Say, I do, as part of my act, killer impressions of the Looney Toons characters. (Bugs, daffy, Sylvester, Porky etc.) I grew up as Mel Blanc as one of my fondest idols, and I try to do him honor when I do my act by coming as close as humanly possible to his voice...er, VOICES.

I was wondering if there are any other serious impersonators out there, (not just cartoon voices but ANY voices counts) and what voices you do, and if you do them GOOD? Translation: You do them good = people say they can't tell the difference between you and the original and or you really get people laughing and enjoying themselves when you do your impersonations.

I started with ventriloquism, so impressions were a sideline:

I do a good:

Peter Lorre
Bela Lugosi
Groucho Marx
Chico Marx
W.C. Fields
Popeye (low, musing voice)
Goofy
Beaky Buzzard/Mortimer Snerd

A passable:

Boris Karloff
Humphrey Bogart
Basil Rathbone
Nigel Bruce
Spongebob Squarepants
Beavis & Butthead
Chas. Nelson Reilly
George W. Bush
Bill Clinton
Richard Nixon
Jerry Lewis

Cannot manage to save my life:

Orson Welles
Vincent Price
Donald Duck
Popeye (out-loud speaking voice)
PeeWee Herman

I just read an article that said proffssional voice impersonators will soon be pounding the streets, out of business. Seems they are perfecting electronic "voice cloning". they take a sample of a persons voice, and cull characteristics of it, and put it together into a perfect electronic "clone" of that person's voice.

The article was from the year 2001, so I imagine it is pretty close to perfection now.

We are already 'pounding the streets'...most of the big names themselves are doing the voice overs 'cause they can't get film or tv work as face actors anymore.

I have done over 100 different voices professionally. (mostly on commercials...some Toon Character shows)

Doug

I can impersonate a bad magician.

I'm still working on my own voice. I am a difficult person to impersonate .
Iven

I used to do a good Margaret Tatcher, but I´ve gotten a bit rusty. I often "imitate" Patsy Stone from "Absolutely Fabulous". Imitate is in quotes because I do this drag character and the speech and all is patterned directly from Patsy, though I´m not supposed to be her. It all begun when I did imitate Patsy, and a fellow comedy troupe member said it would make a great character.

Xmosis, what Toons have you made? In my extensive, brilliant career as a voice-over artist I´ve done a frog once, an owl and once a squirrel that just laughs and laughs and laughs. None of them had any dialogue... I guess the Academy Award is yet to come my way...

Say,

What are some of the characters you have done? Did the work pay well?

Doesn't pay all that well unless you can score a continuing series or set of commercials.

In my case I never did the actual toons on TV but wound up doing many voices in commercials (radio), most of Mel Blanc and Daws Butler types. And for Live Character (performed by rubber heads) shows for amusement parks etc. I did the tracks for Bullwinkle, Underdog, Snidely and others.
Lots of fun...not lots of money.

Currently the industry is WAY over saturated...and the polically correct nonsense has led to toon characters that are realistic and not exhibiting speech impediments such as the Blanc classic voices.

Pretty grim scene.

You can hear some of my original character snippets on the demos at my voice site http://lionpoint.com
Bothe the commercial and the Haunted Voice Trax demos have character stuff.

Doug

Whoa man! You were tough! I listened to it and was extremely impressed! One should be able to make a living when they can do them as good as you can. You were really good.