Sound Design Projects
Here are a few examples of some sound designing projects I have worked on so far. Being the sound designer for these projects, allowed me to design and create all of the sounds being heard within all of the videos.
Last month, I was assigned to a project called "The Blacksmith". The project, for the most part, consisted of a video and live game play. This project taught me a lot in terms of finding or creating sounds for picture and game, but also taught me how to apply the right sounds in the right places for things to run smoothly through a project. I started off with the video of the Blacksmith in the house and then starts walking towards the door. Within this part of the project, I learned the importance of different variables that bring a video to life. Things I considered were the background noise, noticeable noises, distant noises, weight sounds of objects, weight sounds of footsteps, clothing and movement sounds, and much more. While working on the game aspect of the project, I had to consider mostly the same things that were in the video before of the person walking. Within the game, I mainly focused on having impactful sounds and having differences in weight sounds between people and objects. I designed and implemented sounds into the game for the character, enemies, and every other sound effect heard within the gaming video. I had a great time working on this project for this month and it taught me the importance of sounds, accuracy, and mixing assets.
In this video, I was assigned the tasks to create sounds for a video game called "Spellcaster". I created all of the sounds heard in the video game from scratch and developed them to the motion of the character and the magical effect.
This month, I was working on a sound design project for a game called "Underworld". This project, in my opinion, was extremely interesting as I learned the basics and importance of sound designing for a game. I had no idea how many places sound could be produced from and used for in sound design. The sound design process opened my eyes to many small but important details that can help improve a person's gaming experience. In this game, I experimented with different sounds I found and manipulated to fit the environment and I also implemented some vocal recordings to enhance the overall experience.
Environmental assets:
When I first saw the cave, automatically I knew I wanted to make the theme mysterious and spooky. I found a dark delirium ambient sound that I liked and made it the main loop so that it could help create a better setting. The character is walking through a cave which means they are walking into different sections of the cave which vary in size. To compliment the different room sizes, like the big open space walking over the bridge, I used an alto/tenor sci-fi drone hum to give off a gritty feeling. I also used ambient wind chimes and air conditioning ventilation sounds for the other different spaces within the game.
Stingers:
Playing a game and walking around in a cave wouldn’t seem very realistic if there weren’t little sudden sound that occur to help make player feel like they were actually in a cave. Aren’t there living things living in a cave? Animals and creatures perhaps? For this game setting, I implemented the sounds of bat wings fluttering, crickets chirping, monster whispers, snakes hissing and the echo of water droplets. I added some reverb to these stingers to give them more of a natural decay in the cave environment. These stingers can be played at any time during the game.
Sound Effects:
Within the game, there are many sound effects that could be implemented such as sounds for the fire torches along the cave walls. The sound I used for the fire along the walls was an audio recording of actual fire crackling and popping. I chopped the audio recording up of fire crackling and popping into three different assets in order to give off the feeling that there were multiple torches in the setting. Next, I focused on the sound for the portal and a sound for walking through the portal. I discovered a sound I liked that gave off this pulse energy feel and another sound that sounded like a zap but also as if it were pulling you in.
Vocal Phrases:
What could make a dark cave walk creepier? Mysterious voices perhaps? I implemented audio recording in order to give the player of the game the ultimate feeling that they are entering into someone’s domain. I had one of my vocal artists come and record three different vocal phrases to include in different parts of the game. After I got the finished audio recording, I added some pitch modulation to the audio to make it sound like a dark and evil person talking. I also added some reverb to the newly pitched audio recording and to the original audio recording in order to have a smooth and understanding dialog.