An Actor’s Perspective: You’ve seen him on TV shows and commercials for major brands. Nigel Downer speaks about voicing the role of “Kay” in Ryley Learning’s “Anti-Racism for Workplaces” eLearning course For Kay, the “daily grind” at work has meant dealing with racial aggressions that many of his colleagues do not experience.
Why Do We Use Animation ?
Animation brings our content to life. Animation is visually engaging, and is fosters learning retention.
Did you know that animation is a powerful educational tool that promotes empathy? This happens when a character’s story resonates with the audience. This “emotional” connection can happen more readily with animated characters than live human actors.
We tend to dismiss eLearning with live actors when the person doesn’t look like us or the office setting isn’t just like ours. (Not hard to do with the typical outdated 1990s-style eLearning that’s still on the market!)
Why Do We Use Professional Voice Actors?
Digital voices and “lay peoples'” voiceovers on PowerPoints don’t cut it. We knew we had to match our top-notch video animation with quality voicing by professionals.
We went with an All-star cast. All the actors are members of the ACTRA union. We see and hear them in plays, movies, commercials, radio programs, and in live stand-up comedy.
During production, our actors knew when to make changes to ensure the script was more realistic for the character, or authentic to them as a person in the world.
Then we took multiple takes with a director to make sure the actor’s tone matched the message we wanted conveyed.
We Won an Award! (Pretty Much an eLearning Oscar!)
Ryley Learning is recognized for quality and credibility. We have some hardware to prove it:
Silver Medal, Brandon Hall Group 2022 Excellence Awards, Best Learning Program for Unconscious Bias Awareness! Our customer LCBO put us forward as a partnership. Very stiff competition across North America so we are very pleased and proud.
More About Nigel Downer
Nigel is an actor, writer and comedian based in Toronto. An alumnus of The Second City Toronto, Nigel co-wrote and co-starred in the CBC Gem/Prime Video comedy web-series BIT PLAYAS, winner of two Canadian Screen Awards (Best Writing and Best Web Series). Film & TV credits include TITANS (Netflix), BARONESS VON SKETCH SHOW (CBC), ODD SQUAD (PBS), TWO FOR THE WIN (Hallmark Channel). We’re seeing him on TV all the time!
