During an appearance at Anime Riverside early this year, long time Dragon Ball voice actors Sean Schemmel and Christopher Sabat offered a few interesting thoughts on the process of recording for animes such as Dragon Ball Daima and video games like Dragon Ball: Sparking Zero.
Schemmel, who offers the English voice for Goku, and Sabat, who voices Vegeta along with a number of other prominent characters, both had a few things to say when it comes to the two mediums. The consensus? Anime wins just about every time. Thanks to It’s Recording Time Media, we can hear their thoughts in the full video below.
Though there’s clearly a good amount of overlap in both processes, especially because games tend to allow players to replay through familiar scenes and scenarios, but there isn’t as much context when you’re working on video games.
“I can see a lot more context with animation,” begins Schemmel, “and so I can see exactly what kind of scream I need to do. I can see the emotion on the characters.”
He goes on to explain that, by contrast, video game involve a very different process wherein the visual assets are not available for reference when the vocal assets are being recorded. In other words, the voice actors widely lose an important resource when they’re working on games.
That’s not the only aspect that makes animation preferential to games for these actors, though, as Chris Sabat weighs in on just how meticulous and repetitive the process can be given how many extra grunts, yells, and general noises need to be captured.
“It becomes a bit of a grind,” says Sabat, “people have come [and said] ‘hey can I watch a recording session?’ and I’m like ‘okay,’ and then after about an hour they’re like ‘can I go, because this is boring,'” he explains.
There’s more detail in both answers that you can hear all of in the full video below.
Want more from Sean Schemmel when it comes to voicing Goku in Dragon Ball: Sparking Zero? Be sure to hear what he had to say about geeking out after finishing recording in our recent article.