We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Zane Schacht a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Zane, appreciate you joining us 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.

I started Voice Acting as many artists start in their craft; goofing off and having fun. Even as a child I’d do a lot of silly voices for my mom to make her laugh. It was just something I enjoyed doing. The theater bug bit me in high school, and I knew that I loved acting, but it wasn’t until roughly my junior year I realized the first thing I’d do was come up with the voice. I’ve taken my share of acting lessons and workshops, but honestly the best teacher for me has been fun. I’ve made tons of silly videos, dubbed memes. It’s a great space to try new voices while learning editing techniques.

Looking back, I don’t think I’d do anything differently. I didn’t study in theater in college, instead studying Chemical Engineering. I was a part of my colleges theater group though, and got a lot of experience there.

I think the truly hardest skill I had to learn as a voice actor was listening to my own voice. It’s certainly not easy and takes a lot of time in the booth and editing, hearing yourself over and over. But you do have to listen to yourself, the only way to gauge a performance is if you listen to it. It’s no small secret that our voices don’t sound right to us, something about how it resonates in your head and where your ears are. But once you can listen to yourself you can fine tune a performance to where you need it

As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?

I’m Zane Schacht! I’m a remote voice actor (not located in LA or New York) who specializes in character voices for media like podcasts, games, and animation. I live in Appalachia, and use social media to reach out to potential clients, though mostly I like to work with artists and creatives on their personal projects. I’d describe my voice as “Goblin meets wheedy cowboy.” Never had a lot of bass in the larynx but that’s not a problem. All sorts of fun little guys out there to voice. I’d say that’s my brand. Fun little guys.

How can we best help foster a strong, supportive environment for artists and creatives?

You gotta pay artists. Just a few bucks a month to their patreon. Buy a sticker from their store. Support their projects. All of this is skilled labor, and skilled labor deserves money. And unfortunately, the current corporate climate is trying to pay artists less and less while taking more and more away from them. If you love someone’s work, give em a few bucks. They’ll certainly appreciate it and you can feel glad knowing you kept an artist going

What do you think is the goal or mission that drives your creative journey?

I want to be a part of the art that I love. Like when I see an artist make a super cool animation or I play a game set in a really fun world, I want to be a part of that. I think art is beautiful and needed as much as food and water for humans to feel alive. The hope that someday I can be a part of something wonderful and unique, whatever it may be, keeps me going

Contact Info:

• Website: Www.voicesbyzane
• Youtube: VoicesByZane
• Other: Bluesky: Voicesbyzane

Image Credits

Stuffed animals in corner of booth are designs by Gianni Matragrano and Ashley Heather Quills, produced by Makeship