i'm ready i'm ready i'm ready i'm ready
i'm ready to look at impressions
come quick i'm ready gunter hey rocco
hey everybody i'm tom kenney animation
voice actor known as spongebob
squarepants the ice king from adventure
time the maya from the powerpuff girls
and heifer from rocco's modern life
people seem to love to do impressions of
animated characters online so we're
gonna rate a couple of them and check
them out i'm
ready hey
i'm ready hi i'm spongebob sorry
you are gonna finish your dessert and
you are gonna lie again
oh man
[Laughter]
see it's not easy it's not as easy as it
looks uh man that guy was great he
brought the intensity he had the
technique the hand technique
can you see the big scar that i have
there after 20 years of doing that uh no
that's actually not from doing spongebob
that guy's bringing it he's awesome a
character like spongebob is really
hyperactive but he also has really quiet
moments where he doubts himself i feel
like a failure gary and you also have
those moments like like this person was
doing where he's where he's really
yelling his head off and you got to get
all that and it all has to sound like
spongebob spongebob has really high
highs and really low lows emotionally
when he's happy he's really happy
yeah
jumping up in the air freaking out and
when he's sad he's so despairing that
you've seen it on the show where he
actually cries like a lawn sprinkler
where his eye starts to go
[Applause]
i don't need a therapist because i've
got spongebob good morning
gary hooray
good morning gary
guess what today is wow
that's right
a day for
jelly fishing i'm ready i'm ready i'm
ready i'm ready first of all i would
like to say to his parents don't worry
too much it's probably just a phase
that's what my parents thought so maybe
it's not i like that he brings the color
he wears the yellow he seems to really
be intimate with the ins and outs of
spongebob although if he was a real
spongebob fan he would have spongebob on
his guns and not deadpool i do gary the
snail too who is basically a cat in
snail form
gary's a snail of
few words he's a snail of one word meow
but gary
there's weird gradations to him too like
sometimes he freaks out
when he's when he's flipping out
sometimes he's bored
[Music]
this guy nails uh nails gary too when
you're doing voice over for tv the union
contract is that they get you for three
voices once you go to a fourth voice
they gotta give you a little bump in pay
so they have you for one to three voices
so it pays to be versatile because they
would rather pay one guy to do three
voices than three guys separately to do
three voices so a lot of times you wind
up talking to yourself and having
conversations uh with yourself brian
wilson once said to me wait a minute so
basically you're a paid schizophrenic
and i said
yeah
yeah that's right so yeah this guy
manages to get the timing he goes back
and forth between spongebob and gary
without a hitch and manages to firmly
grasp his jelly fishing net at the same
time good object work hey patrick what
am i now
i understand everything now i must be
the opposite of spongebob by being
squad word boy oh boy do i like playing
the clarinet i practice and practice all
day long but i never get any better this
young man has taken it to a whole nother
level he's kicking it up a notch where
something that happens on spongebob a
lot is that the characters do
impressions of the other characters on
the show so he's doing spongebob doing
an impression of squidward which uh you
know is very meta it comes a little
easier to us because we've been standing
next to each other in the recording
booth for 20 years now he really nailed
that that's great because a lot of times
you got to do the math because you're
going spongebob is starting out here and
squidward is starting here
oh please but i'm gonna sound like
spongebob doing squidward so you still
have to put some spongebob in there
because he's not that great of an
impressionist spongebob isn't that's why
the rubik's cube uh aspect of this comes
in where
you go
wow i'm thinking about this stuff way
too much you're looking kind of fat
gunter
gunter you're getting fat gunter
okay watch this oh yeah
yeah
feel the butter
wow this guy is obviously a cartoon
network guy he invested in the beard
probably a repurposed santa claus beard
so that tells me he's resourceful which
you have to be to be a voice actor one
thing that he gets at there is that the
ice king
lives alone in this ice palace the ice
king is about loneliness he's a really
lonely person it's just him and his
penguins who kind of only live with him
because he feeds them again much like
cats or snails this guy gets that back
and forth that that uh
mental uh ping-ponging that tends to
happen when guys are in solitary
confinement for a really long time so
that was either an awesome ice king
impression or a cry for help you be the
judge they call me the ice king
what
who dares into the ice kingdom do you
know why i'm here
do you know what ice king means oh
you're trying to hit me
he went the interesting route of doing a
catherine hepburn ice king fusion so uh
his voice is a little more high in
keening than the actual ice king but
it's a valid choice i would say maybe
that's what the ice king sounded like in
his 20s
before he got so bitter but uh still a
valid uh take on the character hey
how about the personals
hey rocco
i love chicken man you really caved on
that pogo stick i definitely thought you
were gonna keep it wow rocco's modern
life and heifer was the first
regular animated series i was ever on so
that's a really important one for me
it's where i first met stephen
hillenburg who would go on to create
spongebob steve was a creative director
on rocco's modern life when i went in to
audition for heifer i did my
uh basically an impression of my nephew
who at the time was like 13 14 years old
but he always acted like he was on the
verge of laughing
like he was always holding in a laugh
what this guy nails is that that kind of
going up at the end of the sentences hey
rocco it's always kind of going up at
the end he never goes down at the end he
always goes up at the end it's a little
bit of like valley speak valley girl
where everything ends on and up come on
give it a shot
hi i'm heifer
[Music]
that was a hoot i dreamt that eels were
biting my butt i'm realizing heifer is a
harder impression to do for people than
spongebob i tend to play a lot of
characters without any filter and
they're often yellow i'm realizing dog
from cat dog was one of them spongebob
is definitely one of them and heifer is
is for sure one of them the thing about
heifer that this guy taps into is that
there's no filter and there's always a
lot of joy in him like everything's
wonderful i dreamt that heels were
biting my butt
everything's awesome and
there's never any uh negatives with with
heifer and spongebob's kind of like that
too that's kind of impacted me
as
a person
like playing characters that are kind of
unrelentingly positive can't help but
give you a more positive outlook on life
which is kind of interesting so uh
thanks imaginary drawing characters
hi everyone remember me
you could take over my town oh my city
but nobody and i mean nobody touches my
marion hat now give it back
he's got the heifer nervousness in
between i love it first of all i felt
like this guy's t-shirt was trying to
hypnotize me and it was actually working
it's like really really big man from
rocco's modern life stare into my
nipples of the future
and uh and i actually was i'm i'm not
ashamed to say it the mayor sort of has
that mushed mouth thing happening where
there's there's sort of like there's
stuff in his cheeks so there's things on
his lips and he's always all over
here interestingly
this guy is doing the maya from the
powerpuff girls but his kind of nervous
laughter in between his lines is 100
heifer he probably doesn't even realize
that he's channeling those two things at
once i felt like what this guy captured
with the mayor was sort of that
you you don't quite
know what the next thing you're going to
say is it's sort of like coming to you
mojo jojo is destroying townsville yeah
you know you can always tag the live a
little bit yeah yeah that's that always
works
a lot of times voices are amalgams of
half-baked impressions that aren't
really that successful so the mayor on
powerpuff girls started out as a mashup
of you know the wizard from the 1939
judy garland movie wizard of oz back
where i come from we have people called
good d-doers uh sort of like that but
also a little mix of the old lady in
every which way but loose which was a
clint eastwood movie involving an
orangutan and uh ruth gordon uh was an
actress that was in that movie and i
remember she said give me back those zd
oreos
and uh i just remember that line from
when i was a kid give me back those gd
oreos yelled by this old lady and
mashing them up kind of turned into the
mayor from the powerpuff girls mojo may
be a super villain
[Music]
powerpuff girls come quick mojo jojo has
written miss bellum out of the show
this young actor is very enthusiastic
what he gets is you'll see that his
mouth is going all over the place when
he's doing the mayor it's that again
that that much mouthful of marbles thing
yeah the mayor's often in a high state
of distress
a lot of animation voiceover is really
extreme
so anything that it takes to get that
sound anything anything that your mouth
will do or your face can do or your eyes
can do or your arms can do anything to
get you to that place is all grist for
the mill and this guy's got a lot of
grist
it's so mind-blowing and flattering to
see people doing impressions of these
characters and that they're still part
of people's consciousness and their
lives but there's something about
animated characters the stuff that hits
you when you're in your formative stages
that's the stuff that stays with you for
the rest of your life and uh man
i've got a great gig