The Energon Pub

This is not in the sence that Tom will ever voice Megatron nor does it have anything to do with both of them voiceing Wheelie.

This is from a talent perspective as both actors take up a majority of the Transformers cast. Frank Welker was the majority of the G1 voices and Tom Kenny was the majority of Animated voices. (even counting all the Starscream clones as 1 voice Tom still provides most of the cast.)

In ROTF Both Frank and Tom allso provided multiple voices while other members of the cast were restrained to a single character. Allthough with that in mind Frank is still the supirior as he should be. However what the question is asking is weather or not you think Tom Kenny could be considered the Frank Welker of his generation. Meaning could he some day be as good as Frank Welker was for his generation.

We grew up with Frank Welker not just in Transformers but in many cartoons. Well do you think the kids who are growing up with Tom Kenny are going to have as much respect for him as we do for Frank?

Personally I think Tom Kenny is a long way off right now but he sertainly has the potential to do better. It's because of that potential that I think he could become the new Frank Welker for his generation.

Quantity does not equal quality.

Welker has done like 99% of my favorite cartoon voices, but kenny is good. He's voiced quite a few of people favorites in various shows,I think Scott McNeilis more of the next welker.

Until I hear Tom Kenny voicing a perfect monkey as Curious George or Scooby....i'm going to say no.

Name_Violation wrote:Welker has done like 99% of my favorite cartoon voices, but kenny is good. He's voiced quite a few of people favorites in various shows,I think Scott McNeilis more of the next welker.

Scott McNeil allready has a fairly large and dedicated fan base. I myself am more of a Scott McNeil fan because of Beast Wars/Machines.

However the question was about POTENTIAL. The replys here seem to be judgeing Tom as he is now and not as he could be.

Frank Welker and Scott McNeil bot have verry different voices for all the characters they play non of which really sound alike. You can't really tell just listening to them that Megatron and Wheelie are the same actor or that Dinobot and Waspinator are the same actor.

Tom Kenny while he does many voices which do sound different from a sertain perspective. If you listen more closely though there's a sertain scratchyness that all his characters possess. Sponge Bob, Starscream, Wheelie and many others all have it. Straingly enough though Tom Kenny does not have this sound in his normal speaking voice. If he could just learn how to remove that sound from his voice when he isn't talking normally he could be just as good as Frank and Scott.

None of them will ever hold a candle to the great Mel Blanc.

As good as Welker is, and as good as Kenny may be, they'll never do anything ground breaking like Blanc did.

Burn wrote:None of them will ever hold a candle to the great Mel Blanc.

As good as Welker is, and as good as Kenny may be, they'll never do anything ground breaking like Blanc did.

QFT.

Burn wrote:None of them will ever hold a candle to the great Mel Blanc.

As good as Welker is, and as good as Kenny may be, they'll never do anything ground breaking like Blanc did.

Quoted for truth.

Full agreement on the great Mel Blanc.

Without a doubt Tom Kenny is one of the hardest working guys currently out there and his involvement in Transfandom is well set, he is no where near the level Welker has attained, and still building on.

As for Scott.... well Scott is Scott. He's a great guy, not a bad team-mate in an impromptu Frisbee game, and truly cares about his fans. So yhea, I'm a bit biased as to his abilities, so I won't judge him with the others. That said, I could totally see him just snap one day as all the voices he's done start battling for control of his brain.

haha, tom kenny is amazing, voice spongebob..

wonder how he do those voices

Not going to lie, I actully had to look up Mel Blanc to find out who that was. Thing is though that as impressive as his 70 years of exsperiance and long list of voice credits is, he has never been a Transformer. Most of his work seems to be with Looney Toons and because of that you can't even limit him to a single generation like you can with Transformers.

G1 was around in the 80's and that's it. It doesn't air on TV anymore. There are other ways to find it now days but mostly it's attached to 80's kids.

Looney Toons has been around sence my parrents who are in their 50's now were kids and probably longer. My parrents grew up with Looney Toons, I grew up with Looney Toons, my nephews will grow up with Looney Toons. It's a cartoon that has no single generation of followers. They still air the same old cartoons from way back when.

Transformers gets reimagined constantly for new generations of fans.

Looney Toons is timeless.

This is basically a long drawn out way of saying I agree with you but it's a little off topic.

Having to look up who Mel Blanc was? FOR SHAME!

To me Mel Blanc will always be the best, he was a pioneer, he lead the way, and no insult to Welker or Kenney, he'll be remembered by many more people, yeah, his work was limited some what, but his work is classic.

Welker, to me, is Blanc's second. He's had a LOT more in the way of opportunity to work on various projects than Blanc ever did and I would imagine he'll be doing voice over work until late in his life like Blanc.

Problem for him and the other voice over actors these days is there's so much work out there for them, stand out parts are few and far between, and it comes down to die hard fans to remember their work.

When I hear Tom Kenny yell "Decepticons ATTACK!" then we'll talk about it.

Rial Vestro wrote:


Looney Toons has been around sence my parrents who are in their 50's now were kids and probably longer. My parrents grew up with Looney Toons, I grew up with Looney Toons, my nephews will grow up with Looney Toons. It's a cartoon that has no single generation of followers. They still air the same old cartoons from way back when.

.

wheres your nephew gonna watch loony toons. Current channels don't show loony toones. Boomerang doesn't even show loony tunes.

You cant grow up on a show that isn't being aired. anywhere

Nathimus Prime wrote:

Rial Vestro wrote:


Looney Toons has been around sence my parrents who are in their 50's now were kids and probably longer. My parrents grew up with Looney Toons, I grew up with Looney Toons, my nephews will grow up with Looney Toons. It's a cartoon that has no single generation of followers. They still air the same old cartoons from way back when.

.

wheres your nephew gonna watch loony toons. Current channels don't show loony toones. Boomerang doesn't even show loony tunes.

You cant grow up on a show that isn't being aired. anywhere

cartoon network brought some episodes back, they ARE on-demand right now (for me at least on kids wb), and the sell complete season releases on dvd. also you tube has a bunch of episodes

Burn wrote:Having to look up who Mel Blanc was? FOR SHAME!

qft. i didn't know it was possible to not know who mel was

Name_Violation wrote:

Burn wrote:Having to look up who Mel Blanc was? FOR SHAME!

qft. i didn't know it was possible to not know who mel was

I'm guilty of that also. I have no idea who does the voices of any cartoon characters other than actors that I have grown up watching like David Jason. That is only because I recognise their voices from watching them so often. If I don't see them, I have no idea who they are. I never read credits. I don't even know the names of a lot of actors that I watch so people that I never see have no chance of being noticed. Hahahaha.

If a voice actor can do multiple roles each with an individual voice and persona and you are unable to pick one character from the next as that voice actors work by just listening to the voice alone then that defines a true master vocal talent. They certainly do a good job of letting me escape into my own little world when I watch cartoons.

I was not a fan of Animated, but I liked the Starscream that Tom Kenny did. It felt like a nice homage to Chris Latta's Starscream in a way, and I appreciated that. I know that I still like the G1 cartoon more than any of the others except Beast Machines, and that my nostalgia is as much of a heresy as my BM fandom and that my dislike of Animated is enough to warrent my dismissal, but what the hell. Preference is preference.
I love Spongebob as well.

But no, Frank Welker is apparently a Voice Acting icon, and Tom Kenny, for as good as he is, is comparatively still the new guy. MAybe some day Kenny and Welker may be equivalent, like Tom Kenny may be the new generation version of Frank Welker, but not in the near future.

Nathimus Prime wrote:

Rial Vestro wrote:


Looney Toons has been around sence my parrents who are in their 50's now were kids and probably longer. My parrents grew up with Looney Toons, I grew up with Looney Toons, my nephews will grow up with Looney Toons. It's a cartoon that has no single generation of followers. They still air the same old cartoons from way back when.

.

wheres your nephew gonna watch loony toons. Current channels don't show loony toones. Boomerang doesn't even show loony tunes.

You cant grow up on a show that isn't being aired. anywhere

I find that odd that you say boomerang doesn't show Looney Tunes, I just watched some last night....

Nathimus Prime wrote:

Rial Vestro wrote:


Looney Toons has been around sence my parrents who are in their 50's now were kids and probably longer. My parrents grew up with Looney Toons, I grew up with Looney Toons, my nephews will grow up with Looney Toons. It's a cartoon that has no single generation of followers. They still air the same old cartoons from way back when.

.

wheres your nephew gonna watch loony toons. Current channels don't show loony toones. Boomerang doesn't even show loony tunes.

You cant grow up on a show that isn't being aired. anywhere

You live under a rock some where? What world do you live in where there are no Looney Toons?

Not only does Looney Toons still air old episodes but they still make new cartoons and movies. It's even spawned a few spin offs such as Tiny Toons and Loonatics Unleashed. They allso do commercials for auto insurance. How can you not have seen any of this?

Rial Vestro wrote:

Nathimus Prime wrote:

Rial Vestro wrote:


Looney Toons has been around sence my parrents who are in their 50's now were kids and probably longer. My parrents grew up with Looney Toons, I grew up with Looney Toons, my nephews will grow up with Looney Toons. It's a cartoon that has no single generation of followers. They still air the same old cartoons from way back when.

.

wheres your nephew gonna watch loony toons. Current channels don't show loony toones. Boomerang doesn't even show loony tunes.

You cant grow up on a show that isn't being aired. anywhere

You live under a rock some where? What world do you live in where there are no Looney Toons?

Not only does Looney Toons still air old episodes but they still make new cartoons and movies. It's even spawned a few spin offs such as Tiny Toons and Loonatics Unleashed. They allso do commercials for auto insurance. How can you not have seen any of this?

What is this Looney Tunes you speak of!

You should really turn on Cartoon Network right now because Bugs Bunny's 1,001 Rabit Tails is on the verry moment I'm typeing this. Of course I should allso note that I live in California and I have two different Cartoon Network stations on digital cable that show the same programing a few hours apart from eachother so it may not be on depending on your current situation.

Rial Vestro wrote:You should really turn on Cartoon Network right now because Bugs Bunny's 1,001 Rabit Tails is on the verry moment I'm typeing this. Of course I should allso note that I live in California and I have two different Cartoon Network stations on digital cable that show the same programing a few hours apart from eachother so it may not be on depending on your current situation.

Hell, being in Japan I still get Looney Tunes (thank God for American Cable, those AFN commercials are murder!). Of course they're on at like 8 o clock at night here and that makes it what, 6 pm over there or something?

Canadian can get a decent load of Looney tunes if they have Teletoon retro.

TTR more than just Transformers, gi joe, and reboot.

Moved to the Cartoons forum since this is a discussion about two cartoon voice actors.

i didn't watch a whole lot of animated, but the voices were pretty good. frank welker is among my top three voice actors (scatman crothers and casey kasem are the other two), and i doubt anyone could do as many voices as him and make them sound perfect like he did. i dunno, maybe i'm wrong