5 Top Tips to Build your VA Career – Andy Cowley

​Andy Cowley is a Voice Actor, YouTube Influencer & Twitch Partner who has amassed over 340,000​ subscribers. He shares about how voice actors may build their brand, improve their skills, and persevere on their creative journey.

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​What I Love About Being a Voice Actor
 
For me it’s one of the first things that I found that I not only had a knack for but just felt so right to me, I had been doing impressions for years before with friends and on YouTube so it just slipped on like a long lost forgotten glove.
 
Here are some of the lessons that have helped me during my journey:
 
Tip 1: Build your Brand
 
There is no shortcut or special magical way of getting noticed. You work HARD, you devote yourself to the passion every day, you treat people in this industry with respect, find your niche and finally remember to build up a brand for yourself at the end of the day you’re a business selling a product.
 
Tip 2: Improve your Skills
 
Were in an age where everything is on the internet, there are TONS of tutorials and guides on proper practice, after giving it a go yourself I’d certainly suggest getting a lesson from a fully-fledged professional as they’ll help guide you in the right direction and assist you in avoiding potholes.
 
Tip 3: Have Passion for your Job
 
Have passion for the job if you don’t it’ll be very easy to tell and work hard, it’s a basic answer but it’s true. When I started out I was doing voice work every single day, I lived and breathed it.
 
Tip 4: Overcome Rejection
 
The only real thing I had to overcome and this is something EVERYONE has to deal with and that’s rejection. As an actor you WILL experience rejection on a daily basis, you’ll audition for 30 roles and you might get 1 successful. It takes a huge amount of self-evaluation and acceptance to realize no you more than likely didn’t do a bad job, no not everybody hates you etc, you may have just not been the correct voice for the role at that time.
 
Tip 5: Be Patient on your Journey
 
It’s very easy to get jealous and negative when you see other VA’s getting roles which lead to incredible things, BUT your time will come and you’ll be so happy with yourself when it does.

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About the contributor

​Andy Cowley is a Voice Actor, YouTube Influencer & Twitch Partner. With his online career he has amassed over 250,000 subscribers with 23 million views and climbing!
 
After discovering the incredible world of acting Andy delved head first into the talent pool and has achieved much success in various projects of work including video games, animation & more. Projects such as Garroth Ro'Meave in the popular web series MyStreet, Phoenix Drop High & Minecraft Diaries, Narrator in Dude Stop, Phobos & Deimos from Apotheon, Overworld NPC's in the popular MMO Legend of the nine tailed fox, Slimes in the official Terraria: The Animated Series .