Best New Voice Finalists 2008

The Best New Voice Award honors voice actors aged twenty to thirty who have been working full-time in voice over as a professional for three or less years. The finalists in the Best New Voice Category for the 2008 Voicey Awards are…

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Best New Voice Nomination Criteria

The Best New Voice Award honors voice actors aged twenty to thirty who have been working full-time in voice over as a professional for three or less years.  Older applicants will also be considered.

Criteria:

• Voice actor may self-nominate or be nominated by a voice over coach, colleague or client
• A recent sample of their voice or voice over work must be hosted on their Voices.com website
• Each voice actor needs to have a professional headshot or graphical image representative of themselves or of their work to be used for promotion on Voices.com web properties and complementary voice over sites

Joan Baker, 2008 Voicey Awards Judge, Best New Voice

Joan Baker is a sound to be reckoned with as one of New York’s premier voice-over actors and creator of the wildly successful “Make Millions With Your Voice” through the Learning Annex, the ongoing Immersion Class Workshops and for the first time ever Directing & Working with Voice-over Talent at the Promax/BDA TV Conference 2007 was introduced to producers, writers, TV station managers and VO agents to a sell out crowd. Joan is also the author of “SECRETS OF VOICEOVER SUCCESS”, a compelling collection of stories about the top voice-over actors in the industry, including the one and only, Don LaFontaine and many more. All proceeds benefit the Alzheimer’s Foundation.

Clients include ESPN, Showtime, Chase Bank, American Express, ABC News and Sports, Lifetime, Lexus, SPIKE TV and Disney (she positively ROARED for the Lion King’s national radio campaign!). Other credits include voiceover for HBO Family, WNBC, Nickelodeon, Delta Airlines, Fox 5, NBA Entertainment, NICK at NITE, Imus in the Morning, the ABC Super Sign in Times Square and countless more. Joan’s extraordinary talent has generated the spotlight with feature articles in the Hollywood Reporter, Back Stage, Media Week, ADWEEK and Broadcasting & Cable to mention a few.

Kara Edwards Wins Voicey Award for Best New Voice

Kara Edwards, a rising star in the voice over industry, was chosen by a panel of industry judges to win the Best New Voice Award at the 2007 Voicey Awards, sponsored by Voices.com, the Voice Marketplace. Kara’s career in broadcast started at Radio Disney in the mid 1990s until 2001, honing her craft as an on-air personality. Her background at Radio Disney and subsequent work at a radio station in Charlotte, NC for six years guided Kara down a road which would ultimately lead to making the gutsy decision to quit her day job as a radio personality in 2006 to pursue voice over as her full time profession.

It was through Radio Disney that Kara and her peers, all founding on-air personalities of Radio Disney, studied under the tutelage of Pat Fraley, a prominent voice acting coach and Hollywood voice artist. Kara reminisces that she never knew until that moment that she had so many ‘voices’ in her head. Pat Fraley pushed the team at Radio Disney to make all kinds of noises, sounds, and thoroughly explained character development. Mr. Fraley was also instrumental in giving Kara the courage to go to her first audition in which she was cast as two main characters in DragonBall Z. To this day, Pat Fraley’s audio CD lives in Kara’s iPod and is listened to regularly to keep her voice in form.

When asked about what her experience thus far in voice over has taught her, Kara intimated, “It would take a novel to explain everything I have learned these past months! Being a voice actor is tough and requires much more work than I ever imagined. Professional voice actors have more than just talent; they have business savvy and incredible drive. I have to treat this as a business now, not just a hobby. The most valuable lesson I’ve learned is to ask questions! Someone will be willing to answer them and help you out. This is a fantastic community”.

Kara also shared the following as her acceptance speech “I would like to thank Brian Haymond and Bob Souer for their help and kind words which are invaluable. Thank you to DB Cooper for creating the VO-BB and to everyone that posts there; the advice and friendships mean everything to me as I start my new career. Thank you to Stephanie and Voices.com; it is wonderful to have an avenue to find work, ask questions, and be noticed. Thank you to the Voicey judges; this award means the world to me! Finally, thank you to my wonderful husband for allowing me to destroy our guest bedroom and spend all his hard earned money on electronic gadgets. You’re all the support system I could ever need!”

Voices.com and Voicey Awards co-founder, Stephanie Ciccarelli says, “Kara Edwards is a ray of sunshine and has one of the most contagious personalities of the new generation of voice over talent today. Her dedication and ambition to study and learn from others is key to her success, and along with her vocal talent, singled her out among thousands of voices to be honored as a Voicey Award winner.”

About Kara Edwards

Kara Edwards began her career in the mid 90’s as a radio personality while voicing various anime roles and radio commercials on the side. Kara made her dream of being a full-time voice actor a reality in late 2006. She is most well known as the voices of Goten and Videl in “DragonBall Z”. Other roles include Murugu in “Yu Yu Hakusho”; Celica in the recently released “Solty Rei”; Razzles in the upcoming US version of “Raggs”; plus many more. Kara works from a studio in her home in Charlotte, NC and her voice can be heard on the radio, Internet, and television globally. Being a voice actor is more than a job for Kara, it is her life’s passion.

Kara Edwards partial commercial client list includes: Blockbuster, Playmates Toys, Disney, Toys R’ Us, Snow Country, Raising Canes Chicken Fingers, Bowen Family Homes, Publix, Sona Medspa, Dee Cee Dreams, Peidmont Bank, KB Homes, Clinique, Kohl’s, Carrabas, UNCPembroke, Belk, Bojangles and Purina One.

Best New Voice Finalists 2007

Kara Edwards
A voice that will stand out and get noticed.

 

Caryn Clark
Hip, cool, VH-1 or MTV sound.

 

Dana Detrick
A professional voice with style for any project.

 

Anne Swist
The voice and the read you need.

 

John Small
National award winning copywriter and audio image specialist.