Audio is always recorded before animation starts. This allows you to determine how long the scenes need to be and to plot, frame by frame, where the phonemes are so that you can sync your characters to their audio. Not all animations have dialogue, but they may still have special sounds the animation needs to be related to, or you may want to have your characters move to the beat of music. In all these instances, the audio needs to come first.

When you are working with a project that has been funded, you can hire actors, rent an audio studio, record their voices and have technicians edit the audio together for you. When you have no funding, you need to be inventive in how to produce your project with favors and cheap solutions. Let’s start with the assumption that you will have to make do without funding for your project.

Working Without Funding
Finding actors willing to do voice overs for free is fairly easy. Voice overs don’t take as long as acting in front of a camera. Actors don’t have to memorize their lines since they can read from a script. And as long as you’re flexible, you can work around their schedules. If you don’t know any actors, ask around or go to the drama department of a local school. You can also try local theaters and comedy troupes. For short, independent projects, you can often get voice over actors to work for free, with the agreement that you will provide them with a tape that they can use to get future work.

Whether you have funding or not, record multiple takes of each line of dialogue. It always costs less to record more in the first place than to have another recording session. You often need to use portions of different takes. You may hear something in their acting while editing that you didn’t hear while recording.

Sound-dampening in the corner of an office that is being used for recording. Notice that the actors will be facing the hanging blankets.

A number of smaller production studios set up their own little recording booths — or even recording corners — in their office. Find a quiet corner or small room and hang some sound-dampening materials in it to keep the recording from sounding tinny. You can use sound blankets, comforters, foam sheets or anything else that is soft and will absorb sound. Place the microphone so that the actors are facing toward the sound-dampeners. Be sure to have a stand for the actors to read their script from — you don’t want the noisy shuffling of papers on your recording. Use a stand for the actors to read their script from — you don’t want that noisy shuffling of papers on your recording. Use a windscreen in front of the mic to keep down the sound of breath hitting the mic. If you don’t have a windscreen, have the actors speak off to the side of the mic instead of directly at it.

DAT recorder for digital audio recording on tape. It will accept both analog and digital inputs, and the recording quality is as good as you can get.

Once your studio is prepped for recording, you can record to any device that will accept audio. The best results will be either recording to a DAT (digital audiotape) or directly onto your computer. Once the audio is recorded and you’ve chosen the best takes, you should clean the audio by removing any background noise that may have been recorded. We use Sound Forge for recording and Cool Edit Pro for removing unwanted noise. Years ago, we used to record room tone, or the general sounds in the recording area that had a slight hum. We then edited that tone over any gaps in the dialogue, so that the quality of the sound wouldn’t change. Now, with digital audio recording, we ordinarily remove all background noises, so room tone is seldom necessary.