Make Good Art: Burnout, Imposter Syndrome, and Creative Anxiety

(Neil Gaiman, Photo from his Masterclass Series, Teaching the Art of Storytelling)

I haven't read nearly enough Neil Gaiman, and I think even if I had read everything he's ever put to paper it still wouldn't be enough, but nonetheless the man is a creative inspiration to me. In a 2012 keynote address to the University of the Arts in Philadelphia, PA, the author told his audience of students and faculty the following:

Life is sometimes hard. Things go wrong, in life and in love and in business and in friendship and in health and in all the other ways that life can go wrong. And when things get tough, this is what you should do. 

Make good art.

If you want to be a creative, make good art. He was being serious, he said.  Make art.  Make the art only you can do.  Expose your soul to the world and run (figuratively) naked down the street.  Do this especially when things have started to get difficult.

I don't fall into bouts of depression as deeply as I used to, due to a combination of proper medication and deciding to live the life I want to live not what I felt was expected of me.  But I do suffer from burnout and imposter syndrome.  That voice tickling the back of your mind telling that you aren't good enough, you didn't get enough training, you didn't practice enough, you're a fraud and they're going to catch you at any moment, or you should be working more and therefore you do not deserve to work at all.  The last one's a bit strange, I know, but I feel like more than a few of you know what I'm talking about.

I ran headlong into one of those walls this weekend.  I'd had a fantastic live recording session with a local podcast here in Portland that I will detail in a later post once the pictures and such come out, but then I came home and decided to look up the submission rules for the most recent round of Chuck Huber's Now Voice This on Twitter.  I missed the last round, so I was excited to fling myself into this one because why not?  Seemed like a great opportunity.  But then I saw what was being put to the test: Impressions.

My dog above, I hate impressions.  Not only have I been told by seemingly every professional voice actor and acting teacher in the entire world that they really don't matter all that much, I've just never wanted to do them.  I've dabbled in voice matching, but I thought in order to be a competent and competitive voice actor I had to bring something original to the table.  So beyond that bad Christopher Walken impression everyone and their mother does, I. had. nothing.

I had nothing.  My mood instantly tanked.  It should be simple.  Everyone else has a whole stable of these fantastic impressions they can whip out for so simple a task.  It was the first round, right?  If you don't make it past this one you have no business ranking yourself amongst the talented competition. I got irritated, depressed, self-hating, wanted to rant about impressions being a waste of-

Okay, whoa.  What is this?  What was I thinking?  I had to get a grip.  This was a fun, little competition not life or death.  More than that, I have plenty of voices I could tweak into an impression of someone else if I gave it a little thought.  "Make good art." I reminded myself.  It doesn't matter if you win, it doesn't matter if people like it.  No one else has your instrument.  You can't rate your talent by comparing it to others.  They're not scaled the same way.  So sit and think.

As with most of the solutions to my problems, the answer at least started with my wife.  We were watching cartoons before dinner the other night and I do that annoying thing where I start mimicking the characters onscreen without even thinking about it.  She laughed at my dumb jokes and stupid voices, instantly filling that soul-sucking void in that way only she can.  There's just one possibility.  Surely if I thought about it I could think of more!  I thought about the menagerie of NPC ("non-player character" for you non-D&D nerds out there) voices I pull out of my hat for my weekly games and jotted down a few more possibilities.

Getting to the other side of burnout, imposter syndrome, and creative anxiety almost always lies outside of your own head.  You're not going to find a light at the end of that tunnel if you keep spiraling down into it.  When I catch myself starting to head down that road, I find that the best way to combat it is to stop what I'm doing, get up, and walk away from it for anywhere from a few hours to a weekend.  Do something else that fulfills and inspires you -- a hobby, film, music, friends, family, pets, books.  Almost always for me it's not some grandiose obstacle I must conquer if I just take a step away to recharge.  The mountain always looks more like a molehill when I come back to it.  And more than that, getting out of my own head means getting second and third opinions.  Getting out of my dark, little padded booth and bringing in the people close to me helps to give perspective.

Now that I've come back to it I've got some ideas, and a hell of a fun time ahead.  I can't wait to see what I can produce to meet this challenge.  Even if I don't make it to the next round, any new aspects to my voice I discover during my playtime can be used in other things.  My journey never stops, and as long as I'm putting one foot in front of the other I can keep walking forward.  And I'm doing something I love no matter what, and how many people can say that?

Remember, friends, it doesn't matter how slow you're going.  It doesn't matter if you're jumping and leaping forward or you're inching along, pulling yourself the next inch with your fucking teeth.  Forward is forward.  The only way you can fail is by giving up and turning back.  Never stop.  Go farther.  Take another step.  Fly.  Swim.  Dig underground.  Break through.

"Make good art."






Footnote Episode IV, A New Foot: For the full keynote speech from the absolutely fantastic Mr. Gaiman, follow this link.  It's worth listening to, and not only because Neil has a voice and way of speaking that is just enthralling.  I heard him speak at a raconteur event while I was dating my wife (again, everything good in my life starts with her) and I could listen to that man read the phone book.  Seriously.

Footnote Episode V, The Foot Strikes Back: I'm still working on putting together a few talented individuals to help me create my next voice acting demo.  Scheduling being the way it is, I expect most of the work on it to happen next month.  Will keep you updated and irritate you with the end product endlessly when it's finished!

Footnote Episode VI, The Return of the Foot: If you haven't found this blog through it already, check out my Twitter in a day or two for what I end up vomiting forth for NVT4, Round One!

July Update!

So, I'm going to have a busy July!  This Saturday I'm going to be recording for a sci-fi podcast based here in Portland called Exoplanetary.  It's an opportunity that I'm learning to very much appreciate because I won't be doing the recording in my home booth by myself.  We'll have at least half of the cast there to record our parts together in a group instead of sending in everything separately and having the sound engineer and/or director put everything together.  This way I get to play off my partner in the scene and the director will be able to give us live, in person direction.  Very fun, very rewarding whenever I get a chance to record like this.


Nextly, I've been cast in a webtoon dub called Purple Hyacinth , giving me a chance to contribute to something alongside a bunch of VA's on Twitter that I've really wanted to collaborate with.  I'll be playing the part of a kind of mad bomber character and I am absolutely thrilled that I get a chance to do another voice that's...how shall we say..."high strung"?  My guy is front and center in Episode 0 so I'll post about it again once everything's finished.  Should be soon! 


I'm looking forward to some more anime fandubbing as well, one because it's great fun especially with "Abridged" dubs, and two because it gives me more much needed ADR practice.  You don't realize just how much extra work it's going to be matching your words to the lip flaps of already animated characters until you actually go to do it.  It's a skill that takes a lot of time and learning to do fast and easily, and if I'm going to keep the option open of marketing myself to places like Funimation in the future I'll need to practice practice practice!  The Bang Zoom! class in voice acting for animation I'll be taking at the end of next month should also help round out the basics for me.

But it's not all booth time, as at the end of July I'll be heading to sunny Miami with fifteen books and lots of sunscreen for a sort of family reunion my parents have been planning all year.  My brother is a photographer and he's already offered to help me out with some headshots that aren't taken with a cell phone with an Instagram filter.  But outside of that I'll be enjoying some much needed time off with the family.  My youngest brother lives in England and the other lives on the East Coast so we haven't all gotten to see each other in a good long while!

On a personal note, readers, I do apologize for not really posting all that much last month.  The way things came together, June was a lot of me being in between stuff I've already done and a mess of new auditions for future projects.  So while I was working pretty steadily there was just nothing to actually show anyone!  Going to try to make up for that by posting a bit more this month. :) 

Thanks for reading (and listening!) and as always, stay tuned for more!

Note: Exoplanetary logo belongs to Christopher Hart and Exoplanetary Media.  Purple Hyacinth art screengrab belongs to the webtoon creators, Ephemerys and Sophism.

Real Quick

Bigger post coming soon about what I've been up to this month, but real quick I wanted to note that the first episode of Existential Chris, animated by the fantastic Tthunderb0lt, just came out!  (I voice Grandpa Joe!)  Go give it a watch and a thumbs up on YouTube!

Moving Past Auditions and Collab w/ Jordan Rudolph!

Well, things have been crazy at the day job recently.  My schedule has been in flux and I'm looking into backup options for if the worst should happen and they close our branch of this nonprofit.  Still, I'm making the time to both honor the commitments I've already made to projects I've been cast in and audition for new ones.  Voiceover is the one thing in my life where I love being busy, and I feel listless if I don't have a full plate.  It helps me keep perspective and avoid getting too bogged down with worrying about the day job.  The goal has always been to have it be temporary anyway, not a career.  If I end up having to make a change, then I can always do something else to make rent.  Whatever I need to do in order to keep us moving toward our real goals!

But that brings me to the topic I wanted to touch on, just to remind myself if not educate anyone that might happen by this.  It's important, once you've finished an audition and submitted it, to just move on.  Not all projects make it past the casting stage, and even if they do the sheer odds are that you probably aren't going to get cast.  So treat the audition as the entire job, finish it to the best of your ability, and move on to the next thing.  If you get an email or a DM later on announcing that you got it, then great!  If you don't, then it's no big deal because you've already got other things on your mind.

I had to remind myself of this today, because there was an audition that I know I just nailed.  I think I did fantastic.  Just blew it out of the water.  But there have been no updates nor casting announcements for about a week.  Not even a "thanks for auditioning, we're going over them and will get back to you!"  So I kept that tab open, refreshing it every day, checking to see if they'd done anything with it.  I've realized that all it was doing was stressing me out and keeping me from doing other auditions.  It's a useless waste of my attention.  So I closed the tab and recorded ten more auditions and all the lines for Grandpa Joe this morning.  BAM!  Much better use of that energy.

If they go dark, or someone else gets cast in that project I was obsessing over, then I at least have a new voice I discovered during the process I can use elsewhere.  I also learned a ton about my audio software just by having to deal with a character that is VERY LOUD AND ENERGETIC ALL THE TIME.  It's a net improvement in my skill level no matter what.  I can be happy about that. 

(Thanks #VOLife Clothing for the new t-shirt!)

Another thing that I'm excited about is my recent collab with Jordan Rudolph that was released last week.  I tweeted about it, but I wanted to throw the link on here as well for Facebook and Instagram readers.  In her cover of Kiss the Girl from Disney's The Little Mermaid for her Patreon, which you should totally check out, Jordan asked me to contribute the spoken lines of Prince Eric!  I haven't done a lot of voice matching, but I loved the opportunity to practice copying the cadence and inflections of another actor -- in this case the amazing C.D. Barnes, who you may also know as the voice of Peter Parker/Spider-Man from the 1994 animated Spider-Man cartoon.  I think I got pretty close!

Looking forward to the Memorial Day Weekend, when I get to record for a podcast here in Portland (which I will tell you more about next time) and do some more auditions!

Casting Updates!

Hey guys, I've got some fun news to share! First off, I am so psyched to be cast in the role of the incorrigible Grandpa Joe in a new weekly webseries coming out this summer called Existential Chris, animated by @Tthunderb0lt on Twitter. I'll be joined by a few other VA's I've gotten to know on Twitter and Discord who I'm thrilled to work with for the first time!

"Existential Chris" banner on the left, Grandpa Joe on the right! Art by @Thunderb0lt.

Next, I've been contacted by The Story Geeks/The Reclamation Society to come back and record for parts three and four of Death of a Bounty Hunter, a full cast audiobook coming out next year where I play Ellis Warburton II, a banker in way over his head. :) I recorded for part two last December and the Story Geeks crew were amazing as well as the other cast members I met. I can't wait to pop back down to LA in a couple months to help get it finished! The Story Geeks is also a podcast covering geeky topics and their first audiobook, Time Slingers, is due for a general release very soon. So give them a look!

Death of a Bounty Hunter banner belongs to The Reclamation Society/The Story Geeks.

Finally, I've just recently contributed to a standalone mod for Warlords Battlecry 3 (Infinite Interactive, 2004) called The Protectors, where I voice a brutish, growly monster character. I'm not privy to all the modding team's details about their new content, but my contribution should be showing up in the next update! They've been working on and adding to this project for nearly nine years! So if you're a fan of the original game, go ahead and check them out. (And don't forget to support the original game, available on Steam and GOG.)

Banner credit to The Protectors Modding Team.

I am thrilled to be able to contribute to all of these projects, and there is going to be so much more to come. So keep on the lookout for future blog posts from me, and if you haven't already feel free to follow me on Twitter (@StroudKyle) and Instagram (kylestroudva) for news on these and other animations, video games, audiobooks, podcasts, and other roles I get to put my little mark on.

For those of you who have been reading along with me since I've started, and to those of you who still have no idea who I am and may have just clicked on a random retweet, you're all AWESOME and thank you for taking a few minutes out of your day to check me out. This is still only the beginning, and I can't wait to see what the future has in store.

VO Workshop with Mary Mac and Nick Omana!

All day this past Saturday I attended a voiceover workshop taught by Nick Omana and Mary McDonald-Lewis.  You've probably heard Nick's voice on Last Comic Standing or one of a hundred other commercials, promos, or video games like World of Warcraft.  I knew Mary Mac from being the voice of Lady Jaye on the GI JOE cartoon show I used to obsess over when I was a kid, but she's also been Wonder Woman, Lois Lane, Veronica Dean on Archer, and more.  She's also appeared onscreen as Frau Pech in Grimm and is a very successful dialect coach.  So as soon as I saw an announcement for this workshop I jumped at the chance.

From Left: My hairy mug, Mary Mac, our sound engineer Cama, and Nick Omana.

The workshop itself was almost all practical experience, getting tons of time in a professional recording booth over at Rex Production and Post here in Portland.  Our lovely and talented sound engineer, Cama, ran everything from behind the glass allowing Mary and Nick to direct us in a variety of commercial reads; emphasizing relaxed control, strong choices, and what Mary called your "heart voice", or the voice most authentic and truthful to you.  She'd immediately point out when she didn't believe what you were saying, and the little fine tuning and adjustment to get something that sounded great was immensely helpful in learning how to take direction well.

If they read this post, I want to again thank Mary, Nick, Cama, and everyone at Rex Post so much for the opportunity to attend this workshop.  I learned so much and I can't wait to put it into practice.  I'll definitely be keeping all three in mind when I'm ready to do my professional demos!

I think it was Dee Bradley Baker who I heard say that there were three or four stages to being an actor, or becoming a master at anything.  I can't remember exactly what he said, so this is probably horribly misquoted.  However, he said something like the stages are: (1) There's when you're bad but don't know why, (2) there's when you find out how bad you really are, (3) then when you can be good by accident, and finally (4) when you can be consistently good at it.  I think I can reasonably say that I've fully reached stage two after almost two years at this, and I'm making my way toward three.  Today was a big jump toward that end goal of being consistently good.

Check out this little dude guarding the hallway at Rex Post.

In other news, the new home booth has been fantastic so far and I've been auditioning up a storm for pay and for practice on many casting call websites.  I'll be posting the ones I thought were the best along with any casting news I might receive once they've closed.  Most likely it'll be the ones I didn't get, so I don't break any confidentiality with any new project I might get to contribute to.

Stay tuned!

I built a recording booth!

Hey, guess what!  I've (almost) finished my home recording booth! 

It's basically held together with gum, scotch tape, and feelings, but short of me fixing the acoustic paneling on the one wall I didn't have a moving blanket for it's done.  After fifteen trips to Home Depot trying to get the right lengths of 3/4" PVC piping, all the little T connectors and corners, having my irritated wife hold up the ceiling while I fixed the blanket covering the top, and endless futzing around with the new microphone and audio interface I bought, and having to deal with a couple of very curious pets, it's good enough to at least start auditioning some more.

You might remember my janky desk setup from before:

Well, now may I present the somewhat less janky PVC booth!  

Now I can scream out my feelings in the privacy of my very own enclosed space, with jaunty XMas lights keeping me from tripping over wires.  The building material was almost exclusively all purchased online through Amazon.com, with the PVC piping coming from Home Depot.  I used leftover XMas lights we already had for the lighting, and my wife's standing desk on a plastic storage bin to get the laptop up high enough to sit at for when I'm not recording.  The chair can be thrown out the moving blanket door curtain at my whim, which is itself being held to the PVC pipe frame by zip ties so that I can slide the curtain open and closed.

Most of the research for building this thing came from a VERY helpful YouTube video by Ken Tsurata (a.k.a. kenisinoregon).

Next on the to-do list is to further isolate the space by throwing even more blankets and acoustic foam and other such things on the inside surface of the two book cases and the walls surrounding it in order to soundproof as much as humanly possible.  My new mic, an Audio Technica AT2035 XLR condenser microphone, is pretty damned sensitive and I'm still hearing that mic hiss in the background of a lot of my audio tests and the couple of auditions I wanted to get started on right away.

If there's two things I've learned through this whole process it's one, I am NOT a "handy man".  There was a lot of trial and error that went into this thing, even with what I thought was a huge focus on measuring twice and cutting once.  I'm surprised the people in the PVC section at Home Depot didn't know me by name by the time I actually got everything I needed to build that simple, little 6x4x4 box.  And two, I know even less than I thought I did about audio technology.  The only thing that's gotten me this far is episode 116 of Crispin Freeman's "Voice Acting Mastery" podcast where he discussed basic settings for recording equipment.  But at least I never make the same mistake twice, and I'm having a ton of fun with these new auditions and collaborations that I can FINALLY START WORKING ON AGAIN!

That's it for today, folks.  There will be updates real soon on a training opportunity I had to jump on here in Portland.  Stay tuned or...reading...at...don't touch that dial or what have you.  Yeah, don't touch that dial.  [Finger guns.  Winks with both eyes]