How I cast voices for four cartoon cats

I cast the voices for Duma Meow's four cartoon cats by running a structured test: every cat said the same Vietnamese line, Ham chơi!, in every candidate voice, arranged so that no voice got an unfair advantage. That made 16 turns in total, laid out as a Latin square, and it gave me a fair way to compare voices before committing.

The final pick has not been made yet, so this is a look at the method rather than the answer.

Who needed voices?

Duma Meow is a Vietnamese 2D cartoon comedy with four original cats, each with a clear personality:

• Maelis, the deadpan one
• Corin, the flustered one
• Seraph, the wildcard
• Luna, the always-prepared one

You can meet them in Meet Duma Meow: four cartoon cats and a Vietnamese comedy. Each personality puts different demands on a voice. Deadpan needs restraint; flustered needs energy and wobble; a wildcard needs surprise; and a prepared character needs confidence.

Where do the voices come from?

The voices are generated in Vietnamese with ElevenLabs v3. I picked four candidate voices and gave each cat a provisional match:

• Lily for Maelis
• Liam for Corin
• Jessica for Seraph
• Laura for Luna

Provisional is the key word. Matching a voice to a character on paper is easy. Hearing it deliver an actual line in character is where you find out whether it works.

Why one line for everyone?

If each cat says a different line, you end up comparing the lines, not the voices. A funny line makes a voice seem better than it is. So I used one short, punchy Vietnamese line for every turn: Ham chơi!

Ham chơi describes someone who loves playing too much and neglects their responsibilities, and it works as a teasing exclamation. It is short, it has emotion in it, and it can be said in many ways: scolding, amused, exasperated or sly. That range makes it a good test line. The full meaning is explained in ham chơi meaning and the cartoon cat voice test.

What is a Latin square, and why use one?

A Latin square is a grid where each item appears exactly once in every row and every column. With four cats and four voices, it looks like this:

• Round 1: each cat uses a different voice.
• Round 2: the voices rotate one position.
• Rounds 3 and 4: they rotate again.

By the end, every cat has said Ham chơi! in every voice, and every voice has appeared once in every round. That is four cats times four voices, which is the 16 turns.

The benefit is fairness. Order effects are real in any listening test: the first thing you hear sets an anchor, and you get tired or used to things as you go. Rotating the voices through every position spreads those effects evenly, so no single voice benefits from always going first or last.

What happens to each line after it is generated?

A few production rules apply to every voice line in Duma Meow, including the test:

• Lines are trimmed, never time-stretched. I cut silence and fit timing by trimming. Stretching audio changes how a voice sounds, which would defeat the point of judging it.
• Mouth flaps are driven by loudness. The cats' mouths open and close based on the volume of the audio, so a voice's dynamics directly affect how alive the animation looks.
• Clips are vertical 1080×1920 for Shorts.
• Every clip passes a flashing-safety check, at 0 flashes per second.

The loudness-driven mouths are a practical casting factor. A flat voice gives you flat animation. A voice with natural peaks and dips makes the mouths look like they are really talking.

Can you hear the test?

Yes. The test is published as a Short: the ham chơi voice test. Watching it, you can judge for yourself which voice suits which cat.

What to listen for if you run your own casting test

If you are casting voices for your own characters, a few general questions help:

• Does the voice fit the character's energy in a single line, without explanation?
• Can you tell the characters apart with your eyes closed?
• Does the voice survive trimming without sounding cut off?
• Does it hold up across a range of emotions, not just the test line?
• Does it still sound right on phone speakers, where most Shorts are watched?

Keeping the test line, the order and the processing identical is what makes the comparison meaningful.

More Duma Meow is on the Voiceover with jimwest405 YouTube channel, including the other three cats' introductions such as Meet Luna, the always-prepared cat.

If you are casting your own characters, pick one short, emotional line and rotate every voice through every role; it is the simplest fair test there is.