Anybody with aspirations as a voice actor pays attention to other voices. One of my favorite voice actors died recently – Tony Jay, whose generic name probably doesn’t ring any bells with most people. Kids know him as Frollo from Disney’s The Hunchback of Notre Dame and the modern voice of Shere Khan in a bunch of TV cartoons; gamers know him as the Elder God from the Soul Reaver series, not to mention the narrator from World of Warcraft; geeks know him as Megabyte from ReBoot. He had one of those majestic baritones and a slight British accent that defined narration, if not villain. So many times I’d be in a game demo and go “Hey, Tony Jay!” and see a producer do a double-take that someone recognized the voice talent. So I’m really quite saddened. I really did enjoy his voice and his work.
Someone once theorized that at any given time there are only about a dozen people getting 80% of the voice work out there, so with Tony’s passing, everybody probably moves up one slot. In that case, congratulations to Patrick Warburton, who is ten times better as Brock Sampson and Mr. Barkin than he ever was on Seinfeld…