It is our desire, our goal, to create very memorable animated characters in THE SPIDERWICK CHRONICLES. As digital creations with no real world comparisons, it our challenge to vocally add a degree of verisimilitude to these artificial characters that firmly states to the audience “this is real”. The accompanying materials are designed as an inspirational guide to achieving these goals, vocally.

    The SPIDERWICK CHRONICLES features fantastical “syn-thespians” that  convey whimsy and terror, comfort and fear, laughter and dread. They have been modeled to resemble fairly recognizable terrestrial hybrid life-forms. They are piggish, squirrelly, impish, and bestial. As our characters are “hum-animal” in nature, it is our desire and often necessary to embellish the performances with animal-like vocal attributes. To create as seamless a blend as possible, it is advantageous for the vocal performances to contain some recognition of these animal characteristics to effect a transparent transition to actual animal sounds to ground them in reality. As such you are being provided with short samples of some interesting animal sounds that might be a part of your character or may only serve as inspiration for further vocal experimentation.

    Further, the accompanying DVD contains short highlight clips, past and present, that embody what we believe to be inspired vocal performances. The artists in these clips took liberties in the vocal performances that go well beyond what was on the written page. When Mel Blanc first read the line “sufferin’ succotash”, the script carried narry a  suggestion of the tongue tied lisp that he brought to Daffy Duck. Inversely, J.R.R Tolkien’s work referenced, very explicitly, the snake like hiss of Gollum in the first Lord of the Rings. In both cases these memorable performances utilize clever vocal machinations that add life, color, and uniqueness to their respective characters and showcased the talent and improvisational skills of their respective vocalists.

    Two of my personal favorites are the cynical cackles of Burgess Meredith as THE PENGUIN in the Batman TV series. The other is Goofy’s signature “Whahhahhaahoooey” from the Disney Classic Animated shorts. There is E.T.’s gutteral rasp and Porkies stutter or Woody Woodpeckers signature laugh or Yoda’s convoluted sentence syntax.

    It is our hope to imbue our characters with vocal mannerisms, tick, affectations and vocal signatures that do not appear on the page. Does your character snort, or purr or chortle? Does he laugh at himself? Does he lisp? Does he stutter, whistle between the gap in his teeth? There are any number of unique and interesting ways to bring a character to life. We hope you find some of this material helpful and look forward to your “vocal” interpretations in our next session.