Getting Animated - observations on demos

It's July, and I can't believe the summer is nearly halfway over. I've been enjoying as much as the season has to offer ... longer days, dancing out on the Promenade (and enjoying a bit of Spanish Harlem Orchestra on the SM Pier last week), catching up with friends and celebrating a new milestone: the delivery of my completed animation demo!

I had so much fun preparing for and recording the demo that I couldn't wait for my producers to call me and tell me the demo was done. I waited and waited and waited. (OK, it was only 2 weeks but it felt like 2 weeks in dog years.) And when I finally got the finished product, I was so excited to listen to it and share it.

I'm very happy with what I did in the booth, and with how the demo came out...but I admit it, there was some trepidation too. It's a little nerve wracking to think that after nearly a year of workshops and countless hours of practice and research (a.k.a. watching cartoons), my skills and talent are distilled into a potpurri of characters on an mp3 less than 2 minutes long. I have cassettes and CDs and audio files full of classwork, notebooks full of feedback & tips for being a better voiceover artist.... but at the end of the day, what my future agents & clients will hear is this teeny tiny little track full of characters I have created.

In the corporate world, this is the aural equivalent of a 1 page resume. Everything I've ever done condensed onto one sheet of 8.5" x 11" paper. And thinking back, I'm sure I felt just as nervous committing my life's experience onto one teeny tiny page for the very first time, with the purpose of impressing a future employer enough to offer me a job.

Of course, this is the voiceover world, and this is Hollywood. So it's not enough to have just one resume....you need one for each discipline you want to pursue. So, I've got my animation demo done and my commercial demo is nearly complete. And then...

... who knows?