Hi there!!

It’s been quite a month! I hope that despite everything going on that you are all doing well, staying safe and healthy, and taking care of yourselves.

Sadly, this past month for me has been a period of burnout and recovery, and my sound design output was not at all where I wanted it to be. Most of the burnout can be attributed to my day job, which I actually left mid-August.

There are several reasons why that job wasn’t working out (one huge one: low compensation for the amount of responsibility!), but the primary reason that I left was that my company was no longer allowing me to work from home, even though I’ve been teleworking successfully since May. I tried to compromise as I wanted to stay on for the job security, but the company's ultimatum led me to choose in the end to prioritize the wellbeing and health of my family over the position. As such, I spent the last two weeks of my tenure training and transitioning my role to other employees, which was a long, stressful process that took up a lot of time and energy and prevented me from working on much else.

I’m quite nervous now to be unemployed, especially in this pandemic, but I’m taking this opportunity to really reflect on what I want career-wise. As I continue to make strides in my sound design career, I’ll definitely still need to have another source of income, audio-related or not. However, I’m now considering using the skills I’ve developed thus far to work in industries more relevant to my interests, something I hadn’t really thought about as I just needed any job to have an income and insurance. I could work in customer service at a stationery company or plant shop, further develop my programming skills and work in web or software development, or take up the role of project manager/producer. The opportunities are endless, and I’m a little overwhelmed and excited at the same time.

Of course, I’m also using this time to double down on portfolio work and push harder towards game audio work. My goals for my sound design career this year are: 1) to land my first paid project on a game (more if possible!) and 2) to join an audio development team (more specifically, Team Audio!) as a contractor. I’m happy to say that I’ve made significant progress on both goals and I’m closer than I’ve ever been! I’m not there yet, though, and with just four months left in the year, I’ve got to keep pushing.

Mei’s Blizzard

Speaking of portfolio work, I’ve completed a sound redesign of Mei’s Blizzard ability (from Overwatch) and thus completed her suite of abilities!

I’ll do a longer breakdown of this and the other Mei redesigns in the future as I finish up this reel, but I wanted to chat a little about the change in my approach for this sound. After receiving feedback from my mentors (Juan Pablo Uribe and Isabella Ness!) on the previous redesigns, I started working on trying to make bolder sound design decisions. This time around, I let loose and experimented more with different sources for my layers, especially white noise – one layer is literally just air blowing from a stand-up fan that’s put through Mobius Filter to make it _wavy - and the result is probably my favorite sound design out of all the redesigns that I’ve done thus far. I’m excited to still take it further, but I feel really good about this direction.

Other little updates:

• With the full suite of Mei’s abilities, I’ve finished a full draft of the Mei ability reel! I’ll be continuing to work on the sound redesigns for this to level up my own abilities and improve my process.
• Collaborated with DeeKay on “Zombie Run,” a section of a music video that he animated for Lecrae! Published two versions, one with music and one without.
• Completed sound design for a short animation (“All in the Golden Afternoon”) from FITS and Isadora Zeferino!
• Completed sound design for another short animation (“Orange Soda Shop”) from Jen Nie!
• Started working on sound design for a magical girl-inspired animation, “Twilight Guardian,” by Matt Herring! The project was originally Matt’s third year film at CalArts, but he was not able to get around to having someone work on sound. Being the Sailor Moon fan and sound designer I am, I immediately saw the potential for sparkly anime sound effects and asked Matt if I could work on the sound design for it in my free time, to which he graciously agreed. I’ll be collaborating with my good friend Robert Le, who’ll be composing the background music, to add some magical girl vibes to this project! You can check out the progress so far here!
• Started sound library management work for Chase Steele! I’m working to update all sound file names to be consistent with the new Universal Category System released in July, as well as updating the metadata keywords and descriptions.
• Still learning 3D modeling!
• Started studying Japanese with my partner. He’s taking a Japanese language course, and while I can’t enroll with him, he teaches it to me as he practices and works on the homework.
• Media consumption: Breath of the Wild, A Short Hike, Spiritfarer, Ghost of Tsushima, L.A. Noire, Final Fantasy XV, Gilmore Girls, Nice to Meet You

& That’s all I have for you today! Thank you so much for reading, and be well.

Stay flaming,

Amerlyn