Cash in on Your VO Credits: Comic-Con Tips from Andy Field

Summary

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Everyday VOpreneur® with Marc Scott

Episode: “Cash in on Your VO Credits: Comic-Con Tips from Andy Field”

Date: September 18, 2025
Guests: Andy Field (voice actor known for Five Nights at Freddy’s)
Host: Marc Scott

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Episode Overview

This episode is a deep dive into how voice actors can leverage their credited roles—especially in popular franchises—for new revenue streams at fan conventions, such as Comic-Cons. Andy Field, known as the guide character (Hand Unit) in the Five Nights at Freddy’s gaming franchise, shares hard-earned, actionable advice about succeeding at conventions, marketing oneself as a voice actor, and building lasting fan engagement. The wide-ranging discussion covers everything from getting booked at cons to maximizing on-site earnings and managing fan interactions.

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Main Topics & Key Insights

1. The Power of Diverse Experience in VO (06:05–09:15)

• Andy Field discusses how his backgrounds in the military, teaching, and emergency care enhance his versatility and credibility in various VO genres:
  • Military & Medical Roles: Having real-world experience helps with authenticity in narration for similar topics.
  • Broad Exposure: “The more stuff you read and the more stuff you know…” (Andy, 07:12)
  • Teaching as Training: Teaching improves communication skills essential for e-learning and instructive VO work.

2. Landing a Breakthrough Role in a Cult Franchise (09:38–17:42)

• Five Nights at Freddy’s (FNAF): Andy shares the story of booking the transformative role via a Voices.com listing and its unexpected franchise explosion.

  • He describes the game's creator, Scott Cawthon, as a “Star Wars-level genius on the merchandising” (Andy, 12:04).
  • Andy’s guide character has become “the voice of the franchise as we go on with this thing” (Andy, 12:56).

• Franchise Growth: FNAF has millions of players, multiple books, graphic novels, movies, and an adult and nostalgia-fueled fandom.

  “All I really wanted was to pay my electric bill with this voiceover thing... And it’s evolved into people... saying, ‘this was fantastic,’ and that’s just a... special thing.” (Andy, 31:25)

3. Conventions as an Income Stream (17:42–26:10)

• First Comic-Con Experience: His initial con saw “standing room only,” and a substantial appearance fee—setting the tone for future opportunities.
  • “Marketing is everything and everything is marketing.” (Andy, repeated at 00:10, 17:50, and 35:03)
• Getting Booked: Most bookings come from Andy hustling himself—“I’d say it’s 90% me hustling the gigs and 10% getting invited” (Andy, 23:58).
  • He assesses cons by Facebook followers, reputation, and the other headliners.
• Negotiating Terms:
  • Sometimes he asks only for a hotel and table to land a spot, especially for nearby events.
  • He weighs costs and effort: “For like $30 more, my wife and I could just fly there.” (Andy, 26:00)
  • “Once they get to about 10,000 [followers], I think it’s worth it.” (Andy, 27:10)

4. Assessing Your Own Fit—Should You Do Cons? (28:24–34:15)

• Clues a VO actor is ready:
  • Fans already reaching out is a strong sign.
  • The size and engagement of the franchise is crucial.
  • Start local/small, offer panels/workshops, and treat early gigs as learning opportunities.
• Merchandising is another revenue stream—unique items aligned to the role/franchise add value and excitement.
• Caution on Brand and Copyright: Even if anyone can sell generic merch, maintain professionalism: “...I want to make sure that they continue to cast me in the games... There are some lines you might cross at a comic con... I want to be somebody with integrity.” (Andy, 33:17)

5. Merchandising, Pricing, and On-Site Strategies (35:07–47:34)

• Gear for Cons: Andy now brings banners for multiple credits, numerous prints, and innovative signature items (e.g., “exotic butters” squishies from Alibaba, Funko Pops).

  • “That’s the hero item on my table.” (Andy, 37:34)

• Merch Sourcing:

  • Most specialized items sourced from China/Alibaba or bought from vendors at cons.
  • He learned to batch order, look for upsell opportunities (e.g., Funko Pops as add-ons).

• Bundling & Pricing Psychology:

  • Autographs: started at $20, moved up to $50 as demand rose.
  • Combos: Autograph + selfie ($70), $100 package includes a Funko Pop.
  • Military discount at 50%.
  • “Disney lists their most expensive things first so that you feel like the things below it are a better deal... I just started doing that with my pricing.” (Andy, 44:44)
  • Pricing models inspired by other pros and even movie theater popcorn sales.

• Value & Authenticity:

  • “What a privilege to have to stop what you’re doing because someone loves what you do.” (Andy, 46:16)
  • Personal appearances provide value AI cannot replicate.

6. Agents, Representation, & the Importance of Hustle (39:04–41:14)

• Andy’s experience with “appearance agents” for cons has been mixed.
  • Most VO actors won’t get much agent support unless they’re major names.
  • “If you are a lesser celebrity, like I am, and you try to get on with an agent, every agent’s going to have bigger people than you on their roster...” (Andy, 40:15)
  • Self-advocacy and hustle is key for all but “A-list” talents.

7. The Human Side: Fan Interactions & Mindset (54:00–59:26)

• Forward-facing and performative skills are crucial: engage the public, especially shy or neurodiverse fans who find courage to meet you.
  • “You’re not there to make money. Like, you’re there to meet the people who spent... all year [saving].” (Andy, 55:00)
• Tips for successful signings:
  • Open conversations, icebreak with favorite game/character questions.
  • Learn to gently move lines along and respect fans’ emotional stakes.
  • “The change in facial expression is about to be epic for most of them.” (Andy, 59:01)
• “AI can’t take your personal appearances away. My VO work is slowly fading, but…” (Andy, 47:12)

8. Expanding Your Brand: Cons, Social Media, and VO Bookings (31:04–32:36, 51:23–53:20)

• Andy’s Five Nights fame led to voiceover bookings from fans in other genres (e.g., documentaries).
• Cons can build lasting personal brands and open up additional coaching/teaching opportunities.
• TikTok and online engagement further amplify reach—Andy grew from 38,000 to 115,000 followers in months by leveraging recent releases.

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On Diversifying Experience (07:12):
  “The more stuff you read and the more stuff you know... Not only does it help you when you’re reading scripts and you’re faster... but you know more things and you kind of get more things...” — Andy Field

• On Franchise Breakout (12:04):
  “He made millions. And the merchandising—this guy was Star Wars-level genius on the merchandising.” — Andy Field

• On Personal Appearances (00:00, 47:12):
  “AI can’t take your personal appearances away.” — Andy Field

• On Being a ‘Lesser Celebrity’ (40:15):
  “If you are a lesser celebrity... and you try to get on with an agent, every agent’s going to have bigger people than you... So how much attention do you get? Not a lot.” — Andy Field

• On Pricing, Marketing Psychology (44:44):
  “Disney lists their most expensive things first... I just started doing that with my pricing.” — Andy Field

• On Fan Gratitude (46:16):
  “What a privilege to have to stop what you’re doing because someone loves what you do and wants to shake your hand.” — Andy Field

• On Motivation to Start VO (31:25):
  “All I really wanted was to pay my electric bill with this voiceover thing... And it’s evolved into people... saying, ‘this was fantastic,’ and that’s just a... special thing.” — Andy Field

• On Hustle (51:23):
  “If you want to open up cons as an income stream... there’s some hustle that goes into this... But if you’re willing to put in the hustle, there’s an opportunity there.” — Brad Newman

• Memorable Moment: Exotic Butters as a Signature Item (37:02):
  “My character’s catchphrase is exotic butters... I’ve got a bunch of little butters that are squishy and they smell like butter. And I autograph these.” — Andy Field

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Handy Segment Timestamps

| Segment | Timestamp | |------------------------------------------|-------------| | Intro, importance of marketing | 00:10 | | Andy’s wild military cash story | 01:56–06:10 | | Using personal experience in VO | 06:10–09:15 | | Breaking into Five Nights at Freddy’s | 09:38–17:42 | | Evolution, impact of the FNAF franchise | 15:36–17:42 | | First convention, learning curve | 17:50–19:00 | | How to get booked / self-hustle advice | 23:58–28:24 | | Who should consider doing cons | 28:24–34:15 | | Merch, pricing, and signature items | 35:07–47:34 | | Value of agents and working alone | 39:04–41:14 | | Pricing psychology, value for fans | 44:44–47:12 | | The privilege and responsibility | 46:16–47:17 | | Expansion abroad/European aspirations | 49:45–50:43 | | The grind and “hustle” at cons | 50:50–51:23 | | Opening new VO opportunities/docs | 51:40–53:20 | | The emotional core of fan interactions | 54:00–59:26 | | Quick coaching offers, closing remarks | 59:26–61:02 |

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Actionable Takeaways for VOpreneurs

• Market Your Credits: Lean into every notable role—franchise association is powerful.
• DIY Hustle: Don’t wait for invites; proactively reach out to con organizers.
• Fan Engagement: Master approachable, considerate interaction; it sets you apart and enhances your brand.
• Merchandise Smart: Find a hero item related to your character for signatures and unique fan keepsakes.
• Price Psychologically: Bundling and premium packaging increases perceived value; discounts foster goodwill.
• Be Adaptive: If you’re introverted, practice performative elements—it’s crucial at cons.
• Protect Your Brand: Maintain copyright integrity and cultivate a clean, trustworthy reputation.
• Media Cross-Pollination: Use con exposure to seek new bookings or teaching opportunities.
• Remember the Privilege: Fans are the lifeblood—a little effort goes a very long way.

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Contact & Coaching:
Andy Field offers mentoring and support for other voice actors looking to break into the con circuit. Find him at andyfieldvoiceover.com.

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Summary by: Everyday VOpreneur® Podcast Summarizer
Episode link: vopreneur.com

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Transcript

[Andy Field]

I think I'm going to make 60 to $70,000 this year off conventions. AI can't take your personal appearances away. I would certainly say if fans are already reaching out to you, that's a hint. Marketing is everything and everything is marketing. They were so excited to be able to say hi.

[Brad Newman]

It sounds like it's a very viable income stream.

[Andy Field]

You're a voice actor, you're an entrepreneur, you're a veopreneur. Welcome to the everyday veopreneur podcast. Your guide through the business of voiceover.

[Brad Newman]

Marketing is everything and everything is market. Quote from this episode and it's truth. If you're not a confident and effective marketer, you're going to struggle to achieve your true potential as a voiceover business. So learn how to market voiceover marketing Playbook is coming back in October and I would love to have you join. The wait list is open now. Go to the website@voiceover marketingplaybook.com Are you on the edge of your seat yet? You should be. I'm all about opening up new income streams. I think that's just smart business, whether you're a voice actor or otherwise. But for voice actors, one of those potential income streams is comic cons. And here to help us understand them a little better is a guy who's been traveling across America attending them. Welcome to the show. Andy Field.

[Andy Field]

What is up? How are you?

[Brad Newman]

I am very good and I am very much looking forward to this. Not that I am ever going to be going to cons. I don't think there are any cons where elearning guys get to, you know, shine in the spotlight for a few minutes. But this is a topic that I get asked about a lot. Voice actors want to know and so I feel like you're a guy who's in the know. So I'm looking forward to getting it in, getting into it with you. But before we do that, I do have one very important question that's been sitting on my mind ever since I started doing the research for this interview. I would really love to know what it feels like to drive $480 million in cash down a middle eastern highway.

[Andy Field]

Like, yeah, I was.

[Brad Newman]

How big is that duffel bag? What does that even physically look like?

[Andy Field]

And it depends on the bills. I was, I was an army officer and I was in a finance unit at one in one of my deployments. And yeah, $480 million was, I think, 40 something boxes about this big, full of hundreds. It was, it was, it was insane. And we had like 13 trucks that we did. Some of them were military police and some of them. And some of them were just backup trucks that didn't have anything in them. But yeah, we flew into Iraq from Kuwait and picked all that up. They had confiscated it from one of Saddam's palaces. And it was all. Well, it wasn't all American. There were four or five boxes of euros and then we had to count it all. And so there was a lot of security involved in that. We had to go into Kuwait City and buy those bill counting machines because all of ours had been, I mean, a finance unit in the United States. All of our bill counting machines had been sitting in a storage for years and all the little belts were dry rotted. And it was, it was quite the experience. It's almost half a billion dollars and we had a million dollars in the, in the vault in ones. And so that's an insanely large stack as well. It was kind of neat to see all of that really, really wild. And of course everybody's like, why didn't you steal some of that? And that, that lets you know that people just think of cash and they want to steal it. I mean, that would never cross my mind. But that's why people robbed banks in the Wild West, I guess was.

[Brad Newman]

It's very true.

[Andy Field]

There's cash, we got to get it.

[Brad Newman]

I mean, I would, I would consider maybe Scrooge McDuck in it and, you know, trying to take a little swim in it or something.

[Andy Field]

Yeah, that experience.

[Brad Newman]

But I'd put it all back when.

[Andy Field]

I was done, like to roll in it. I did take a picture with a million dollars in hundreds and it's only about, only. Well, it's only about that big in hundreds. And it's. I, I taught middle school and I had a whole lesson on how big is a million. So I wanted, when I got back from the war, to be able to show my kids, you know, this is what a million dollars looks like in hundreds. In ones, it'll be 100 times that big. And we could calculate that, but 480.

[Brad Newman]

Million, like, my brain can't even comprehend that. That's just. Yeah, that's just crazy. That would be an intimidating drive. Although, I mean, maybe if nobody didn't know that you were doing it, I guess it wouldn't matter, but.

[Andy Field]

Yeah. Well, we just drove down the highways in Kuwait and there were cars going in and out of our convoy. And I mean, it was, and it was an open back truck. Like it was just, it just had the big wooden sides and it was but yeah, it was. And then there were other trips. I mean, I'd go on a trip and pick up only 108 million, you know, know, or something like that, you know. You know, sometimes there'd be a sergeant driving down the highway and I'd be like, how much you moving today? And he's like, we got 800,000 in the back of the Humvee today. You know, and it was just, you know, and it was kind of almost like the more rank you had, the more they'd trust you with. But it was. I mean, it's. But it's all the same. Moving. It is all the same. It's just kind of a wild, bizarre experience that you don't think about when you think about war.

[Brad Newman]

No. You know, no, I'm never going to look at a military vehicle driving down the road the same ever again. I'm always going to be wondering, is there a big giant pile of cash?

[Andy Field]

Well, we don't deploy to Canada very often, so it's.

[Brad Newman]

No, but occasionally we have like five military trucks in this country, and occasionally you get to see one of them drive by. And so I'm always going to wonder, now, is that filled with snow shovels or half a billion dollars? That's.

[Andy Field]

Well. And the thing was, you needed cash a lot in Iraq because that country was still kind of primitive, technology wise, and so a lot of our transactions were in cash. Conversely, 15 years before, in Desert Storm, in the early 90s, almost all of that was electron think. We never had more than $10 million in the vault for that whole deployment, but we had over a billion in the vault there in Iraq. We had to pay. The Marines were paying their translators a quarter a day. That's a lot of money. U.S. money, 25 cents. And they wanted like $120,000 in quarters. And the Pentagon was like, we are not spending the money to fly. And they said, you don't. They said, give them a $20 bill. And they said, you don't understand. If you give a guy named Ahmed in the middle of the desert a $20 bill, he's going to disappear and just go find another unit 20 miles away and see if he can get another 20 bill from him. Yeah, I mean, 20 bill is like what they made in a year.

[Brad Newman]

Yep.

[Andy Field]

You know, their money was so depressed and so. So they did get there. I think it ended up being $30,000 in quarters, but that's a lot of quarters. It's 120,000 quarters. Yeah. I mean, the Air Force has to calculate how Much that weighs and fly that.

[Brad Newman]

Figure out how to fly that over. Yeah, that's crazy.

[Andy Field]

They'd line them up at the end of the day and give them each a quarter and just crazy.

[Brad Newman]

So part of what I teach in the playbook is finding your unique value proposition. What do you bring to the table that no other voice actor does? And how can you stand out in some way, whether it be in a genre, a niche, or otherwise? And I think that that's something that you've been able to do really well because of this deep resume. Obviously, the military background lends itself to a number of different opportunities, but I know you've also leaned into your teaching background for educational content. I believe you spent time as an EMT and working in emergency care. You've been able to lean into that from medical narration. So talk to me about how you lean into some of these different aspects of your past life to influence the opportunities you generate in your current VO life.

[Andy Field]

Well, and you. And you hit it. I mean, medical narrations are a lot easier if you've had some medical training. You know, so I was an EMT and I majored in nursing because I thought that's what I should do as an emt. And so I didn't, I didn't become a nurse, but. But yeah, that helps the military. I did 32 years in the military, so it's less knowing how to talk like a soldier and getting those gigs and more. Just a very diverse experience. You meet so many people and you do so many things in that amount of time. I mean, I've, I've done, I did a lot of things in those 32 years seeing the world, but just, I equate it to being a voracious reader. The more stuff you read and the more stuff, you know, when kids ask me what should I do now as a 13 year old to be a better voice actor, I'm like, read, read, read, read. Be a great reader. Not only does it help you when you're reading scripts and you're faster about all that stuff, but you know more things and you kind of get more things and there's words that you wouldn't have known had you not, you know, and so there's a lot of that that you just pick up from doing so much of that teaching school kind of decreases your vocabulary, but it kind of the education going up to that, if you continue educating as an educator, kind of helps you understand how people think.

[Brad Newman]

Yep.

[Andy Field]

And. And that does help with the E learning, learning how to say things. The Right way, and say, well, the listener doesn't know this. And so I'm coming from a place where I am informing the listener of this. So all of that, it's all little things. But I find that the military experience sometimes hurts me because video games don't want to sound realistic. They don't want to honor the real thing or the veterans. Hurt Locker, one of the worst movies ever made from a military standpoint. It won the Oscar for best film, but veterans hate it. Like, despise it, just. And so, you know, I find that I get. I'll read a military line, say, this should sound like this, and it doesn't get the job and something that sounds completely contrived. And, you know, we talked about that at one of the veterans panels at VEO Atlanta one year. There was a veterans in Video gaming panel that I moderated. It was, there's what's realistic and there's what Hollywood wants. And then.

[Brad Newman]

Which is. So what is. What is Hollywood want? Is it more like cartoon, over the top?

[Andy Field]

Yeah.

[Brad Newman]

What is it?

[Andy Field]

I'll give you an example. I was in a video game one time, and there was a voice actress who was playing like a squad leader, and the line was something like, let's go soldiers. And she was like, let's go soldiers. And it was just so cheesy. I mean, in the military, when we say soldiers, it's like, it's like the guy's name, let's go Soldiers. Like, let's go Johnson. It's.

[Brad Newman]

Yep.

[Andy Field]

It's just what you call the guy, you know, who you talking to, Sailor. That's what they say on the boat. Like, if you're. If you're speaking disrespectfully, you know, it's like, you know, you know, soldier. Are you crazy? You know, it's so let's go soldiers. You know?

[Brad Newman]

You know, I feel like there's a lead in here to the conversational read. That's what it feels like. Right? Oh, man. I don't want to go down that road, though. So. Five nights at Freddy's. I have to admit, I was clueless. I had to look it up.

[Andy Field]

That's common.

[Brad Newman]

So I was doing research and learning a little bit about it. So 28 games in the franchise in total are there. I thought 11 mainline games, and then there's spinoffs, expansions, all that sort of stuff, right?

[Andy Field]

Yeah. Lots of fan games too.

[Brad Newman]

Yeah. Books, graphic novels. There was even a. A liveaction horror film in 2023 and.

[Andy Field]

And top grossing horror film of the Year Blum houses Blumhouse's top film of the year, which Blumhouse is huge. Yeah, it was insane. And I wasn't in it.

[Brad Newman]

Supposed to be another one coming out this December.

[Andy Field]

Is that coming out December? They're starting filming on movie three next month. I've auditioned for both movies and I'm auditioning for this one too. Not for a voice role, but for an on camera role.

[Brad Newman]

Okay.

[Andy Field]

And they did. There were two cameos in the first movie of popular YouTubers.

[Brad Newman]

Okay.

[Andy Field]

The YouTubers are bigger celebrities than the voice actors. I mean they're 10 million followers, some.

[Brad Newman]

Of these guys, as it goes these days. So from what I gathered, estimates have between 3 and 4 million playing on Steam alone. And that does not include mobile console, et cetera. And I read a couple of different things that said this. Franchises potentially, potentially valued in the low billions.

[Andy Field]

I would think so. Yeah.

[Brad Newman]

I was like, how in the world. I clearly live under a rock. So I was like, I do not know anything about this, but this is obviously it's a, it's a big deal.

[Andy Field]

Yeah.

[Brad Newman]

So talk about your role and how you came to be a part of it.

[Andy Field]

Awesome. Yeah. So the guy that created it, Scott Cawthon, started as just a little indie developer. I mean he was, he was. He basically said, I'm going to try one more game and then I got to get my resume together. And. And he. And he made five Nights at Freddy's. And it's a cheap little. The first game is just a cheap little game. You sit in one room and it's kind of a red light, green light game where you have to concentrate pretty hard and then sooner or later you get jump scared. And the jump scares are so brilliant because you're concentrating so hard. And that gained a huge cult following. And then he created games two, three and four, all within the span of two years. And I mean he made millions. And the merchandising, I mean this guy was Star wars level genius on the merchandising. The toys, the shirts, the posters, the lunch boxes, the, you know, all the stu stuff. And then for his fifth game he said, I'm gonna spend some money. And so he. The fifth game was called Sister Location because it was set in a sister location to the original games.

[Brad Newman]

Okay.

[Andy Field]

And he hired like 10 or 12 voice actors off of voices.com because that's who was dominating the search engine. How do I, how do Google, how do I hire a voice actor? That's where you went if you didn't know. And, and so that's where I came in with quite a few others and, and that fifth game took off and then here I am. I've been in seven games since then. So when you say there's 11 mainline games, I guess, well, I'm in. I like to say I'm in all of them except the fifth game since the fourth game. But I just found one the other day, but it came from voices.com and then I've just been recast to, to reprise my role. And then in this latest game I got a couple of other characters too. And so it's, it's getting bigger and bigger, but I'm the guide character. So I'm kind of the voice.

[Brad Newman]

The voice?

[Andy Field]

Yeah, of the franchise as, as we go on this thing. And so a lot of kids, as soon as they hear me talk, they're like, oh my gosh, you're the guy, you know. So it's, it's.

[Brad Newman]

So when you saw the posting on voices.com originally, did you have any idea about Five Nights at Freddy?

[Andy Field]

No, no, no. I was. So the funny story, I was teaching middle school and I just auditioned and it was a pretty high paying gig as I recall because the guy, Scott Cawthon's a pretty generous fella. I would say it was 3x union scale.

[Brad Newman]

Okay.

[Andy Field]

Wow. And it was a non union indie game. And I was teaching school and it was a slow day. There were only like five kids in class. I think there was a field trip or something happening. And so they were just doing busy work and I was at my desk checking my personal email, not my teaching email. And the kids knew I was a voice actor. They'd seen a couple commercials and stuff like that. And I said, hey guys, I just got a voiceover gig. And they were like, oh, cool, great. I was like, oh, it's a video game. That piqued a little more interest.

[Brad Newman]

Yeah.

[Andy Field]

And I said, you guys want to hear the script? And so I start reading it. And it was like due to the unfortunate closing of Fazbear Pizza. And that's when one of the kids shot his head up in the air like, that's a Five Nights at Freddy's game. And that's when I knew. I'm not reading another word. I don't know what that means.

[Brad Newman]

I just broke an NDA or did.

[Andy Field]

I break an NDA or am I.

[Brad Newman]

About to lose the gig?

[Andy Field]

Right. So I immediately messaged the guy and I said, hey, I know all about NDAs and I'm a middle school teacher and I just read this to my kids. And one of them said, it's a Five Nights at Freddy's Game. And he said, well, since it says it in the script, you can tell people you're in the next Five Nights at Freddy's Game, but you can't tell them who you play. And it occurred to me much later that when he said, since it's in the script, he literally didn't tell the other voice actors, like, Kellen Gough is in it, and he plays like the main character, Funtime Freddy. He didn't even know his character's name was Funtime Freddy because it's not in his script. I mean, we really didn't know. I was maybe the only one that knew knew that it was a Five Nights at Freddy's game. Or maybe Kellen did. Because back then on voices.com you could see the name of the game creator. And fans were. Fans were already speculating. They could see his voices. They were already youtubes about me before the game came out. Like, who is Andy Field? My character's name was Hand Unit. And they were like, is that a puppet? Is that a handheld computer? What is. They were already speculating. And I was already commenting on YouTube videos. That's a good.

[Brad Newman]

There was a pretty big cult following with this already by the time that Game five rolled around. Game five is just kind of when he. He loved it, by the sounds of it.

[Andy Field]

And then it's exploded. The games have increased production value and they're on all the major platforms, PlayStation and all that, and the movies and the books. And so. And we're starting to see an adult fandom come in. Parents are learning that the humor is sophisticated and the storyline is good and the games look great. But it's taken. You know, I've been at this nine years now. That's nine years ago is when I got that first gig.

[Brad Newman]

That's amazing.

[Andy Field]

And. And it's. It's interesting to watch the fandom start as kids and grow into adults and then bring adults in with them. You know, my original fans are now in their 20s and have jobs. You know, they were angsty 13 year olds when this happened.

[Brad Newman]

Is it still the same people playing it or is there constantly new people coming in and the old. The original crowd still continues to play as well. Like, do you see that?

[Andy Field]

It's both. Compared to the Star wars fandom, There are some people who have been die hard since 1977. There are new ones coming in all the time. I can't wait to show my granddaughters Empire Strikes Back. Nobody Nobody better ruin the surprise about Darth Vader. I'm not gonna spoil anything else for your listeners, but. But then you see new fans coming all the time. But then you also see old fans who, who lost their love of it. You know, they're mad at Jar Jar Binks. You know, so what I see a lot is 17 year olds who are too cool to play it now, but when they turn 20, they're nostalgic and they're back.

[Brad Newman]

Yep.

[Andy Field]

And that happens with, with all of us. You know, how many 40 year olds have rediscovered their love for Scooby Doo? You know?

[Brad Newman]

You know, I never stopped loving Scooby Doo. But you know what? We were in Tennessee for vacation in, in August and they had an old school arcade machine in the, in the cabin that we stayed in. And it had like the original Donkey Kong. And I, I spent way too much time sitting there and I'm like, I haven't played this game in like 30 years. Like, I had to remember how to play it. And I was so bad at it. But I was having so much fun playing the original Donkey Kong and then sharing that, like Kaylee sitting up on my lap and she's trying to push the buttons and do it. She's four years old, right. And it's like, wow, there's, there's definitely a nostalgia factor comes so much. You revisit some of that stuff.

[Andy Field]

And yeah, I've got an Airbnb here in my little town in Louisiana and I've got an arcade cabinet in there. It's Donkey Kong Jr which by the way, no one can beat. That's so hard. But, but Donkey Kong's in there too. But yeah, I love that kind of stuff and just kind of bring it back. I've now made friends, pretty good friends with Scott Ennis, the voice of Scooby Doo. And so we talk about that. And my daughter, one of my daughters is a Scooby Doo nut. He's done a little bit of coaching, he's coached me a little bit on how to market myself better at these cons and all that.

[Brad Newman]

But you really had no idea at the time what you were signing up for and how big this was ultimately going to become and how much of an impact it was going to have on your career.

[Andy Field]

No, I had no idea. So the game came out in October of 16, and we did our first Comic Con in January of 17. And that's when I said, okay, I'm on to something. And so I've been learning how Comic Cons work since Then. And I'm still learning new things all the time. It's kind of. It's. It's its own thing. It's kind of like voiceover. You kind of have to figure out how the industry works and then figure out how to do your hustle. And marketing is everything, and everything is marketing, you know, both. And so it's. It's an interesting world.

[Brad Newman]

So Five Nights at Freddy's opens up the door for you to get into these cons. Do you have any other credits now that you're able to lean into? Or when you're going, are you just doing.

[Andy Field]

I do. And that's something we can talk to our listening audience here about, too. I've got a big banner that hangs behind me, and it's got, like, 10 or 12 games on it. And I'm in a ton of games that most people have never heard of. Rarely does anyone talk about any of them. I mean, I was in Marvel Avengers Academy, which sounds cool, but everybody on voices.com 10 years ago was in Marvel's Avengers Academy. I could probably name five voice actors from the Five Nights at Freddy's series that are in Marvel's Avengers Academy. It's like Heroes of New Earth back in the day. But I got in right after Heroes of New Earth. I'm in Paladins, which is made by the company that makes Smite. So if you're listening to this and you've never heard of Smite, you've certainly never heard of Paladins, because it's kind of their second. But probably every convention, if I talk to 100 people, two or three will mention, oh, you're in Paladins, but they don't. They don't get an autograph from it. This past convention, I was in East Tennessee, not far from where you had been, and there was a lady with her child who was a Five Nights at Freddy's fan. And the lady was taking a picture of my banner, and she said, I see you're in Top Heroes, and I'm freaking out. I'm one of the top guild masters in the world and Top Heroes. And I'm sending this picture to my friend who's also a guild master. It's one of those addictive mobile games where you send out your little tribe to fight other tribes and build up your, you know, build your guilds and your farms and your mines, you know, and all that. And so she was excited about that. But, I mean, I've probably had Top heroes on my banner for five or six comic Cons. And that's the first person to say anything. Probably what gets more attention than anything is that I'm also in the Waze navigation app, and I have the Waze logo on my banner, and a lot of people ask about that. And I just. I just put my five nights at Freddy's Voice in Waze so you could have the five nights at Freddy's computer guide. And so not only do lots of people come up and say, you're my GPS voice, but then a lot of other people say, oh, my gosh, you're going to be my GPS voice. And I did record it, so it wasn't super obnoxious. So if you're not a FNAF fan, that's five Nights at Freddy's fnaf.

[Brad Newman]

I had Ghostbusters in my ways, but they just. It just. They're just getting ready to take it down. Or it's a. It's.

[Andy Field]

It's.

[Brad Newman]

It has already just recently come down, and so I'm gonna have to replace it. So I may have to look that up.

[Andy Field]

Well, I see. I find a lot of the celebrity voices are annoying because they put a little catchphrase on the common phrases. For example, like, if you get Lightning McQueen, he'll say, like, in one mile, exit right, kachow. In half a mile, exit right Kachow. In 800ft, exit right kachow, exit right kachow. And it's like, if I hear kachow one more. So I made sure I didn't put anything cutesy on all those common phrases, you know, so there's five or six startup phrases, and there's a couple of ending phrases, and then, you know, like, traffic reported ahead, it's a good time for some pizza. You know, that's. You're not going to hear that a lot, but, you know, the game is set in a. In a pizzeria, so that's why that's in there.

[Brad Newman]

But so that. Wow. So you start out doing a video game, and then it opens up into all of these other different things. And that's the benefit of having a guy behind the game who obviously, you mentioned he's a brilliant marketer, right? Like, he just knows how brilliant. How to leverage the crap out of it.

[Andy Field]

This shirt I'm wearing, the tag says copyright Scott Cawthon. The guy that. The guy. Just a guy from a little town outside Austin, Texas. And yeah. Yeah, I just got this shirt today. I'm pretty excited about it.

[Brad Newman]

I just need a good idea and the willingness to hustle it. Right? So that first con you said was 2017. Yeah.

[Andy Field]

Okay. Yeah. Like two months after the game came out. Yeah.

[Brad Newman]

So what was that like, going to the first one, having never done anything like that before? What did that feel like?

[Andy Field]

That one was insane. And I think they learned some lessons, too. So they took six of us voice actors out of the game and flew us all out first class. Or they didn't fly me first class because they. They bought my wife a ticket, too. Gave us each a $2,000 appearance fee, which is not something that has happened again. Only had us sign autographs for a couple of hours and then had a panel with, like, 600 seats. And it was standing room only in that panel. But there's no way they recouped that cost. There's no way that they sold, let's say, 800 unique tickets just for us. And I think they were learning that at the time, too. You know, that was. That was a big. That was sack anime. It was an anime convention, and it was.

[Brad Newman]

So that was the con that brought you out, not five nights at Freddy the Game. Right.

[Andy Field]

Five nights at Freddy's hasn't done any of that.

[Brad Newman]

Okay.

[Andy Field]

Occasionally, for example, there's five nights at Freddy's at Halloween Horror nights at both of the Universal resorts in LA and Orlando. And they may have paid for Kellen Gough to go out. I saw he was on the red carpet and was answering interview questions, but he lives in la, so he's a cheap date.

[Brad Newman]

Okay.

[Andy Field]

You know, for that, they didn't have to fly him out first class or anything like that. Kellen is probably the most prolific famous voice actor of our thing. He's also added a couple of very large anime roles. So when he goes to conventions, he's five nights at Freddy's is kind of over there as just one of his two or three really big roles.

[Brad Newman]

So how many cons have you done since then?

[Andy Field]

In total, I'm 20 this past weekend. I've lost count, but I'm in the low 40s. Like, 42, 43. I took about three years break after Covid. There was a point where I was making such good money in voiceover that I was kind of like, I'd really rather have my weekend than travel there and make this. But now the money's gotten bigger and the fan. My celebrity has grown to the point where, yeah, it's worth the weekend.

[Brad Newman]

So are you getting invited or are you, quote unquote, you know, inviting yourself? Like, are you reaching out and saying, hey, I'd love to come, or what? I'M just, how does that look like for a voice actor who's thinking, maybe this is something I'd like to explore?

[Andy Field]

I'd say it's 90% me hustling the gigs.

[Brad Newman]

Okay.

[Andy Field]

And 10% getting invited. Typically if I get invited, it's a smaller show. Sometimes we call cons shows. They call them shows. For example, next month I am headlining at Wyoming Pop culture Con. Very small show, free admission. It's in the mall in Casper, not even in Cheyenne. And the whole state of Wyoming only has a half million people. So it's, you know, for that one I got reached out to.

[Brad Newman]

Okay.

[Andy Field]

But then like for Smoky Mountain fan fest that I was at this past weekend, and I can kind of gauge them by Facebook followers. They've got about 27,000 Facebook followers and you can gauge them by their headliners. Like they had four of the on camera actors from the Walking Dead and they had Lou Ferrigno that played the Incredible Hulk and they had one of the doctor who's and they had, you know, Scooby Doo. The voice of Scooby Doo was there a couple of TikTokers was like 3 million, 6 million followers. So at that one I had to hustle that and ask for that myself. And there's a. There's a little bit of knowledge I've gained on the logistics of cons and what I should be offering and what I should be asking for. And that's still evolving now.

[Brad Newman]

So when you're hustling and you're reaching out and saying, hey, I'd like to, you know, I'd like to be able to come to your con. I'd like to have a table five nights at Freddy's. Like you're leaning into all of that. Are you having to. If you're not being invited, then are you having to pay to attend or do you have to pay to buy a table? Or like, what does that look like?

[Andy Field]

Good question. And it's, it's a little bit of all of that. I have found this year. I've had more success this year booking than ever. And a lot of the times it was because I was willing to say, you don't have to fly me there. But I've booked a lot of conventions that were driving distance from my house. I live in a small town in Louisiana. If I'm going to fly, I probably have to leave my house at 3:45 in the morning and drive an hour and then fly to Dallas and then fly to where? I mean, it may take me nine hours. To get somewhere that I could have driven five hours to anyway.

[Brad Newman]

Yep.

[Andy Field]

So like Bell County Comic Con, best con I've ever been to in Bell County, Texas, near Austin. It was absolutely insane and huge, but it was only five hours away. So I just drove and I said, all I need is a hotel and a table. I mean, they all know you need a table. They also paid me a per diem for food, but I'm going to two later this year that are flying me out and are giving me a per diem and do pay all your travel, you know, your baggage and your airport parking and all that, and they give you a hotel. But I've done a couple this year where I said, I don't even need a hotel. You know, my daughter lives in Nashville and I wanted to go visit her, and so I went to Nashville comic con for 100 free. The only thing they had to spend money on was, you know, they have to rent a table and they have to buy you a banner. They put a banner up behind you and. And floor space. You know, they have to decide whether you're worth them giving you a spot on the floor when they could have had a better celebrity. But it just varies, you know, sometimes like Smoky Mountain Fan Fest. I told him I was going to drive, then it was a 14 hour drive. And then I did the math. I was like, well, for like $30 more, my wife and I could just fly there. And if she hadn't gone, it certainly would have been cheaper to fly. So we flew and you know, just, you know. But I make enough money to justify that at a convention that size. You know, I wouldn't offer to travel for free to a convention that has, let's say, 3,000 Facebook followers.

[Brad Newman]

Okay?

[Andy Field]

But once they get to about 10, 10,000, I think it's worth it. And sometimes there's one with 3,000 followers and William Shatner is there, and you're.

[Brad Newman]

Like, okay, good enough for William Shatner. It's good enough for me.

[Andy Field]

Or maybe, well, maybe that one's owned by a company that owns 10,000 that owns 10 conventions. And, you know, that one in particular, you know, they market elsewhere. You know, some of them market really well on the radio, and you just don't see that on Facebook.

[Brad Newman]

So I want to get into some of the logistics. But I'm curious. Before we go there, let's back up a second. We talked about the stats of five nights at Freddy's. You know, millions of people playing online, plus whatever's playing on console. Like, there's a Very well established, large fan base, feature films, all of that sort of stuff. So it stands to reason that if you've got a star character in that franchise, you're somebody that's going to benefit from one of these cons. Putting that aside, what are some of the, I don't even know, clues, signs, indicators. How does a voice actor look at their resume and say, I think this character would be good? Or, you know, I think if I've got these couple characters, I think I could pull this off. Like, is it. Is it about credits? Is it about following? Is like, how do you make that determination?

[Andy Field]

So I would certainly say if fans are already reaching out to you, that's a hint.

[Brad Newman]

Okay.

[Andy Field]

But, you know, every now and then, for example, I was talking to Kay Bass about this, and she voices one of the spaceships in Star Picard in like 12 episodes of that. And she went to a Star Trek convention, but she said my role is so obscure that the only people that want my autograph are, you know, the fans who want every single autograph of everyone who's ever been in Star Trek. That's not right, you know, So I would say if fans are already reaching out, that's a good sign. However, if you know your franchise is big, I think there's some potential for you to make some money. I'm assuming everyone listening to this is a lesser celebrity, which is what I call myself, and everyone else is down there, too. So I would say to start out with, you probably ought to be reaching out to conventions that you can afford to do for free. Okay, you know, maybe ask for a hotel room. But even better, if you live in a town that has a small convention, just say, I don't even need that. I just need a table. And then offer to do some panels, how to be a voice actor or how to audition. You know, I've started doing those things, too. And then, oh, well, let's add that there's a little bit of income to be made in that, too. Let's say you teach lessons. I did a panel called how to Audition for Video Games at Phoenix Fan Fusion, which is a tremendous convention. And three people who went to that panel signed up for my class. It's a 500 class. And one of them was at one voice conference with a couple weeks ago with me there. I mean, he's actually. He's doing it also. He's a producer. He's cast me twice as well. So there's lots of opportunities that come in all that. And sometimes you could just do some Merchandising. Let's say you're in Call of Duty. Call of Duty is a massive fandom, but they're not a rabid fandom. Like, people aren't buying stuffed animals of Call. Call of Duty. But if you're selling Call of Duty T shirts at your table for $30 apiece and they cost you five, you know, then there's. There's a little bit of opportunity there as well, because people will buy it. Just because you're in Call of Duty. Let's say you play the guy that, I don't know, gives you your bullets in Call. I don't even know how Call of Duty works, but, you know, but let's say you're just an NPC in Call of Duty. People are freaking out about that. I knew a guy that was an extra in the Walking Dead that was selling his autograph for $20 apiece at comic Con. That blows my mind. It blows my mind that anybody would buy my autograph.

[Brad Newman]

So when you're starting out in particular, it's not necessarily about the following that you have, it's about the following that the franchise has. But I'm guessing as your following as a, as a voice actor grows, that just benefits because it's more direct contact, easier to market, let people know where you're going to be, that whole sort of deal, right?

[Andy Field]

Oh, yeah, absolutely. And that's so, like this seventh game that I was in that just came out this year, it's called Secret of the Mimic. I would say it's my best work in the franchise for sure, and maybe some of my best work I've ever done. And the fandom is saying that as well. And so suddenly, after nine years, not everybody, but some people are saying, this guy is my favorite voice actor in the whole franchise. Which is a mind blowing thing to hear. Yeah, it's such a privilege to read something like that. You know, when you. All I really wanted was to, you know, pay my electric bill with this voiceover thing. You know, I just really wanted to, you know, do some E Learning and some commercials and, and not be broke as a middle school teacher. And. And it's evolved into people, I don't know, saying, you know, this was fantastic, and that's just a. It's a special thing. But. And that has allowed me to grow. Like when this game came out in June and it's now September 9th that we're recording this, I've posted on TikTok every day since that. And I've grown from like 38,000 to 115,000 on TikTok. And it's. And it's continuing to grow. So I'm figuring out how do I make money off of that, you know, And I am making money off my creator videos on TikTok, but it's not much. It's a couple hundred dollars a month. But then I'm like, how do I. Can I sell things on TikTok? You know, can I. Can I sell a Five Nights at Freddy shirt on TikTok? And will people buy it? You know, can I get a commission on these things? And so I'm trying to. I don't know, trying to figure that out while balancing my brand, you know, do you. You want to be respected as an artist, but then you're selling a, you know, a hat rack on TikTok. Then is that a.

[Brad Newman]

I want to talk about the T shirt thing, because that's interesting. I mean, you showed the shirt that you're wearing, and you mentioned that it's got, you know, copyright for the creator in it. How does that work from a copyright standpoint? If you're going to do any kind of branded merch. Five Nights at Freddy branded merch, Is that something that you have to go through the owner or how does that work?

[Andy Field]

No, because anybody can sell anything. I mean, you can walk in the grocery store right now and buy a pack of gum and come right back outside and sell it to someone else. So there's nothing, you know, violating copyright about any of that. I am very careful about my role, my de facto role as an ambassador of that brand. Yeah, I'm a clean voice actor. You know, I don't make TikToks saying the F word or anything like that. I don't say it.

[Brad Newman]

Yeah.

[Andy Field]

I don't say it very often anyway. But I want to make sure that they continue to cast me in the games, and I want to make sure that they're. There are some lines you might cross at a comic con, and I do want to make sure that those lines aren't crossed. I want to just make sure that they can trust me to be somebody with integrity and all that. There is a very popular voice actor who hosted a burlesque show at a comic con I went to recently. I'm assuming that's a show where people get naked on stage.

[Brad Newman]

You didn't get in on that one.

[Andy Field]

That's not my brand.

[Brad Newman]

To pop up on TikTok.

[Andy Field]

Right. And so I've just, you know, so there is some of that, and I. I have seen some of that. Impacting some of the other voice actors in the franchise. Yeah. So, you know.

[Brad Newman]

Yeah, that makes sense. I mean, especially if you've been in it as long as you have at this point. You want to ride that gravy train as long as you can. So do what you can to protect it.

[Andy Field]

Well, and it. And it depends on what brand you want to establish. For example, there was a girl who had gotten a role in the Star wars cartoons several years back. She was a brilliant impressionist and she did a brilliant impression of. I don't remember her name, the lady who testified against justice, against Justice Kavanaugh. And this was when the hashtag MeToo movement started. But the lady had a very distinct voice. She had that vocal fry that does like that. And so the girl did an impression of her on social media and the girl was a Justice Kavanaugh hater. I mean, she was on the side of that lady. She was just. And she got removed from Star Wars.

[Brad Newman]

Oh, man. Yeah. I never know.

[Andy Field]

Right? So the. The front facing stuff you do is important.

[Brad Newman]

It matters.

[Andy Field]

Yeah. Every marketing is everything and everything is everything is marketing.

[Brad Newman]

It's so true. And I think sometimes that we forget that. And the other thing is, like, it's not even what you're doing right now. Tick off the wrong person and they're going to go back and look through 20 years of your history on X or whatever and name the social media platform. Let's do a little con, one on one. Then I'm guessing that you're not just packing the car with some Sharpies and making your way to Tennessee or are you just doing that? What are you walking through the door with? Do you have photos, signed autographs? What do you bring?

[Andy Field]

So initially I had a little banner with my name and five nights at Freddy's and a couple of prints, you know, of the game or if you have a character print of your character. My character used to have him in here. My character is a handheld computer and he's only in that first game. And then for like five more games you just hear his voice and you never see him again. And then in this last game, I'm a new character, but still the guide and you can't see him. And then I have two of the animatronics, so I do have pictures of them. And so you have those prints and some Sharpies. A lot of times the con will give you Sharpies. But now I come in with a pretty good bit of stuff. I've got a six by eight banner that I bring that I Usually cover up the banner that the convention makes. I've got like a big standing stand with prints on it. I've got. I just started selling Funko Pops and little keychains and little FNAF merchandise and all that and lots of prints. And then the big thing I have. Oh, I have some in here. My character's catchphrase is exotic butters. And to the point where there were memes remixes with my voice in them. At Hot Topic, you could buy a plushie basket of exotic butters. That's been discontinued. So now it's like $200 on EB. So I've got a bunch of little butters that are squishy and they smell like butter. And I autograph. I autograph these. This one was a practice when I was seeing what pen worked best. But exotic butters.

[Brad Newman]

And that's so crazy.

[Andy Field]

And I get so many of them from China. They cost about the same thing as a print. So I sell them for the same cost as a print.

[Brad Newman]

Well, that's another question. Where you, you, you. Where are you sourcing this stuff? Is this like an Alibaba thing?

[Andy Field]

I got those from Alibaba. In fact, I just got a thousand the other day from Alibaba and they weren't the same. They aren't as squishy. They're like, these are super squishy. But the ones I got are more firm. The standard stress ball. And they're a little smaller. But on the plus side, they're going to be easier to autograph and see how the ink kind of soaks into that after a while. But you can't autograph those. A fine tip pen because the pen just drags in that butter and it's. But the butter, man, people walk up and it's, it's. That's the hero item, right?

[Brad Newman]

I mean that, that's something that's going to stand out.

[Andy Field]

And it's the hero item on my table. Like Hacksaw Jim Dugan signs pieces of 2x4. I don't know if you know if you're Canadian, but he was a percent I know. And he has pieces of two by. And they say, like woo, Hacksaw Jim Dugan. And people walk around the convention with a board all day. It's great, you know, so you find.

[Brad Newman]

Your, find your thing, whatever it is that your character represents. And then you figure out, how do I source this and how do I bring some with me? And that probably makes it a lot easier when you're driving, I'm guessing, versus flying or do you.

[Andy Field]

Yeah, yeah.

[Brad Newman]

Do you have it shipped to the to location or do you bring it in?

[Andy Field]

I brought it on a big suitcase. This time. I got one free check bag and then I paid for another one. And then I had my carry on with all my voiceover stuff in it. But if I'm driving, I'll bring more. Like, I have a little karaoke machine that I bring because I could distort my voice to sound like one of my characters. He says, tickets, please. But when he says it, it's much more distorted. And so when kids hear that, they freak out. You know, they're like, I didn't even know you played him. He's, you know, everybody loves this character. He's a boss villain in the Most recent Game. And they're like, I just thought you were the guy on the radio.

[Brad Newman]

That's so fun.

[Andy Field]

That's. I just. Yeah, it's fun. And, you know, merchants T shirts. Sometimes I've had T shirts. I think I'm Scott Ennis, the Scooby Doo guy, and I are working on making some better shirts, like some flannel shirts with Five Nights at Freddy's on the back and stuff like that. So it's going to be fun.

[Brad Newman]

So talk about hustling this on your own versus finding an agent or a representative to do that for you. Have you crossed that line or have you looked into that at all?

[Andy Field]

Yeah, I've had quite a few appearance agents. I've fired most of them. I haven't fired my current one yet, and she got me one this year. She got me one convention out of. I have 15 conventions in 20, 25. One of those is from the agent, and it was an hour from my house. It was Sunday only. I did it on the way home from one voice conference, which is only four hours from my house. So the thing. And this is really got a parallel to voiceover work. If. If you are a lesser celebrity, like I am, and you try to get on with an agent, every agent's going to have bigger people than you on their roster. So it's kind of like being on. I was on DPN's roster one time in LA. Well, there's 300 people on that page with my name, and probably 20 of them are legends. I mean, like, Tara Strong was on that roster, right?

[Brad Newman]

Yep.

[Andy Field]

So how much attention do you get? Yeah, not a lot. And so. But conventions. Some conventions are big enough that they really want to deal with an agent. You know, the agent contacts them and says, look, I've got these 20 people and one of. And they don't even say your name because you're number 50 on the list. And the convention says, we want those 12. And then the agent handles all the travel and handles all the pay and handles all the, you know, and all that. Or they can get an email from me and they still have to do the same amount of work they did for 12 bigger names. So cracking that code has been tough. So Groucho Marx had this great quote. He said, I would never want to belong to a club that would have me as a member. And it's kind of the same. It's what I tell beginning voice talent. If there's an agent approaching you and you've been doing voiceover for two months, you don't want to be on that roster. You don't want to be on any roster that wants you at this point in your career. That's just some guy scamming you. Same deal. At this point, the agents that I can get, and I'm having some other agents, we're talking. But up until now, the agents that I've been able to get just haven't been willing to give me the attention. And it's also. Some of it is trying to convince an agent who's your age that has. Doesn't know five nights at Freddy's that this is a franchise worth.

[Brad Newman]

Yeah.

[Andy Field]

You know, giving some attention to. But if that agent had booked me these 15 conventions this year, she'd have made six or seven thousand dollars off of me. Yeah, you know, that's. I think I'm gonna make 60 to 70 thousand dollars this year off conventions.

[Brad Newman]

Wow. You know, that's a decent income stream then.

[Andy Field]

Yeah, you know, some. And that's at my level now. I started out and, you know, this is the bizarre part. We are selling our autograph to people or selling the opportunity to take a selfie to people. And it's a bizarre notion. Like, I don't think I would ever. I don't know, I almost thought about paying for Weird Al Yankovic's autograph. But it was a hundred. A hundred dollars for the autograph. And people were. There was a line, a long line, like an hour long line for this. So, you know, guys like that are going home with a suitcase with maybe $80,000 in it at the end of a weekend or more, all cash. But what is a weekend worth to Weird Al Yankovic? How do you get him to come? You know, and it's the same with me. What. What money is it worth to me to Give up not just two days for Comic Con, but a day to travel to get there and a day to travel to get home. I could have been doing chores, I could have been mowing the grass. You know, I could have been hanging out with family.

[Brad Newman]

Not as much fun, right?

[Andy Field]

You know, so what did a star of the Walking Dead make on an episode? It might have been $80,000 per episode, you know, so you know, you have to say, how do I get this? And how does the convention owner even make money? Well, the vendors pay to be there and then off ticket sales, maybe concessions. And so it's all a balancing act.

[Brad Newman]

But let's just carry on that line with revenue. You mentioned autographs, you mentioned selfies. And then you've got things like you've sourced your Alibaba. You said you get the Funko Pops. Where are you sourcing those?

[Andy Field]

Well, I found, I can't. You can't order them from Funko directly unless you're a distributor and you spend more than 50k a year. So then Funko recommends some resellers. Well then I've contacted them and they're like, you have to have a reseller certificate from your state. So like if you're a comic shop or something like that. Okay, So I find I found some on ebay for like seven or eight dollars a piece. But at this past convention I sold them so fast I went out to the vendors at the convention and bought them. And some of them were $10 and some of them were $20. But, but the idea there, my Funko Pops are part of an upsell. So again, this is all business, right? So all right, let me back up. I started and I was charging like $20 an autograph. And then I went up to 30 and nobody was batting an eye at it. And then I went up to 40 and nobody was batting an eye at it. And I was smoked. Like I had to stop the line at some big conventions to go to the bathroom and I'm like, maybe we should get people to bat an eye at it. So you know, so this past convention I went up to 50. So 50 for an autograph, 40 for a selfie, $70 if you got em both, that's a combo. So then I got a pricing model from Scott Dreher, who's the voice of Knuckles the Echidna in Sonic the Hedgehog, which is much bigger than me. Like I was at a convention where I was busy and he was like super busy. So he had a hundred dollar package and for the $100 package you got an autograph, you got a selfie, you got a Funko pop. Like you bought the pop and he autographed the pop. And so all of that separately might have been $160, but it was $100. But really the idea of the pop is just to upsell.

[Brad Newman]

Sure.

[Andy Field]

You know, so if I buy a pop for $20 and I sell you that hundred dollar package, I'm making zero on the pop. But you may have spent an extra $10. You know, I may have just upsold and made another $10 on that. So. And I had four or five people buy that $100 package this past weekend. That was a big convention.

[Brad Newman]

So bundling, looking for different merch ideas. It's not just about. It can be pictures and autographs, but it can be so much more than that if you've got the character and the leverage that you can lean into to do some of those extra things.

[Andy Field]

And I've been leaning into, you know, I listen to other marketing things, like for one thing, Disney has this model where Disney lists their most expensive things first so that you feel like the things below it are a better deal. And so I just started doing that with my pricing. Like we start with that hundred dollar package and then people go all the way down. Also at the bottom of my list is a 50% military discount. So if you read long enough, you'll, you'll. And so I get a lot of military ID cards. And so that a hundred dollar packet is now a $50 packet. And I may need to rethink that because I lose. I mean, I had to pay for the pop, you know, so I may actually be losing a little money on that. But, But I saw a thing the other day it talked about. You may have been the one that posted. It was about how movie theaters price popcorn. Was that you?

[Brad Newman]

I actually, my kid did a speech on this last year in school and we actually sat down and worked out the logistics. And it's like a 13, 25% markup on popcorn or something like that.

[Andy Field]

But let's say a small popcorn is $6 and a large popcorn is $10.

[Brad Newman]

Yep.

[Andy Field]

We'll price a medium at 9. No one ever buys the medium, but that medium makes everybody buy the large because it feels like such a good deal.

[Brad Newman]

Yep.

[Andy Field]

And so I'm using some of those ideas in my pricing.

[Brad Newman]

There's a lot of psychology that goes.

[Andy Field]

Into the pricing side of it. So if it's $50 for an autograph and $50 for a selfie, and it's $70 for a packet. Then, you know, there's the psychology there that I'm getting. I may as well spend the extra $20, you know, because I'm saving $30. And I say all this. I need to inject this here. This all sounds kind of sleazy and businesslike. I don't think I would do this if I didn't feel like it was offering some value. The people that I meet are truly excited about this. This is something that they go home and talk about forever forcing it on anyone. I watched a bigger celebrity in the airport yesterday and lots of people in the airport knew who he was. He was an on camera celebrity. Like a luggage guy came in from the tarmac to take a picture with him. I mean, it was that big. And that guy really, he took the pictures, but he didn't seem happy about it. It. And I don't want to ever get there. What a privilege to be bothered by the thing you dreamed about. What a privilege to have to stop what you're doing because someone loves what you do and wants to shake your hand. And so I say all that to say I need to make the money because I need to make these weekends worth doing. And also, AI can't take your personal appearances away. My VO work is slowly fading, but. So I don't want anyone to listen to this, think that that's so sleazy and you're selling your autograph and I.

[Brad Newman]

You know, no, I don't think it's like that at all. I mean, this is a fandom, right? People show up to do this. I mean, crap, if I went to one of these things and I came across Christopher Lloyd or you know, one of the Ghostbusters, right? Like, come on.

[Andy Field]

Yeah, Christopher Lloyd does 15 year old.

[Brad Newman]

Me is losing his mind and opening.

[Andy Field]

His wallet like, yeah, yeah, I get it. And they were, yeah, like I saw Michael Rooker from the Walking Dead and from Guardians of the Galaxy and you know, I didn't go up, go Michael Rook. But man, it was kind of cool just to walk by and see him over there. Yeah, it was, it was neat. And Carl from the Walking Dead was there and he looks, doesn't even look the same. He's so old now. But you know, Drake Bell was there from Josh and Drake, and I'm not a fan of that, but he did a concert and I mean, the kids were nuts about that. So just. It's Lou Ferrigno that played the Incredible Hulk on the TV show, sat right across from me and I'm like, oh, Bam Margera from Jackass was right across from me. He had a line all day. The longest line I saw was the guy that played Neville Longbottom in Harry Potter. Like, he only came out every now and then to do autographs and there would be people waiting for him to come out. I mean, it was.

[Brad Newman]

It's crazy to me. Like, a couple. I feel like I don't even. I don't even know. I mean, you said you did your first con in like 2017. I feel like I didn't even start hearing about these things until a few years ago. They are getting really exploded.

[Andy Field]

It's exploded and they're everywhere. So if you go to fancons.com or fancons.org There's a pretty exhaustive list everywhere. And you can search by geography or by country or by town. And there's another one, there's another con page, rostercons.org I think. And even then, some of the Cons don't make that. Like, if you just Google where you live. Toronto, Canada. Comic cons, or really they're pop culture cons, but comic Cons, anime cons, horror cons are pretty common. But it's incredible. I mean, like, there's a con in Tupelo, Mississippi. There's a con in Lafayette, Louisiana. Pretty good one. There's a con in Santa Fe, New Mexico. Albuquerque, New Mexico is one of the bigger ones in the country. And you would think Albuquerque, what? You know, Huntsville, Alabama, huge convention. William Shatner, Priscilla Presley, and Weird Al Yankovic. We're at Huntsville, Alabama, which is, I.

[Brad Newman]

Mean, I guess feels random, but hey.

[Andy Field]

Yeah, well, Huntsville's a. A pretty great town, but it's not a major city of. It's not a great city of the world. It's not San Diego.

[Brad Newman]

Yeah.

[Andy Field]

You know, and San Diego likes to say they're the biggest in the world. But there's two in Brazil that are bigger than the one in San Diego. There's one in Mexico City that's bigger than one in San Diego.

[Brad Newman]

Have you ever done one outside of.

[Andy Field]

The U.S. i've tried. I got invited to one called Brazil Game show bgs and then covet hit and then we tried to schedule it the next year and we just couldn't get travel to work out.

[Brad Newman]

Are there logistics that would work into that as far as video? Do you need some kind of special visa or something or would. I guess.

[Andy Field]

I think Brazil. Brazil does have one. And I think there's a special. I don't remember what it was, but they Put my mind at ease about it. But, like, Mexico, that's an easy one. And I love Mexico and I speak Spanish. So, like, I'm really right now in my brain aggressively thinking about La Mole in Mexico City. Or ccxp. Comic Con Experience is a Brazilian show that's moved to Mexico City. I'd love to do one of those, man. Anything. But really, I kind of even got my chat GPT to kind of lay out some European comic cons. If I could get, like, four in a row, four different weekends in Europe, I would just do, like, a European tour.

[Brad Newman]

Yeah.

[Andy Field]

You know, I might even pay for my own flight to do that.

[Brad Newman]

Yep.

[Andy Field]

Because the conventions would end up paying for the trip. So that would be kind of cool. If you have the money up front to front. That. That's. That's another thing, too.

[Brad Newman]

It feels to me like. I mean, this is like voiceover. It's like anything else. Right. If you're going to be a successful voice actor, the. The voice actors who are going to succeed are the ones who are willing to put in the time. The. The hustle. Right. If you want to open up cons as an income stream, it sounds like it's a very viable income stream, you know, if you've got the right character and you're in the right franchise or whatever. But it's not like you're just going to show up and just walk away with a paycheck. Like, there's some hustle that goes into this. You got to be willing to put in the time. You got to be willing to track down, you know, the promoter. I guess it is. Get yourself in the door.

[Andy Field]

Yeah.

[Brad Newman]

Source your merch, show up with everything. Like. But if you're willing to put in the Hustle, there's an opportunity there. I'm curious on the other side, we've talked financial. Has it ever opened up any voiceover opportunities for you just because of who all you're in the room with?

[Andy Field]

I have. Not from the cons, but from Five Nights at Freddy's. I have been cast by two fans, and they make a lot of fan games. I get messages almost daily. Would you be in my Five Nights at Freddy's fan game? And I can't do that. I probably can, but I won't, because I don't want to saturate. I don't want to cheapen my brand.

[Brad Newman]

Sure.

[Andy Field]

You know, I don't want to be the voice of Five Nights at Freddy's and Five Nights at Johnny's and Cico Noches and Alfredo's which is there's a Spanish, you know, and all that. So I don't do that. So if you're going to cast me to be the handheld computer guide in your haunted pizzeria, we can't do that.

[Brad Newman]

Yep.

[Andy Field]

But one cast me as like an EMT in his video game. And the female lead in that video game won the One Voice award for best video game a few weeks ago. I mean, so this was a Five Nights at Freddy's fan who wanted me and then another one. This is funny. I think I told you about this recently, but not obviously not a podcast. He posted that he was doing a documentary in Louisiana about shrimp and he interviewed a guy that sounded like me and he tagged me and I replied and said he does sound a lot like me. Also, I live in Louisiana. Also I narrate documentaries. And it. And so he cast me and I'm in his documentary. It's coming out in a couple of weeks. It's about, it's called Shrimp Gate and it's about Gulf coast shrimp, other. Other countries selling shrimp to the United States and it being falsely marketed as Gulf coast shrimp and not as good.

[Brad Newman]

So you never know what other types of crazy.

[Andy Field]

Right. It's going to open up and I want to. I may have gotten another one here or there. Like I'm marketing myself to Halloween attractions now. And you know, one of the emails that goes out in that sequence is, did you know I'm the voice of Five Nights at Freddy's? Which is a big deal in the haunted world.

[Brad Newman]

Sure. So however you can leverage it.

[Andy Field]

In fact, I'm doing a horror convention in Richmond, Virginia next month in October.

[Brad Newman]

So I know nothing about cons. So I was trying to do some research to try and ask intelligent questions and fish the right information out for somebody who's interested in exploring this. But as the guy who's done, you know, you're going into, you know, 40 or 50 of these things now at this point. You've been across the board as far as smaller ones, larger ones. You've, you've had all the experiences. What didn't I ask that somebody should know if they're thinking about trying to get in?

[Andy Field]

You really hit a lot of it. And I was thinking about this ahead of time too on all of that. There's a forward facing element, there's a performative element to this, just like in voiceover. So it's not just getting the gig, but being good at the gig when it gets there. If you are an introvert, it's more Difficult. It's more exhausting. I mean, I'm an extrovert and I'm, I just got home like an hour before this interview. This is a Tuesday from a three day convention. I mean, I've been gone since Thursday and this is Tuesday. There's an element of interacting with the public. Like I've seen guys from Marvel movies sit at their table and chew their fingernail and look down at their phone as fans walked by. And the fans are, and as you might guess, the fans are already not the most proficient socialites. I mean, there are certainly some people who are extremely impressive that walk up to your table. But a lot of my fans are autistic teenagers, you know, of varying degrees of that. And even if they aren't autistic, they're still just teenagers that don't know how to interact with people. And so my wife has been a great coach. She kind of sits there as my manager and cash counter and all that. And she'll say, there's somebody over there and I'll make eye contact with somebody 20ft away on the floor who's looking at me and I'll call them in and even if they don't have any money or even if they, they just want to say hi, you know, and we, they, they were so excited to be able to say hi. And that's, that's why you're there. You're not there to make money. Like, you're there to meet the people who spent there. Some of these people have been saving all year. Somebody commented on my TikTok the other day that they plan for a convention the way they plan for going to war. He said, that's a, I need six months notice that your convention, you're going to be at a convention. And I'm like, that's why I try to tell convention, you know, I'm going to a convention next month that hasn't announced me yet. I'm like, we've got to start announcing this. There's people who, I've had people message me the day after a convention and say, I live an hour from there and had no idea that you were going to be there. So that's conventions marketing. But it's, I mean, I'm like, well, I mean, I don't know how to make more TikTok videos. I mean, I made three that said I was going to be there. One guy messaged me yesterday and said, I live two and a half hours from that con and I had no idea you were there. And the con was in East Tennessee. So I know he lives. And I said, well, I'm going to be in Chattanooga, Tennessee at the end of the month. He said, oh my gosh, I live in Chattanooga. And I'm like, there you go. So just, I'm doing three conventions in Tennessee this month, which is a very odd happenstance, but they're not good.

[Brad Newman]

Think it's a beautiful place to go visit.

[Andy Field]

It is. And Tennessee is a huge state. It's 10 hours from 1 end to the other. So it's not like any of these are near each other. And it's not saturated for me because most of my fans still young, you know, I'm not William Shatner. People aren't taking an eight hour flight to come get my autograph. But, but the forward facing element of it. And, and you know, I love to coach people who are new to the thing on how you interact with the fans and what you say. And sometimes you need to steer the conversation because a kid with no social skills, if there's not a line at your table, he'll stay 30 minutes, you know, and I'm like, I need to go to lunch, I need to eat. You know, it's stuff. So after a little bit of initial conversation, I will lean into a suggestive, sell a little bit and say, oh, did you want to get an autographed exotic butter or did you, you know, you know, and, and if they say, oh, no, I don't have any money, then I kind of close it out by saying, well, saying hello is 100 free. You can do that to every celebrity here, even the biggest ones. And, and I'm so glad that you did, you know, and I'm very smooth. But it's taken me, you know, 40 conventions to kind of, kind of figure that out to build the script. But I ask almost every one of them as they come up, what's your favorite five nights at Freddy's game? Because we needed something to talk about and that needs to be five nights.

[Brad Newman]

At Freddy's breaks the ice.

[Andy Field]

And, you know, every one of us like, oh, that's so hard. I'm like, how can it be hard? How could you not have a favorite? But, and then if they say, you know, one of the games, I, I know my lines from each game and so I'll, I'll spit one out immediately. And, and the jaw drops. I, I, I need to remember to tell parents to get out your phone and film your child because the change in facial expression is about to be epic for most of them. And here's Something that I've noticed recently because of my five nights at Freddy's roles. People in general have vastly different ears for things, which is discouraging because that's why so many people think AI voiceovers are good and they're fine. But some fans know me the instant I open my mouth. Some fans, I can do a line from Sister Location Game five and they freak out. And then I can do a line from Security Breach Game seven and they freak out again. I'm like, did you not know that was the same voice in both of those games? They sound just like this. And then we go to Secret of the Mimic, the newest game, and they freak out again. I'm like, the whole fandom has been like, as soon as the trailer came out for the game, they're like, oh, my gosh, Andy's back. And he doesn't sound like a computer this time. I mean, it's. It's just so funny. And then some people immediately, right away, they're like, yeah, I know you're in all these games and you play this, this, and this character. It's just funny how different people's ears are for that. But yeah. And then mothers will be like, oh, my gosh, are you our ways navigation voice? She makes me have, you know, I.

[Brad Newman]

Listened to you to get here? Yeah.

[Andy Field]

And I do, you know, like, when you get to your destination, I say, you've reached your destination. Well done. And well done. I probably say 20 times in the game help wanted. Because I instruct you through all these tasks and well done, well done. And so they like, they like, I live for the well done. Yeah.

[Brad Newman]

It really does sound like a fun world to get into if you have the credit or credits that can get you into it. And there's certainly a lot to explore there. So I think you've covered a ton of ground here. And hopefully I've asked the questions that people wanted to get answered to learn more about it. But if somebody's interested, wants to dive in a little bit deeper, I mean, you said you've coached some voice actors on how to handle themselves at these things or whatever. How do we get in touch with you?

[Andy Field]

Yeah, and I do get other lesser celebrities that email me every now and then, like, how do I do this and all this? It's andyndiefieldvoiceover.com deliberately easy to find. If you Google Andy Field, voice actor, you will get quite a few websites, but my official one's in there somewhere. So if you forget my email address, just remember Andy Field, like, football Field, like Field of Dreams.

[Brad Newman]

And we'll put it in the show notes so that'll be easy to find. Well, Andy, this has been absolutely fantastic, and I'm really grateful that you came on. And we're, we're so open about it because not everybody is always willing to share. They want you to go out and do the research yourself or whatever. But, I mean, this is a form of research. Trying to, Trying to understand, but yeah.

[Andy Field]

And if. Sounds like a fun world. Yeah. And if you're a fan that was listening to all this, I hate that you had to see how the sausage is made. But that's, you know, that's. That's just part of it. It's all good.

[Brad Newman]

This is going to be my most downloaded YouTube video, most watched YouTube video.

[Andy Field]

I'm debating whether I should help pitch it or not, but I think because.

[Brad Newman]

I'm going to have your name in it so it'll help the channel and then everybody like, what? This isn't what I thought I was signing up for. All right, man. Well, thank you so much for coming on and sharing your expertise. I truly do appreciate it.

[Andy Field]

Thank you for having me, man. It's always a pleasure. The everyday Veopreneur podcast, available at Everywhere Find Podcasts are given away for free. Mostly. We think you have a great website. Right. Well, make sure you host it at some place that doesn't suck. Hey, it's Brad Newman, fellow VO Pro for 28 years and owner of Upper Level Hosting.com. people ask, why us? And that's simple.

[Brad Newman]

We make it easy, respect your time.

[Andy Field]

Save you money, and just make all the magic happen. You don't need to know all the tech stuff. When it comes to hosting your website, we got you. Ask around ten tens of thousands of.

[Brad Newman]

Client interactions later and six years of.

[Andy Field]

Amazing customer service and not a single negative complaint. Ever. Upper levelhosting.com and see. And that's a wrap. Thanks for hanging in. Thanks for hanging out. Want more Veopreneur goodness? Jump [e-mail].