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say - with no facetiousness - if you happen to be the exception, and find that you're able to be successful in VO without putting in the groundwork, then more power to you. (This is in no way meant to demean or belittle those successful VO artists who have avoided the theatrical acting route; they deserve their success and certainly don't need me to tell them how it should be done. However, even those VO folks will tell that you've got to educate yourself - or be educated, by a qualified teacher - about the business and craft of voiceover.)

Momentarily putting aside my earlier point about not being in VO for the money: you're proposing to enter a field wherein, when you're working steadily, you can (potentially) earn as much as a working attorney or physician. The latter two occupations require going to school for eight, ten, twelve years (or more) after high school. There's no legal requirement that you attend any sort of formal classes to be a voiceover artist...but you do have to have the same level of commitment as those professionals. If you like the idea of a self-taught CPA doing your taxes, or an untrained mechanic working on your car, then by all means plow ahead in that same vein.

A Seat at the Table

Regardless of how much or how little training you've had, a resume' of acting experience does little when it comes to landing VO jobs. You've got to bring something to the table, and that something needs to be your demo. In fact, you'll need several demos in different categories, and each of them needs to stack up against pros who are already working steadily. However, before we put the cart too far in front of the horse...

Don't get too impatient; you need to be ready to perform before you get started creating your first demo. If you've been practicing and absorbing information from VO pros (via the resources and methods listed previously), then you can start putting materials together for the demo.

While you might want to concentrate on completing one demo category at a time, it's important to know what the main ones are: Commercial, Narration, and Character. There are others, such as radio/TV imaging, subcategories of Narration like Medical, Scientific and Corporate, etc., but let's stick to the basics for now.

Finding material for a Commercial demo is easier than you might think, but also a little tricky; while you can contact studios and ad agencies to search for old legitimate advertising copy, you can also find the same material in any magazine or newspaper

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