Demo reel breakdown: weapons and armor

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In this continuing series, I take a look at the sound designs from my Oblivion demo reel clip.

I wanted to create the bow and arrow sounds myself for this clip, but I wasn’t able to coordinate with my archer friend to record. I was going to have to create the sounds from scratch, as components.

The main bow-draw sounds came from some experiments with a slingshot and a thin wooden dowel. The friction of the arrow against the frame, combined with the stretch of the elastic bands got me in the right neighborhood for the draw sound. Unfortunately, disaster struck as I was experimenting with ways to record the arrow loosing part of the sound, and one of the bands snapped. Although I was able to get a few recordings of bow releases, they needed a serious amount of oomph.

I decided to record various types of strings and cords under tension to mix in on both the low and high ends of the sound spectrum. It was quite the arm and pec workout just stretching a cord in both hands, not to mention that I practically needed to pluck it with my teeth. Instead, I tied one end to my pullup bar and torqued the other with a gloved hand.

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Cube Implementation Work in Progress

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As I learn more about using the Wwise sound engine, I have been working on creating new sounds for the open-source FPS Cube.

Here is an early video from when I had just finished adding the basic sound elements for the enemies and weapons*.

The monsters and player voices were are all taken from vocal sounds that I recorded myself. Some were pitched and layers, others vocoded, flanged or otherwise modulated to get the right character. I’m quite proud of the performance I did for the hell pigs.


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Demo reel breakdown: creature vocal effects

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In this continuing series, I take a look at the sound designs from my Oblivion demo reel clip.

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The Flame Atronach, the main enemy in this clip, is a fiery creature from another plane of existence. I wanted to give it an evil, demonic quality. Here are some of the unedited vocals I recorded of myself:

After cleaning up some of the background noise, I applied pitch effects and a little bit of vibrato to get the following:

I thought it was getting close to the right sound, but I also wanted to impart some more menace by modulating the voice clips with elements of rock and fire. I fired up FL Studio and set up a channel with a vocoder so that I could mess around with different carrier waves (roaring fires, road construction, avalanches, etc.)

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More recording projects

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One of the video clips that I’m redoing the soundtrack takes place on a wooden billboard scaffolding. I needed to record clean footsteps, impacts, and friction sounds, but it can be difficult to control all the variables. There are some boardwalk areas near my house that I’ve recorded in the past, but I’ve always had to struggle with noise from the wind and waves, not to mention distant boat and car traffic. I found a wooden pallet outside of a dumpster the other day and saw my golden opportunity.

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This turned out to be pretty good (and free) foley stage.

The clip involves a couple of bodies falling onto wood, so I made myself a foley dummy. I filled a gym bag with shoes, clothes, and books and dropped it from various heights to record these.

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This should be good for the main meat of the body falls.

I wanted to record some heartbeat sound effects for a game project to use as an auditory health cue, so I set out to try and build a sort of stethoscope using household items. I took the plastic lid of a cd spindle and wrapped the open end with saran wrap and affixed a rubber band around it to form a diaphragm. I drilled a hole in the other end and attached a cardboard tube that was just wider than one of my condenser microphones.
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This is one of the recordings, after a little bit of compression and noise reduction:

Demo Reel breakdown: the Oblivion Gate

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I’m going to start writing about the process of sound design from my demo reel. First up is the Oblivion gate from the Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion.

In TES: IV, Oblivion Gates are mysterious portals to a hellish plane of existence. For the base of the sound, I wanted to combine elements of fire (various library sources ranging from campfires to forest infernos), earth (low rumbling earthquake), and electricity (arc welder) in a way that would sell the visuals.

Separate elemental sounds:

Combined together with some effects:

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No More Room In Hell Soundtrack Accolades!

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I’m proud as hell to say that Gamefront.com has included No More Room In Hell among the games with the best soundtracks of 2014. Check it out. We’re in the same company as Far Cry 4 and Dragon Age: Inquisition!

On a related note, Garret Lindquist‘s first album of OST tunes is available for a few bucks off during the Steam sale, so now’s a great time to pick it up. No More Room in Hell – Original Soundtrack Volume 1

Pre-holiday update

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Things are ramping up for the holidays. I’ve been recording drums for my band Identity Collapse‘s new EP, learning Wwise, and composing a new track for the No More Room In Hell soundtrack. Speaking of which, we’re in the running for the MODDB Mod of the Year voting again. I’ve also made some additions to the Portfolio section of my page.

All the best to you and yours, whether you celebrate Christmas or some nameless arcane Solstice feast from before mankind emerged from the primordial ooze. Here’s to a prosperous 2015.