InGame SFX Demo

Heya!

For this month I decided to put together some work I've done for my last project : The Secret World (Funcom) which is a AAA MMOrpg released last July - I had enough material to do an In-Game demo where you can hear some sounds I created for monsters, magic powers, and ambiences...

I felt that working as a sound designer on an MMO can be pretty challenging coz you can find yourself doing sounds for basically anything in the game - Then you can be able to have a pretty good idea of what you're best at and specialized..

For myself I ended up specializing in Magic as there was a big part of it in the game, like the majority of the MMOs.. Working at Funcom was an interesting experience in my career and helped me to be more creative and polyvalent, I hope you'll have fun listening!

Shake that tooth!

Hi there! Been working last year on some monster and this dude was supposed to make weird sounds with his teeth - the direction was to go for some teeth chattering, jaw clanking, stuff that can enoy you enough to stay away from him.. Here is a few extracts of the files I produced, enjoy :-)

Regarding my original material for these sounds, it was multiple takes of teeth clanking and jaws dislocation movements. I recorded the sounds with an AKG C 414 and I had to compress them a lot because even if the person was quite close to the mic, the clanking was to soft..

So compression and a bit of maximising helped me to get the presence and punch I wanted! I also filtered with a low cut everything under 200 Hz which wasn't needed for this type of sound. And finally I automated a pitch shift plugin now and again and use time compression (Flex time in Logic) to make the clanking a little faster. Here is a picture of the Logic strip with the plugins I used.

Teeth chatter 1 by gugasprod Teeth chatter 2 by gugasprod Teeth chatter 3 by gugasprod

Trailer Sound

                                   

It's been a long time since I wanted to challenge myself audiowise on some combat/action scene but when working full time on a project it's not always easy to find the time and motivation for it.. Don't get me wrong I love creating sounds but sometimes you just want to chill out with your friends and see something different than your beloved DAW eh eh!

Anyway, I managed to find some time recently to rework a scene from the latest Mortal Kombat game. For the E3 in 2011, Warner Bros Interactive released a nice CG trailer where you can see Scorpion and Subzero fighting for victory.. And what was interesting for me is that I just spent 8 months creating magic sounds for a AAA game project so having the combination of action and magic was a perfect little challenge.

The way I started on this one was to create a general ambience first and place some markers on important moments like when the action is forward (giant kick, power throw, etc..). Then I did a list of all the powers used and I built a "sound palette" to create the magic sounds for my 2 buddies (Scorpion and Subzero) that was the longest part : finding the right sounds to process, build layers, etc.. And finally, I cleaned up all my layers in my session and added sweeteners where it was needed like for example on the chain at the end where I added a special stereo delay when the blade is thrown.

Regarding the mix, it's wiser to start mixing low and bring the volume up slowly so that you have more space in the dynamic for the big moments.. But for my case, I also compared my mixing with other game trailers, it helped!

For the final step when I was satisfied with my work.. I passed my mix through a Tornade MS Bus compressor that one of my friend makes and it sounds pretty cool, it added a bit of punchyness to my mix even if this type of compressor is mainly used in music : it's basically made of the same components that you can find on the master bus center compressor of the SSL 4000 G console, exiting!

Here is a link where you can buy this awesome machine for anyone interested : http://www.audioaddict.fr/?page_id=1927

My Tornade MS Compressor

Make it Thunder!

I bought a spring/thunder drum a year ago to use it on the game project I was working on lately and I found it really useful to create some dreamy/eerie ambiences. What is interesting with that instrument is that you just basically shake it with one hand and it will produce a nice beefy drone, the more you shake it, the more intensity you get on the drone's sound, pretty easy eh!

Spring Drum in the studio

So first weekend of June, we decided with a friend to experiment a bit with it and of course record it! We tried differents things with the spring drum : shaking it as we should to get the drone, using scissors to hit the string during the shake so that we could have these metallic small impacts on top of the drones, then we did a few vocalizations in the tube while the drone was playing, we had some pretty interesting results.. I just processed a bit my friend's voice who was definitely inspired that day to do some kind of dinosaur/reptile monster voice and that was it.. We recorded the sounds using a Fostex FR-2 recorder and an XY stereo mic : the Rode NT4. Here's a comp of my best takes, enjoy!

Ambience SpringDrum Compilation 01 by gugasprod

Magnetic!

It's been a long time since I wanted to record some magnetic sources and after reading nice documented blogs from other sound designers (JED and faunethic to name a few..), I thought it would be fun to give it a shot!

With a friend of mine a few months ago, I bought a Seymour Duncan pickup and we started experimenting with our new toy.. I used it in combination with 2 recorders a Fostex FR-2 and a Sony D-50. I try to record all sort of equipment such as : Hard drives, hoovers,  a Liquid mixer, remote controls (TVs and smaller ones), small milk mixers, fans, motorized screwdrivers, etc..

Seymour Duncan Pickup

To have the best results while recording I had to use the pickup really close to the source and push the gain quite dramatically on the recorders as these sounds can be very quiet especially for the remotes that produced the beeps "data" type of sound when you push keys on them.
Also in general, I found that the sound produced was more interesting on small sources that I could control (HD, razors, motorized tools) rather than big ones like huge fans that generates a constant hum..

Anyway have fun listening to the one minute medley I made from my best magnetic recordings! Regarding the processing on these takes, I did not do that much except denoising and a bit of compression.


Magnetism_DataVariations_01 by gugasprod

Unworldly Organ

Last time I went to New York, I walked downtown and we saw a church called "St-Thomas", it's in the middle of the skyescrapers in the midtown center. We decided to go inside to see the look of it : the design inside was beautiful but very quiet, not a lot of people just one guy with a broom cleaning up the area.. We just took a few pictures, check a bit the area then suddenly we heard a massive sound coming from the 1st level of the church, there was this chinese lady practicing the organ but man the sound was pretty scary!! I had this image of the frankenstein mansion in my mind without the rain and the thunder but still freaky.

I am glad I had my portable recorder this day, I tried to find the best spot : in the middle of the church below the organ tubes but not too close so I could benefit of the church reverb, I waited for a little pause in her game, hit record and that was it! Here is a sample of it after a bit of editing and level matching.