We’re excited to feature Andi Bishop, a talented voice artist who has found success through our Work from Home doing Voice Overs course. With a background in theater and a passion for storytelling, Andi has transitioned from live performance to building a fulfilling freelance career in voice acting. Read on to learn about Andi's journey, insights, and advice for aspiring voice artists!
Q: What was your background (education/career) prior to enrolling in the Work from Home doing Voice Overs course?
Andi: I have a degree in Theater and a background in the performing arts. I ran in the rat race of Chicago's storefront theatre scene for many years, until the pandemic shut everything down and gave me a new opportunity to evaluate my life choices. While I was pursuing theatre as a career, I also worked in a series of administrative roles at various companies, including the R&D team at a major chemicals company, a Shakespeare company, an inclusive theatre company, and an architecture firm.
Q: What motivated you to enroll in the Work from Home doing Voice Overs course?
Andi: I discovered voice over work when I was looking for a new creative gig. While I still perform fairly often, I stopped pursuing theatre as a full-time career and wanted a way to continue using my skills in performance and storytelling. Around the same time, I was laid off by the last company in that series of admin jobs, and they treated me extremely poorly as they did. Rather than looking for another corporate job, I opted to explore freelance income options and fell quickly into voice overs as the perfect fit.
Q: How did you find the Work from Home doing Voice Overs online course?
Andi: Once I decided I wanted to seriously pursue voice over work as an income source, I found this course via an online search. The quality and value of this course was absolutely unmatched by anything else I found in my search.
Q: Could you share your initial expectations about the course? Did it meet or exceed those expectations?
Andi: This course gave me everything I needed and more. With my performance background, I mostly needed to learn about the technical aspects of voice overs: setting up a studio and working in Audacity. This course gave me everything I needed! And the Voice Review at the end would have been worth the cost of admission all on its own.
Q: How long ago did you complete the course?
Andi: I finished the course in January of 2024.
Q: How much time do you spend working as a voice artist?
Andi: I consider myself a part-time voice artist. Working as a freelancer means I'm usually pursuing several different income streams at once, but voice over work is one of the most consistent (and lucrative!) of my income streams.
Q: What types of voice over work have you completed so far?
Andi: So far, I have booked several audiobooks and a handful of podcasts. Currently, I have four audiobooks on Audible, and two more in my queue. I'm a frequent guest artist on "Shadow Carriers," a paranormal storytelling podcast, and have just been cast as a recurring character in an audio drama podcast called Borrowed Lives (coming late 2024!). All in less than eight months!
Q: What’s your favorite type of voice over work?
Andi: This will surprise no one considering my theatre background, but I love any kind of voice over where I get to do character work. I love working on my podcasts, and my favorite audiobook I've narrated to date is Before Now Was Now, a sci-fi adventure where a teen girl discovers she's descended from a long line of time travelers and goes back in time to the 80s to learn about life, love, death, and punk rock.
Q: What’s a typical work day like for you when you are doing voice over work?
Andi: I average about two hours a day in my studio, and this time is split between recording my current projects, editing those projects, and submitting new auditions. If I'm between audiobooks this number will be smaller, and sometimes it runs longer when I've got a deadline looming, but it averages out to about two hours a day.
Q: What do you love most about being a voice artist?
Andi: I love the flexibility that voice over gives me to use my creativity and performance skills in a way that I have a lot of control over. I get to set my schedule, pick my projects, and I don't have to spend two hours on the train back and forth from audition locations in order to do it! It has a lot of the same things I love about working in live theatre, but from the comfort of my home studio.
Q: What advice would you offer to others who are considering becoming a voice artist?
Andi: Invest in your equipment and your training! Voice overs can be a flooded marketplace. Anyone with a microphone and a laptop can submit auditions. Good equipment and high-quality readings are what make you stand out. I can't tell you how many times I've auditioned for something and been told something along the lines of "I got dozens of auditions and all of them were unprofessional except yours."
Q: Please describe your recording space. Where do you record? How did you treat the space?
Andi: I record in what I affectionately refer to as my "recording studio blanket fort." It's the back half of my walk-in closet, which I treated with foam panels and separated off from the rest of my closet with a heavy quilt as a barrier. (Hence, blanket fort!)
Q: Would you like to provide additional links to your work and/or website?
Andi: My website is: www.venturevoiceactors.com
And here is my Audible page: Andi Bishop on Audible.
We are so proud of Andi’s success and look forward to seeing Andi's voice over career continue to grow!
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