read our handy guide on how to start your voice acting career. Making good investments in equipment and training early will ensure you start your path successfully.