1: Character Font, and a new collaborator
Hi there!!
Thanks for subscribing to my newsletter! I'm excited to share a little bit about my journey in sound design and life with you, and hope that this letter can bring a little sunshine to your day.
For the past few months, I've been doing a lot of work on sound redesigns - replacing the sounds of a gameplay or animation clip - for my portfolio. Each redesign is a little lesson on how to grow, and I love working on these sounds and getting feedback from my mentors. I've kind of been missing designing sounds for short animated pieces and games that don't already have audio, though, and exercising my creative voice around a completely blank canvas. Thus I began making time in my off-hours outside my day job to work on both! It's a bit difficult balancing so much but I'm finding how much I deeply enjoy the many hours I spend working on sounds. Here's one product of those efforts, an animation by DeeKay Kwon for which I worked on sound design towards the end of June/beginning of July:
The round, cutesy art style and animation felt like the perfect opportunity to design adorable, bubbly UI sounds akin to the sounds of Animal Crossing, and my goal was for the audio to fit that exact aesthetic. Every decision and tool throughout this process went towards the purpose of making the audio cute and satisfying!
- Recordings: I'm working on integrating more synthesis into my process, but for this project, I started with samples. Luckily, I had quite a few recordings already of popping, clicky, squeaky sounds - things like uncapping a highlighter, clicking my pens, cleaning my digital thermometer (a happy finding thanks to the COVID situation, hah), even squeezing an empty Happy Lemon cup!
- Mobius Filter: Dramatic frequency modulation to give the pitch more movement and direction
- Ringshifter: Ring modulation to add a bit more rapid frequency modulation, but I ultimately used it more to make the sound sweep, especially for the sounds for the bold + regular fonts
- Logic Pro's Echo: Since sounds were fairly short/transient and stretching would soften the attack, I used Echo to give the sound a bit more of a tail
- Pitch shifter: Changed the pitch of most sounds to make the sound movement correlate more with the movement of the animation, and blend everything
- Reversing + stretching + automating as needed
After completing the project, I sent it over to DeeKay, as I'd let him know that I wanted to work on the sound for some of his animations for fun, and wanted to show him before posting publicly. Not only did he love the work I did, but - he asked if I'd be open to collaborate from time to time on some of his pieces! Ahhhh!! It's still so gratifying to recall this. That someone whom I'd only just met, and who barely knows my work, would be interested in a professional relationship with me based off a piece I was doing for self-indulgence - it's such an honor, and it's pretty freaking cool. I've actually been working on a collaboration for him the past couple of weeks, and I'm excited to share it with y'all soon.
Other little updates:
- Still beefing up my portfolio and hunting for sound design contracts!
- Made a new Portfolio Day reel, since this one was from about six months ago.
- Working on a sound redesign reel, focused on the abilities of Mei from Overwatch - you can listen to the progress here!
- Learning how to 3D model using Blender, alongside my partner! It's slow-going but we're aiming to pick up the pace, so maybe I'll share some pieces from time to time.
- Big Boss Battle (B3) published an article about a tiny birb whodunnit game that I worked on for a two-day game jam (Ryan's Lil Jam)! If you check out the game, I hope it makes you giggle just as much as I do when I play it.
- Media consumption: Breath of the Wild (round 2!), A Short Hike (also round 2), The Baby-Sitters Club Netflix series, The Office
& That's a wrap on my first letter!! Thank you so much for reading, and I hope you have a lovely rest of your week.
Stay safe & stay healthy,
Amerlyn