We recently connected with K Beau Foster and have shared our conversation below.

K Beau, looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. Learning the craft is often a unique journey from every creative – we’d love to hear about your journey and if knowing what you know now, you would have done anything differently to speed up the learning process.

My journey through voice acting has been filled with an incredible amount of luck, hard work, massive mistakes, taking those mistakes to heart and doing my best not to do them again. But regarding what I would change… that is definitely a tricky question to be honest. On the one hand changing my journey would ultimately change the outcome and all the wonderful people and projects I’ve worked on might never have happened. Now that the silly philosophical answer is done: To those coming up in the voice acting world; I would suggest Dee Bradley Baker’s website iwanttobeavoiceactor.com as it is the most comprehensive compendium of voice acting info that you can find. Having access to something like that site or Chelsea Krause’s fantastic voice acting instruction videos on TikTok would have been the holy grail when I first started.

All that being said: I honestly wouldn’t change a thing. As the saying goes: It is what it is. The ups and downs – all of it has made this journey unique and unforgettable and it truly has only just started. I’m excited for the things to come, both known and unknown.

K Beau, before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?

Of course! Hi everybody. I’m K Beau Foster. I’m a giant (6’7″), a husband, son, brother, musician, voice actor, and a massive goofball. As for what it is that I do… Well, that starts with a little backstory.

I love cartoons. Always have. As a kid I didn’t realize that there was a person behind those wild and wacky characters. Once that revelation set in it was off to the races. I was mimicking every cartoon scene I could. Cannot tell you how many times I must’ve sung Part of Your World around the house. My love and passion for voice acting was constantly there. My older brother Kurt even bought me a voice acting book called The Art of Voice Acting by James Alburger. Great book, by the way. Having all that information and passion was great… But extreme anxiety made it nearly impossible to put it to good use. If I could have dug a hole and lived there forever I would have. But here’s the thing: anxiety is part of life, right. Ya gotta find a way through it or it will keep you from living your life. Took me a solid decade and tireless efforts from my incredible wife Mina for me to finally take the plunge into sending out auditions to narrate audiobooks and eventually starting a TikTok and a YouTube channel. I was a sock puppet in my first few videos. Too terrified to sit in front of a camera so I used a sock puppet. And just like before: It took time and wonderful (and extremely patient) people – Mina and our friend Mahsa – to get me on screen. I got super lucky and my videos started to do well and I began getting emails from people asking if I could voice characters in their projects.

And then, if all that wasn’t cool enough, I started to chat with and collaborate with some ridiculously talented and skilled voice actors in the TikTok community. A gorgeous gigachad by the name of Ali Gohar was one of the first people to contact me to do a collab. I went from a ball of uncontrollable anxiety to someone who is actively seeking to work with other people like Ali Gohar or Elgin “Eltrain” Foster or Andrew Knollenberg. I consider those guys brothers now.

What’s the most rewarding aspect of being a creative in your experience?

The most rewarding part is hearing from people who have watched my videos or heard me in a game or cartoon and how it has positively impacted their lives. I mean, it’s both rewarding and humbling. There was a guy who commented on one of my videos – he said he started watching my vids when he was in high school and now he’s graduating college and still watches and says my videos make his day better. I mean, putting into words how much that kind of thing means to me is almost impossible. All I can say is that I’m so very grateful.

Also the most meaningful project that I’ve been a part of is the 48 hour Audio Drama festival run by an amazing friend, writer, voice actor and all around awesome person Chelsea Krause. As the name implies; all entrants have 48 hours to create a 10-20 minute long audio drama. We’re split into teams with a writer, voice actors and an editor all of whom are fantastic people. The stories and performances that come out of those short 2 days are wonderful, just wonderful. Some are spooky and scary, others will make you cry your eyes out. I love it. I got lucky and my wife, Mina, was the writer for the story I got to perform in so it was extra special for me. It goes to show that even with a constraint of 48 hours you can create some really cool stuff. I can’t wait for the next one.

Let’s talk about resilience next – do you have a story you can share with us?

Yeah, of course. A while back I did around 600 auditions in one year and only managed to get 3 contracts. It was disheartening for sure and made me question my own abilities and skills. You start getting into your own head asking “am I good?” “do I even belong in this industry?”, ya know – the whole imposter syndrome thing. That year taught me a few very important lessons: It wasn’t necessarily that I wasn’t good enough, it’s just that someone else fit the role more than I did. The other lesson it taught me was to fall in love with the act of auditioning. Take each audition as if it’s the actual role. Put everything you’ve got into it and have fun with it. Once you’ve recorded the audition and sent it in, it’s out of your hands. I can’t sit around fretting about things I cannot control, ya know. Just gotta take a breath and start up the next audition.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://kbeaufoster.com
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/kbeaufoster
• Twitter: https://twitter.com/KBeauFoster
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@KBeauFoster
• Other: https://www.tiktok.com/@kbeaufoster