Nathan Lowe ’94 has done voice-over work for video game characters and for companies including National Geographic, Aetna, Walmart, Cisco and Hardee’s, but he’s most proud of working with YouTube creators Wisecrack to bring philosophical thought and smart conversations back in vogue through their show 8-Bit Philosophy.
“The idea was to explore philosophical ideas through the lens of classic 8-bit video games. It was close to my heart because it brought me back to a first love, philosophy, which I studied at Wofford and in graduate school,” says Lowe. Twists of fate took Lowe away from the academy, but he still firmly believes that philosophical thought and training are something society desperately needs.
Lowe and his partner, Mia, moved to Los Angeles after graduate school at the University of South Carolina — “the real USC,” he says to annoy local University of Southern California Trojan fans.
“Mia nudged me toward radio as a way to begin looking at voice acting — to which I had always been drawn, but hadn’t really thought of as being an option,” says Lowe.
He started humpbackmedia because “broadband internet began to allow, for the ‘average’ person, remote connections to other studios, and for actors from all over the world to be heard and hired without those traditional gatekeepers. ... It was a real disrupter, as the saying goes,” says Lowe, an early adopter in that new workflow. He chose the name in homage to the camel. They’re all over his studio.
“They’re straightforward, sometimes ornery, pretty much always a bit bloody-minded, yet get the work done. They’re not flashy, certainly not Hollywood, and since I am a bit of all those things, it seemed like a perfect fit.”
By Jo Ann Mitchell Brasington ’89