David Dixon has voiced Woodsy Studio characters for 10 years, going all the way back to the first voice acted Woodsy Studio’s project, the Serafina’s Saga animation (Arken Jeridar). Now we take a moment to talk to David about his overall experiences in voice acting and his own personal passions. This is part 1 of 2 in the interview with David (see Part 2 here). You can listen to the vocal recording of his response to each question, and/or read the transcribed text. Enjoy!
1. Your history of voicing Arken goes back all the way to the original Serafina’s Saga animation and you are reprising the role in the upcoming Woodsy Studios game, Serafina’s Saga: Awakened. Has your approach to the role changed over time?
Hello there, I am David Dixon and I voice Arken (Serafina’s Saga: Awakened, Serafina’s Crown).
Yeah, for sure! After seeing more of his development from the end of the original games to the new installment I see new angles of his past so I’m definitely trying to push the sorrow and bitterness more, but also have a bit more fun with the sarcasm. I see he uses that as a deflection or even a wall when he’s uncomfortable. I also think the passage of time and changes in my life are helping me wade deeper in the truly emotional moments with Serafina.
I think that if I had to the narrow it down I’d say I’m kind of giving my performance HD Plus remaster, but yeah I’m definitely trying to use more of what I’ve learned as an actor since then to just really delve deep and really make Arken just come to life more. It’s one of these things as an actor you’re always looking back at your old performances and in the moment you could be like “Yeah oh that’s great I love this.” But then sometimes when you go back and you’ve learned so much since you look back and like “I would have done that differently, ah crap oh no I would have done that differently!” So kind of a bit of that, yeah. I just really want to push forward with what I’ve done in the past and just really flesh out Arken.
2. You have voiced villains in two Woodsy Studio games: Picard in Serafina’s Crown and Thomas “Tip” Wagner in Crimson Spires. What is your process for connecting with villains, and how much did it vary between these two?
I definitely like to think of what makes them tick in their everyday lives. With Tip I see him as a man driven by fear and paranoia. Now saying he’s driven by fear I don’t mean for him to be sympathetic at all, I’m more focusing on the ignorance that comes with fear, you know. He’s a bad dude in a very sadly relevant to today’s atmosphere villain. He’s a bully who wants to feel important, like he has the answers, so I latch on to that want. With all the goings on in that particular setting he goes from being a nothing and to now just looking for an opportunity to say, “Yeah yeah hey I feel seen I’m important.” But as I said earlier you look at the fact that he is a bully he is a jerk and so I’m layering that on to some of those natural wants of wanting to be heard, wanting to be seen. But also, I’m the bad guy, I’m a jerk, so I’m having that be corrupted into wanting to lord it over people be like, “Ah you don’t know anything, I know something, why should we trust you, you’re an outsider, I’ve been here all this time, and I know what’s what, so let’s put the microscope on you!” and I take it from there.
With Picard, I had fun with his hedonism and treated him like a bit of a brat, if I’m being honest. We’ve all had days when we feel we’re owed a bit of indulgence, a bit of extra pepperoni on our slice, a bit of Grace when we woke up before our alarm and it’s raining out and the forecast said it would be sunny. I took all of that and cranked it to 11, to the point where he’s basically saying “Let’s all indulge, let’s all get into a fun party!” And I have him get into a bit of a scary hissy fit where people just can’t drop what they’re doing and indulge. They can’t just say “Okay you know it’s time for a party I have work I have to deal with a sick relative.” It’s all of that where people have different motivations, different plans, different amounts of freedom in time, and he doesn’t see that, so he takes all the realistic feel of “Okay hey I want to have some fun,” “hey let’s all have a good time” and he turns that into just being angry, and just insulted. “Wait, you don’t have time to stop what you’re doing to have a good time with me?” And I crank it all the way up to a godly level so yeah I think it’s all about finding that little bit of an anchor.
In high school, my theater teacher–Mr Slate–talked about how the key to playing any type of character is finding some of those anchors so you know what drives all of us. So he would always mention, and it’s always stuck with me, you don’t have to be a murderer to be angry enough to murder somebody. If you’re playing a villain you don’t have to go out and do something horrible. You can just think of what made you that angry, and then add on layers and layers and then, you know, you’re cooking.
3. You voiced Heremon ir-Caldy in Woodsy Studio’s Echoes of the Fey series. Unlike most roles you’ve had in Woodsy Studios games Heremon becomes a romantic interest for the main character over the course of the series. Arken also became a romantic interest for Odell in Serafina’s Crown. Does this change your approach to voicing a character?
Oh yeah, *laugh*, a bit. I’m not used to romantic relationships in real life so I really focus a lot more and I really put a lot into wanting to get it right. I’m a lot more in my head when I’m prepping versus when I’m just playing like a salesman or something like that. I’m thinking a lot more of am I connecting well enough to the love interest? Am I being convincing? Is the audience buying what I’m putting out? Do they like what I’m going to be doing this performance? I’m having a lot more scrutiny on myself to make sure that yeah this is entertaining and this is authentic and this is doing justice to what the author, in this case Jenny (Gibbons), would be writing. It’s a different type of challenge but it’s a good challenge.
4. What are your favorite types of roles to play?
Villains are fun since I get to push the contrast between myself and–depending on the type of villain–I get to be hammy. It could be a lot of fun to just MWAH-HA-HA all throughout the production. I also really like playing mentor types and heroes. I really want to get a chance to play more idealistic heroes like a Superman type. I think those are incredibly fun, but challenging. You really have to sell the optimism and heroism without it feeling phony. We’ve all seen hero characters pop up in a cartoon show and not really like a superhero show but like something like a spoof, like a kind of like Angry Beavers or in Ren and Stimpy you had Powdered Toast Man. A lot of times you know it’s hokey, it’s fun, but it’s not sincere and I’ve got to go in a little bit of rant so you’ll have to excuse me.
I often times see people saying Superman is boring, but I don’t agree at all. I find the concept of one of the most powerful beings choosing not just to save the world, but taking a second to sit down next to you and ask if you’re okay and if you’ve had breakfast. I find that fascinating. The guy can lift mountains, but he stops to listen to people and he truly fully loves his neighbors. It’s not just PR. You know it’s all of that because his heart is just that big. Some of my favorite moments of Superman like in the media, and comics, animated movies… some of the most interesting moments are when he’s just not doing impossible odds but just sitting there and listening to somebody and like really really just caring about them and being like, “Okay I want to help, I want to make sure that you’re okay.”
I mean sometimes it’s like more emotional stuff and then sometimes it can even be lighter stuff. There’s times where he kind of gets into like a dad-like mode and he was just kind of floating there one time and a whole bunch of these guys were robbing a store and they just all just stood, looked at their guns, put them down, took off their masks and just turned themselves in.
On the more heartfelt but still just as impactful vein, there was an anniversary issue where all kinds of different people were saying how much they loved Superman. But the one that stuck out to me was there was a guy talking about how he was a career criminal in Metropolis and Gotham and other places, but he just kept running into Superman and Superman was like, “You can do better than this. I believe in you.” Eventually, it took him a while, but he got his life together, rehabilitated himself and just lived on the straight and narrow path, and I thought that’s a cool thing.
I mean you have all kinds of things like awesome super battles and superpowers but it’s something a bit special and different to see someone who’s like, “Yeah I get it, hey maybe you’re not in the best place there’s a reason why you did this, you signed up. Not everyone is as privileged as me. I’m a super-powered alien and I can do this but I believe you can be better and I want you to be better.” And that’s kind of the core of Superman for me, where he just absolutely loves everybody, he sees the best in everyone and he wants everyone to get that second chance.
Penciler Gary Frank
Inker Jon Sibal
To me that is an amazing character and I would absolutely love to get a chance to really juggle that where it’s like, okay the weight of the world’s on your shoulders but you’re still balancing being a guy who’s fighting for truth and justice: on the the lower levels as a journalist, on the higher levels as a guy who can move planets and mountains. All of those different things coming together to just make a really compelling narrative where it’s not about, okay can he punch this guy out? Can he stop this Armada of bad guys? It’s like yeah, okay, is he going to save the day on a personal level? Is he gonna be there, is he gonna help you through a terrible day? Is he gonna be a friend? I love that idea and yeah, more of that. I’d love to try more of that. It’s fun and compelling.
5. What aspects make a role extra challenging or difficult?
That depends. Sometimes it can be the subject matter. How dark is the villain going to get with their head space? What am I going to have to… What lines am I gonna have to cross? What is going to be informing my performance? What’s going to be driving the anger, the hate, the bitterness? Then there’s other things, where: is the performance itself gonna be challenging? Am I going to be slipping between English and a fictional language? Am I going to be doing a role where I’m playing dual roles?
There was a project where the game took place in the past and you saw me as a younger character, but there were chunks of the game that flashed decades forward and I was an old man. And so it was interesting to be balancing those two performances. But there are other times where some things can just be oh it’s kind of like it’s a marathon rather than just kind of like a jog. It’s like okay, there’s
gonna be a lot I’m having to do, or they’re just even things that are just surprisingly complex. Is this character going to sing? Is this character presented as upbeat and happy, but they’re hiding a secret, they’re hiding sorrow, they’re hiding guilt or shame, and you have to have the audience start to kind of clue in. So that could be another challenge where you’re having to let the audience know there’s something about this character, but you can’t make it too obvious or you can’t make it too subtle that no one picks it up.
So, yeah! *Laugh.* Every role is a challenge, even if it’s a something you consistently come back to like a series, you can have an episode of that just throws a curve ball. It’s a lot of fun. That’s one of the reasons I love acting. There’s just so many things you can get involved with from project to project, from episode to episode, from chapter to chapter.
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Continue reading/listening in Part 2!