“A microphone, pop filter and my own little determination.

[I started voice acting] in eighth grade, so I was like 12 or 13 at the time. I did it by myself because I originally wanted to do actual acting after the pandemic. I went to my mom and said, ‘Hey, can I take acting lessons?’ She said, ‘No, focus on piano and chess,’ so I [was] like, ‘You know what, screw that. I’m going to take it into my own hands and do voice acting because you don’t need to go anywhere in person.’

Going into it, I was a little delusional. I was like, ‘I want to pass every audition.’ That did not happen. My first audition was pretty bad because how I got into voice acting was, I found a video on YouTube that wanted voice actors. I [was] like, ‘Oh, hey, this is cool,’ but the creator gave up on it midway. [After that, I found auditions on] casting call dot club or on YouTube, which is less professional but less competitive.

[It was hard in the beginning] because I had no professional training. All I’ve seen is just regular people talk [on] podcasts and stuff. It was daunting, but eventually I learned the ways, like sometimes you have to say the lines twice in different situations and different emotions. Some [projects] are original ones where they create their own characters, and some of them are comic dubs, [where] people make fan comics of their favorite characters and you voice over the characters for them.

[I’ve produced] like 14 videos. [The video] that’s the most viewed has like 2.4 million [views] and 200k likes, but it’s so bad. It’s from when I just got home and I was rushing to my desk. I’m surprised my director didn’t tell me to fix anything, but I’m glad. I scroll[ed] down to the comments, and there were no bad things about my voice. I kind of have an accent. It’s not distinctively Chinese, but it’s a weird accent. The industry is really strictly American accent unless otherwise specified.

I don’t claim to be big. I’m just a little small voice actor [who] auditions for things that I find interesting. I did it for the experience. It’s cool seeing how in this industry, there’s people my age, but there [are] also adults I can look up [to]. I quit [voice acting] coming into high school because I moved places. Other than that, I actually need to focus on schoolwork and maybe actual acting because even though the tapes are usually 30 seconds long, it takes a while to get the take you really want. But you know, I’m just happy to get a job or [get] offered an opportunity. I don’t do this professionally. I have a mic, but it’s supposed to be for Zoom classes. I just like mak[ing] characters come to life, because that’s what acting is.”