INTERVIEW WITH SHOGO MIYAKITA — One blade, many Brawlers
Voice actor for Kenji
◆◆ EPISODE CONTRIBUTORS ◆◆
Gamerland — Interviewer
Want Some — Design
Shogo Miyakita — Special Guest
✵✵ ABOUT SPECIAL GUEST ✵✵
Shogo Miyakita is a British-born voice actor with a home studio in North London. His natural accent is RP, but is known for his assured and versatile dialect work.
Shogo has a number of videogame projects in the pipeline, including work with Sound Cuts, FirePoets, PitStop Productions and Molinare. This is alongside some recent announcements…
In March 2024, Rise of the Rōnin was released on PS5 in which Shogo plays Toshizō Hijikata. He can also now be heard as Straban in Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine II. Shogo is also the voice of Heimdall in last year’s Marvel Move: Thor & Loki series.
In 2024 Shogo has recorded a number of upcoming audio dramas for Big Finish, including The Death and Life of River Song which has now now been released. He has also recorded an upcoming audio drama for Audible and several audiobook titles for The Games Workshop, most recently Red Tithe.
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Since 2019, Shogo has worked on a wide variety of projects including commercials, corporate narration, ADR, audio drama, eLearning, explainers, ad campaigns and video games.
❖❖❖ ABOUT INTERVIEW ❖❖❖
In today’s episode we invited voice actor for Kenji — Shogo Miyakita for an interview. The episode was very cool, with a lot of interesting facts about his career. We hope you enjoy reading it as much as we enjoyed conducting it!
You’ll find all the essential links and sources at the end of this article. Don’t forget to follow our and Shogo’s social media channels and visit our websites for the latest updates.
Please share your comments and thoughts about the interview below. Your feedback is important to us, and we look forward to bringing you more captivating interviews in the future.
▬▬▬ INTERVIEW ▬▬▬
1. What inspired you to become a voice actor, and how did your journey begin?
Gaming! Specifically Lylat Wars on the Nintendo 64. Or Star Fox 64 as it was known outside of Europe. I got pretty obsessed by it. Because you could finish it in about an hour, you got the full narrative experience in one sitting, and along with the glorious 90s MIDI soundtrack, the voice acting absolutely carried the narrative. I remember 8-year-old me feeling sincerely moved when I finally got the ‘good’ ending!
A few years later I started getting into point-and-click adventure games and I think that’s when I began to understand the impact good sound can have when the visuals are limited. The Longest Journey was a stand-out for me. One which I played far too many times!
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2. What were your first steps in the voice acting industry, and what were the most challenging aspects at the beginning?
I went and got some coaching. I researched a few workshops, found one that seemed like a good fit and went from there. In hindsight, I probably did what most people do, which is run before you can walk, so I really hit a brick wall early on when I realised that getting started wasn’t going to be easy. I’ve never been much of an entrepreneur, so getting my head around the business of voice over has been a tough, ongoing process. Especially since all I wanna do is play pretend in my booth!
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3. Do you have any idols, who might you be inspired by? Who are they?
Too many to name! If I had to pick some, it’d probably be Mike West (Fox McCloud in Lylat Wars) and Sarah Hamilton (April Ryan from The Longest Journey) for what are probably, by now, fairly obvious reasons! More currently, but only slightly, Nolan North’s performance as David in The Last of Us just blows me away every time I remember that Nathan Drake is playing such a despicable creep.
To be honest, though, I end up becoming a little obsessed with the people I get to work with. As a voice over artist, you don’t always get to work directly with other actors, so when it does happen, it’s always a lot of fun. It’s great to be able to make a connection that goes beyond just being in the same industry together, so when they celebrate their wins it feels personal and you get to cheer them on!
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4. You voiced Kenji in Brawl Stars. What was it like to work on a project and be part of something with a large fan base like “Brawl Stars” and voice one of the most popular brawlers in the game?
It took me by surprise. I’d heard of Brawl Stars, of course, but I’m so out of the loop with mobile gaming that I had no idea that the fan response was going to be as big as it was. The session was recorded in a nice air-conditioned studio in central London, but in spite of that I was dripping with sweat by the end. I’m so glad that the effort I put in has met with the response that it has. It would’ve broken my heart a little if people were just kind of ‘meh’ about it!
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5. How do you prepare to voice a character with a strong or distinct personality like Kenji in Brawl Stars?
It’s easy to think of characters with big personalities as being separate from the gritty realism we’re used to seeing in a lot of AAA games, but I don’t think they are. They’re just ‘more’. So the prep work is all pretty much the same, it’s just that you take all that then dial it up to 11. The more ridiculous and melodramatic you feel, the better. You can always dial it back down later.
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6. Is Brawl Stars the biggest project you have participated in? Or were there other bigger games?
It’s definitely one of the bigger ones. I had a small role in Rise of the Ronin, a slightly bigger one in Space Marine 2, and I’m working on a few other major roles at the moment, but Brawl Stars is definitely the one with the biggest audience built in. Like I said: the response was pretty intimidating!
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7. Can you share a moment from your career where improvisation played a key role in bringing a character to life?
Working on Brawl Stars! I was asked to come up with a couple of lines that might suit Kenji’s overall vibe, so I brought some with me and we workshopped a few on the day.
Improv is a skill that a lot of directors appreciate in an actor, in general, though. Even if it’s minor things like adding a contraction, or a bit of ‘pre-life’ to a take, they can take a line from feeling ‘read’ to feeling ‘said’. That authenticity is what audiences respond to, even if they don’t always realise it.
When the demand for improv is bigger, though, that’s where it falls apart for me. I’m terrible at real improv! I was filling in some background walla on another project and was told to avoid, among other things, brand names. So with that rattling around in my head, I of course immediately listed off four or five beverage companies rendering the take useless! It’s definitely an area I need to work on.
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8. What role has technology played in shaping your career as a voice actor?
I’ve not been around that long, so things haven’t changed too much for me personally, but I know that remote recording has been a game changer for actors and production houses around the world. Of course, COVID had a hand in highlighting what we were capable of doing from home on relatively small budgets, and in the short term at least it did a lot to disperse the work away from those key hub cities. Since then, there’s been a bit of a return to the old ways, but there are a lot of places that are still happy to record remotely, and are clearly getting great results. I really hope that continues because it really opens the industry up to newcomers, or just talent that wouldn’t otherwise have the opportunity due to geography.
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9. How do you stay creatively inspired, especially when working on projects with tight deadlines?
It’s a bit corny, but characters live all around us. Even the wackiest cartoon or game characters have to be rooted in something real. So if you can take those kernels of truth that we see in the people around us, and develop them into character traits, or even fully fledged individuals then that’s just one more source to draw on. Of course, it also helps that I work in an industry where playing video games and watching movies can be considered research!
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10. What is your approach to voicing characters who are very different from yourself, either in personality or physicality?
I don’t think I have a set approach, but in those situations, I just like to play as much as I can. It’s liberating. You really have the opportunity to let loose, explore and create because everything is equally different from your default. Those are the times when you can’t remain passive or purely reactive, and you have to start creating moments of drama and tension, and making interesting character decisions. Even if the director disagrees, it can at least open the way to other possibilities that neither of you had considered. It’s all part of the collaborative process.
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11. Can you talk about a time when you had to voice a character with minimal direction? How did you create the voice?
A lot of my early work was done asynchronously, with little to no direction. Sometimes it’s frustrating having to record something, send it back, wait for feedback then do it again. It’s generally not my favourite way to work. Sometimes, though, you’ll have an opportunity where the client is happy to give you a lot of freedom and just wants to see what you create. I can be quite freeing, but you always have to remain mindful of the brief and stay within certain margins. You end up second-guessing yourself a lot, and as such it’s never been what I think of as my best work.
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12. Can you tell us about any funny or interesting moments during voice acting?
I think I need to start being more careful about what I wear when I’m working from home! On more than one occasion I’ve found myself getting a bit warm in the booth, go to take off my jumper then realise that a) I’m on camera and b) the t-shirt I’m wearing underneath is *very* embarrassing. At times like that, it’s often better to just sweat through it. Especially if the video’s being recorded for promo or BTS materials… :|
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13. Have there been instances where you needed to make changes to the script or the character’s personality? How did that process unfold?
Sometimes it happens organically: you’ll be doing a take and you just misread something without realising. If it’s important someone will pick you up on it, but a lot of the time people are happy to stick with the ‘error’ because it reads more naturally, or feels more consistent with the character that’s forming.
There’s also definitely been times where I’ve been playing a character from the UK, but the writer was clearly from the US and certain turns of phrase don’t quite work with my natural accent. In those instances, it’s nice to be able to spend some time workshopping an alternate so they at least have options when it comes to the edit.
More specifically, I hate having to say, “Great.” It’s basically impossible to say that word with a British accent and NOT sound horribly sarcastic.
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14. How do you approach creating the personality and backstory for a character you are voicing?
With video games, you do what you can with what you have available, which isn’t always all that much; and if you’re playing a historical character then all that extra research and prep work can actually get in the way of the vision the client has for that character. So I read through the script — if I’ve been given it, listen back over any audition files I might have sent in, re-read the character brief for the millionth time and reflect on any reference material they may have sent and try my best to distil all that into the essence of a person. Those are the margins we have to stay inside, but within that we get to play and explore and develop. Ultimately, we have to stay flexible and adaptable, though. We’re almost always working with people who know more about the character, plot and the world of the game than we ever will, so you have to trust their input and put your faith in the collaborative process between you all.
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15. How has your approach to voicing characters changed over the years of your career?
I’m trying to learn to be less self conscious. In real life it’s good to have a bit of self-awareness, but in acting it can be a limitation. I don’t know if it’s down to embarrassment or lack of confidence, but I can get in my own way sometimes, so I’m making an effort to be more creatively free. To be an honest, sincere and authentic vessel for someone else’s vision is the goal. Or it’s my goal, at least.
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16. Some voice actors say that AI will replace them in the future, others say no. How do you see the future of the voice acting industry?
I have mixed feelings about AI voice. On the one hand, AI-generated content always feels pretty mediocre to me. The images feel uncanny, the writing feels awkward, and the voices feel insincere and calculated.
So with the current state of the technology, I’m not too worried. I can see it continuing to eat into the entry-level end of the industry: list videos on small YouTube channels, social media ads for cheap gadgets no one really needs, and so on. This isn’t ideal for VOs trying to get started, but the budgets on this kind of work tend to be closer to beer money than rent money.
That said, and while I’ve yet to hear an AI voice that was convincing for longer than a few seconds, sometimes that’s enough. There are so many cases of actors’ voices being cloned wholesale without their consent, and to rub salt in the wound, without appropriate compensation. People are falling prey to scams that employ voice clones of celebrities, or even loved ones, which is incredibly violating. Worse yet, if your specific voiceprint is used as a security measure for your bank, and your voice gets cloned, that’s just another layer of security out the window.
Of course, the people working on this stuff are motivated to make generative AI the best tool it can be, so it’s up to us as artists and performers to take steps to protect ourselves against exploitation and fraud. There are some great organisations already shouldering that burden and trying to get these protections codified into law. NAVA, is the main one that springs to mind, and of course the unions are hard at work, too.
To be honest, whenever I encounter obvious AI content, my knee-jerk reaction is that I’m looking at something low-quality, so it’s always surprising when it’s supposed to be supporting a news story or promoting a product. It’s clearly not just me, either: I feel like I’m increasingly hearing about companies returning to human voices after their AI-voiced campaigns perform poorly.
Only time will tell, I guess, but I plan to be working in this industry for a very long time.
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17. In your opinion, what impact does voice acting have on players’ perception of a game?
It’s huge! It massively elevates the medium. Whether it’s purely functional to gameplay like telling you where the enemies, or pickups are; or if it’s about delivering the narrative — along with scoring and soundscaping — it’s such a huge part of the experience for most people. And while visuals can do a lot to deliver emotional weight, it can feel very in-your-face. Sound is subtle. It can sneak up on you and make you feel things you weren’t expecting, and that’s such a powerful tool from a narrative point of view.
Hearing that Amazon CEO talk about how “for games, we don’t really have acting…” was such a galling thing to read and goes to show how the acting side of games can still be overlooked and underestimated by some key decision-makers in the industry. Thankfully, most people don’t think like that and treat acting with the value it deserves and continue to appreciate the value it adds to the player experience.
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18. How do you balance the technical aspects of voice acting with the emotional depth required for certain roles?
The experience of remote working can vary a lot. If you’re working with an experienced production house using something like Source-Connect, it’s a breeze. The same with working in-studio because all of those technical demands are the engineer’s responsibility, so it completely frees you up.
If you’re playing the engineer’s role as well, though, that can get pretty distracting. Having to keep one eye on your levels, keeping an ear out for your noisy neighbours, and making sure everything is being backed up, does a lot to pull you out of the moment. Heaven forbid your Internet cuts out! It’s all part of the job, though. If I didn’t maintain a respectable home studio setup, so many doors would be closed to me. And of course it just makes me appreciate all the fantastic engineers I’ve worked with over the years! They don’t always get the credit they deserve.
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19. What advice would you give to aspiring actors who want to try their hand at voice acting?
There’s a wealth of information out there on how to get started and what to expect. Best of all: a lot of it is free! I’d say to read and watch and listen as much as you can to as many different people as you can. There’s going to be things that take you by surprise, and some things that flat out contradict each other. There’s no one way to be a voice actor, but there are definitely some ‘best practices’, so get out there and give yourself a (free) education.
There’s only so much you can learn before you just need to get out there and do it, of course. So get involved in a drama club, collaborate on student or indie projects and just generally put yourself out there, and exercise those muscles. Eventually you’ll want to up your game and start taking on bigger, higher profile jobs, so that’s probably the time to look into professional coaching. The right coach can be a gamechanger, so take your time in finding the right one for you. A good coach will help you round out your abilities, highlight areas for improvement and advise as to next steps; both career-wise and in terms of training.
One word of warning: be careful of how you spend your money. Sadly, there’s a lot of money to be made in selling the dream, so there’s always going to be people willing to take your money. Voice over is no different, so if someone’s selling you a bit too hard on their coaching course, or their agency, or whatever; making guarantees that sound a little too good to be true, don’t let your excitement or your ego cloud your judgement. Slow and steady. Do your research and try to make sensible decisions. The interesting, silly and ridiculous decisions are for when you get *in* the booth!
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20. By the end of the interview, can you share with your future plans in voice acting? What are you planning to do?
Keep working! I’m pretty private about my behind the scenes stuff, but there’s definitely a bunch of areas I need to refine and develop. I did some face capture work on Rise of the Ronin and I’d love to do more of that kind of thing: full-body performance capture and so on. And like I said before, my improv skills suck! Definitely an area for improvement. A bunch of projects I’ve been working on are due out in the next few months too, so I’m sure I’ll be making plenty of noise about those when the time comes.
══ SOCIAL NETWORKS ══
Shogo’s social networks and links
X (Twitter) — (x.com/shogomiyakita)
Instagram — (www.instagram.com/shogomiyakita/)
IMDb — (https://www.imdb.com/name/nm12211411/?ref_=tt_cl_t_4)
All other information was taken from the official Shogo’s site — https://shogomiyakita.com/
Interviewer’s social networks
X (Twitter) — (x.com/Gamerland469485)
Telegram (RU only): (t.me/Gamerlandbs)
