As per title, they should have right? Else how do they know what tone, volume and emotion to set for their characters?
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No, not generally.
The voice actor has a script, and a director to tell them how to act. Then they record the scene. When the director likes it, they turn it over to animation, and the timing of the audio becomes the timing of the animated action.
They see storyboards or maybe even a rough animatic without the specific facial animations done, but in fact the opposite happens.
They use the recorded voice line to animate the face and emotion in the scene, sometimes even filming the voice actor to use as reference.
They typically record the voices long before the film is animated and they probably just do it all in a vacuum with a script and a director/staff coaching them through the proper performance. They *might* have had a table read where the cast gets together and reads the lines as a group but the recording is likely alone.
They can do this because they are actors.
As an anecdote I’m reminded of the the voice actors for parent characters of “Bluey”, arguably the biggest children’s show for Gen Alpha, who physically met for the first time on on a talk show fairly recently, despite “co-starring” on this show for several years .
Generally, no. Voice actors typically go into each recording session without animation references. The exception to this is dubbing, when actors are given very specific cues in the recording session about how to deliver each line so it fits with the existing animation.
In post-production, actors will often do a process called ADR, that is another exception. This is usually not for recording lines of dialogue in animation, but it is most often used for things like non-dialogue vocals. So, if a character gets hit in a fight scene, the actor will record the “ooof” or “aghh” after the scene is animated so that they can match the intensity and energy of each animated hit to the vocals.
In some cases, ADR is also done for live action to re-record dialogue that sounded good on-set, but that may not have been recorded properly for any number of reasons.
Typically they do the voice acting first, and then the animators can do the final animation to match their voice.
Sometimes they’ll get like, rough sketches or cuts to understand what’s going on, but not always.
Now a fun one is when an existing show is getting dubbed. Like a Japanese anime getting an English translation. Then the voice actors may watch the scene while they record because they try their best to watch and match the mouth movement
Generally? No – usually they are doing this first. Sometimes they see an animatic or a Storyboard. They usually have directors to tell them what to do instead. Sometimes they record them together with other characters to make it more authentic. But other times they record their lines separately – for better and for worse.
Sometimes with dubs, they do get to see what they’re recording their lines to – but that’s cause the original work was done. I also emphasize the word “Sometimes” here – because there are occasions in which dubs are recorded alongside the original – you see this with say, Final Fantasy XIV.
So tldr, yes and no.
Usually voices are recorded long before the animation is finished. That’s how animators can lip sync to the recordings.
Those videos you see of an actor voicing a character with animation playing on the screen? Likely that’s dubbing.
Lots of answers for western animation. Japanese animation is slightly different in which the storyboards (often with rough animation) are usually already done and shown on a TV in the recording room. They also record together as a group instead of solo like in western animation. No finished animation is ever shown during recording, except for foreign shows that are already finished.
Depends on the director and studio.
Here’s an example of one
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