Matthew Mercer Quotes

For film and games, there is now a fantastic method of actors portraying characters which don't necessarily look like themselves. And yet you've still got the heart and soul of the performance.

As the CG in motion capture made it look realistic, it put more of an onus on the game makers to make the dialogue they're saying more realistic. It doesn't matter what they say when they're 8-bits, but if they look almost photo-real, it matters. More and more, the games industry is realising that.

If an actor only comes alive when he has lines to say, it doesn't work, and the same goes for illustrated characters.

Voice acting is very interesting, I've done several animated projects, and you have to make the voice reflect the character and try and do as much with a word as you can with a look in a live-action film.

Games are another place to find work, not only the voice stuff but in the motion capture stuff. It's exciting work.

I grew up playing video games. And the cool thing about the EA Sports games is they took me through the whole motion-capture thing, where they put little sensors on my body so the video game really is me. It actually moves the way I move.

I don't know how video game narrative works.

I'm proud of the versatility I've had since I was in high school, getting in trouble for all these voices. What happened was that there were so many of these big heroes I played - in 'Dark Void,' 'Assassin's Creed,' 'Shadow Complex,' 'Uncharted,' and 'Prince of Persia' - and they all showed up at about the same time. It got a little ridiculous.

You have to always physicalize, when you do animation recording. Otherwise, you won't get the performance right.

And because performing for a game involves real acting. The way they create a game is very similar now to how they create a film. I've always wanted to stretch my acting skills, and the timing being what it is, I couldn't say no.

It's a treat to portray a complex character. Besides... where else could I find a job where emotional outbursts and odd exclamations like 'Egad!', 'Narf!', 'Poit!', 'Splonk!' and 'Zort!' are allowed?

Originally when I went off to work on 'The Lord of The Rings' I got a call from my agent saying that I was just going to do a voice. But I couldn't really approach it like that. To get Gollum's voice I had to play the character.

You can write and write, but if you don't have someone who can nail that character, it's never going to live.

Acting is a plum gig, and then animation is an even more plum gig.

My respect for animation has gone way up. It's a truckload of work. I have to sit with my animators the same way I'd sit with my actors and cast them.

When Tim and I first discussed the part in 2003, he told me, 'I'd love for you to play five Oompas.' But five Oompas quickly turned into 165 - and they're not computerized; I did each one individually myself.

One day, I was taken into a room with 25 animators, all working on Sadness. They asked me a lot of questions, and they got something of the way I move into the character.

The way a character sounds is so important to how you're going to play him.

The nice thing about animation, you don't even really have to account for yourself. All of the physical stuff that you work on as an actor, you just throw away.

I had a role in 'DodgeBall,' where I played a pirate who played dodge ball. I'd say 80 to 90 percent of my lines were 'Garrr' or 'Arghh.' And it was all about what the quality of your 'Grr-arr' was.

There are very few VR games with really strong characters and voice acting.

I had no idea what 'Life is Strange' was going to be when I auditioned. I had no idea what 'Horizon' was going to be when I auditioned.

What you do in film and television is really different than what you do in video games.

I really enjoy watching animation films and I have always been curious about how such well-established actors in Hollywood lend their voices to animation films.

Designing characters for 'Dragon Quest' is fun but difficult work.