I don't understand why animated characters NEED to have such annoying/unrealistic voices

Cafe Society
1

I’ve never really been able to enjoy most animated cartoon shows and the main reason why is because I feel like the voice acting is often too obnoxious and goofy-sounding. Case in point: Family Guy, which, though I try to avoid, I just involuntarily caught a snippet of and spent a few minutes watching it just to contemplate why the voice acting is so over-the-top dumb-sounding. Why do they need to do this?

My whole life, I’ve always hated The Simpsons, which never fails to elicit genuine shock and even anger from just about every single person I’ve ever told - the main reason why is because I can’t stand the sound of the voice acting. (Marge especially.) (The other reason is that I don’t like the way Matt Groening made the characters’ faces look, with the yellow skin and the pronounced overbite - this totally drives me crazy from an aesthetic standpoint and makes the show visually look revolting to me.)

Futurama, same thing. The Professor and Zoidberg are the two most-annoying to me, though I also think Fry is pretty obnoxious. I think this show has some hilarious moments and some good concepts, yet the voices get to me.

The only cartoon show I really like - and I truly love it - is King of The Hill, which I feel has much more listenable voice-acting. Although a few characters like Boomhauer, Bill and Luanne have slightly goofy and obnoxious styles of speaking, I find most of the dialog on the show to be far, far less grating and more “normal” sounding than most shows, which is why I like it. (I also like the semi-realistic way the characters are drawn - this appeals to me far more than the stylized humanoids of other shows.)

As a kid, I also enjoyed Doug, which, again, I think has more realistic sounding voices. Again, on that show, there were a few annoying voices, but they belonged to minor characters like Mr. Dink. The core of the show - Doug and his family - all had really real-sounding vocal styles and sounded like real people, which I liked. I never really enjoyed any of the other Nickelodeon cartoons because the dialog was just too over-the-top goofy-sounding.

I don’t understand why this needs to be. Why don’t more producers of animated shows try more realistic voices? Voices that sound like actual human beings?

2

It’s cartoony and distinct. Just like the animation.

With few exceptions, “real” voices are boring as hell.

3

Because most people prefer it that way? You used the Simpsons as an example of how animators are doing it wrong. This is a show that’s been on the air for twenty two years. Clearly, the vast majority of the viewing public does not have a problem with cartoons that have cartoony voices.

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First of all, I never said The Simpsons is “doing it wrong.” I’m saying that I, personally, don’t like the style. Obviously most people do.

The actors in live-action comedy shows do not sound like Peter Griffin and Homer Simpson, so why does it seem that anything animated must have goofy voices in order to be funny?

ETA: you used the term “cartoony voices.” Does someone want to try to take a stab at defining what it is about these voices, exactly, that make them sound “cartoony”? I have a mental picture of it, but I can’t put it into words. What is it about the inflection that is so “cartoony” sounding? Does it relate to the yo-yo-ing pitch of the voices? I feel like a wildly changing pitch is one of the things that does it.

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Fry’s voice is basically how Billy West talks normally, with a bit of stupid thrown in.

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Julie Kavner’s speaking voice is not that different from Marge’s. My impression is that this is pretty common in animation: a lot of character voices are a slightly modified version of the real voice of the actor. People like Billy West (who voices the Professor, Zoidberg, and many others on Futurama) and Dan Castellaneta and Hank Azaria and Harry Shearer (all from The Simpsons) are not common. There’s a reason animated voiceover work is dominated by a small number of people. Whether or not it’s your thing, they’re very talented.

Anyway as far as the main question goes… perhaps because it’s entertaining? Or it’s funny? Or because animation is an inherently unrealistic medium (that’s one reason you draw things instead of filming them) and it’s not going to look like real life no matter what, so why not take advantage of the possibilities it offers? You can get away with bigger departures from reality in animation. There’s nothing wrong with the King of the Hill way, but animation lets you do some things you can’t do with real people. Exaggerated voices are one part of that. It’d be stupid if nobody took advantage of that, and clearly, some people enjoy it.

Either that, or Homer figured it out: “It’s because they’re stupid. That’s why everybody does everything.”

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There’s also the cynical side benefit: by exaggerating the voices, one person can provide the voices for multiple distinct characters, thereby saving money.

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Then… what’s your question? They do it, because that’s the style that’s popular.

It’s not a requirement, obviously. You’ve already pointed out one example of a cartoon that didn’t do that, at least too much. But it does help heighten things. Futurama could still be a funny show with naturalistic voice acting, but voices like Doctor Zoidberg really add to it. It basically boils down to funny voices being… well, funny. And in a comedy show, you want as much funny as you can get.

I think the voices are just generally exaggerated, same as the animation. All the aspects are punched up to one degree or another - when they’re excited, they’re really, really excited. When they’re sad, they’re really, really sad. Characters with accents push the distinct part of the accent harder than a real speaker normally would. Characters with no distinct speech patterns are absurdly flat. Same with the animation: if a person gets punched in the face, it doesn’t just flatten their nose, it completely inverts it. A character falling down the stairs doesn’t just thump down them, he bounces like a rubber ball.

Out of curiosity, how do you feel about Looney Tunes, or the old Disney stuff?

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:smack::smack::smack:

Do you get what I’m trying to ask here? Why is that style popular? Why is it popular with cartoons but not with other kinds of shows?

I prefer the Looney Toons that have a minimum of dialog. Tom and Jerry is one of my favorites. The best old cartoons are the ones that are kind of like the silent comedy films by people like Charlie Chaplin and Mack Sennett - the humor is all in the physical comedy, not the vocals.

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People doing multiple voices isn’t a cynical byproduct, it’s a major advantage.

I was starting to write another post about this when I saw this. I think the medium does invite it. Animation calls for a little extra energy and it’s not a naturalistic medium on its own.

Some of it has to be tradition. Most of the earliest classic animated characters, like Mickey and Donald and Bugs and Daffy and Porky, aren’t human in the first place. So you can’t ding them for being unrealistic.

Audiences don’t expect the same amount of realism for cartoons (where everything is obviously not real) and for live action (where things are assumed to be realistic unless it’s established they aren’t).

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Because that’s what people like? You’re not asking a question that really has an answer - it’s a matter of taste. Most people find it funny. That’s not really something you can explain.

It’s also hardly unique to animation. Lots of live action slapstick do the same thing - look at The Three Stooges or The Marx Brothers, for some classic examples. Or any Adam Sandler movie, for something more contemporary.

It’s not clear from your post if you’re aware of this, but Tom and Jerry aren’t Looney Tunes. They were developed for MGM by William Hanna and Joseph Barbera. Looney Tunes was, of course, done by Warner Brothers’ animation studio.

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What I’m confused by is that you are citing voices that are rather realistic. Yeah, Peter Griffin has an accent that isn’t usually shown on TV, but it does exist. Marge and Fry are using their actor’s real voices, and I know people who talk like the professor, and Zoidberg is based on a real person.

There are unrealistic voices out there, but you haven’t really named any. Unrealistic would be Bart or Homer, Herbert, Zap Branigan, or nearly the entire cast of South Park.

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Animation is a medium where subtlety is very hard to convey, because actors can’t use their face and body language. Animation which can portray emotions in a subtle way requires a ton of time and therefore money, so it’s easier to exaggerate everything.

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Well, I suppose you could just phone it in, like Angrlina Jolie in the whole Kung Fu Panda franchise.

She sounds like Billie Bob’s Angelina, evermore. Nothng strained or different there. Helll, even the more unrestrained voice actor even sounds Like Jabbels.

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I guess they have “unrealistic” voices for the same reason that most cartoon characters have an “unrealistic” appearance. It’s not supposed to be real life, it makes them unique and I prefer it that way.
I always hated the trend of having famous celebrities do voices for animated feature films instead of professional voice actors. An interesting, recognizable and unusual voice is an important part of a cartoon character.

By the way you’ve mentioned that you liked the voices in Doug yet not Fry from Futurama. Maybe you know already but the same guy (Billy West) did both the voices for Doug and Fry - and those two characters sound very similar. :slight_smile:

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Go to YouTube and call up the first Popeye cartoon. Olive has a pretty realistic voice in it. Betty Boop has an extended cameo. Betty’s voice is so much better for the cartoon medium that her voice actress (Mae Questal?) became the voice for Olive Oyl pretty quickly.

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gottatellyamanyertakinyercartoonswaytooseriouslythereman antellyawhutbuddyyaaintevencominupwithexamplestosupportthattherepointyagotthereman

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just a sub-question, could you guys help a non-american place these accents (given the charater and my own guess):

huckleberry hound (new england?)
yogi bear (mid-west?)
fat albert (south-side chicago?)
yosemite sam (texan?)
popeye (bronx?)

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Argent, have you seen any of Creature Comforts by the Aardman Studios (either the original short film or any of the later television episodes)? The creators interviewed real people on the street and then animated them (in clay) as animals. It’s very effective, very funny and you get real voices and unscripted (albeit edited for comic effect) speech. You can watch a lot of them on YouTube. Admittedly a lot of them still have funny accents but they’re REAL funny accents (as spake by The Great British Public).

Mac - Fat Albert is definitely intended to be Philadelphia where Bill Cosby grew up, although it’s not a strong Philly accent as some.

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Even more potentially confusing, when Chuck Jones left Warner Brothers in 1963, he produced 34 Tom and Jerry cartoons for MGM over the next four years. Those cartoons could easily be mistaken for Looney Tunes, as they retain the style that uniquely belonged to Chuck Jones.