Learning To Listen

Listening is such a huge part of what we do as sound designers. Whether it's making sounds for a AAA shooter or a casual kitchen game, we have to be able to listen and determine if what we're making fits the game. Some sound designers think it's very important to specialise within a certain area, for example sci-fi guns, but I'm completely the opposite. While I think it's important to know your strengths, I also really enjoy almost every style of sound design. Learning to listen properly has helped me be able to…continue reading →

Using Wwise For Sound Effects In Linear Media

Today we're taking a look at how we can use Wwise to make sound effects and create variations for use in linear media. By linear media I mean film, tv, radio, music and so forth. The process is very simple and extremely versatile, so let's take a look! Setting Up The Sound Imagine that we have a shooting sequence in a movie with tons of sci-fi laser weapons shooting left and right. A sequence like that would take a pretty long time to make since you need to create a bunch of variations…continue reading →

How I Made My Designed Freebies For “The Old Cash Registers” Library

A couple of weeks ago I was asked by a couple of my good sound designer friends, Daniel Martin Nielsen and Nikolaj de Haan, to create some designed freebies for their new sound library. The challenge was that I had to create all sounds from just 4 sounds from their new library, so today we'll take a look at how I made some of them and hopefully in the process show you how you can get a lot out of very little! I'll take you through 4 of the sounds I designed, that…continue reading →

2 Lessons In Patience From Wolverine And Iron Man

A couple of days ago I was binging youtube and suddenly came across small clips from the Howard Stern show. As you do, I watched about 20 of them before realising what I was doing and then quickly started playing some video games instead.. much more productive! But two of the clips I saw really stuck with me and actually inspired me a great deal, especially since I'm notoriously impatient. One was an interview with Robert Downey Jr. and the other one was an interview with Hugh Jackman, both actors who are extremely…continue reading →

6 Sound Designer Tips for Game Jams

Game Jams can be really intimidating, especially if it's your first time going. You probably feel like you aren't good enough to contribute to the team, unsure if you can handle the pressure and not really sure if you can suggest your own ideas for the game you're making. Here's some tips for you! Both for experienced and beginners out there. (This guide will not show you where to find game jams but here's a pro tip... https://itch.io/jams) Tip Number One: Expect nothing! I really like going into a game jam expecting absolutely…continue reading →

43 Ways To Challenge Yourself As A Sound Designer

I'm taking a little break from the "Microgame Platformer" series to show you a cool little exercise I came up with! Introduction I really like the idea of limiting yourself in some way when creating sounds. It tends to inspire more creativity within you, while also giving you space to learn completely different/new ways of doing things. Limits also allow you to work quicker and more effectively, since you only have a certain set of options to choose from when designing, so forget about having an existential crisis about which of your 60…continue reading →

Microgame Platformer Part 4 (Pickups)

Hey everyone and welcome back to the "Microgame Platformer" series! Today I'll show you how to make pickup sounds that are in a musical key and also how to play them sequentially when picking up the crystals that are scattered throughout the game. Let's get going! Making The Pickup Sound So, since the game has a kind of "cute-sy" aesthetic, I wanted to reflect that in the sound as well. Especially the pickup sounds, because you're going to be hearing those a lot during a playthrough of this type of platformer game. I…continue reading →

Microgame Platformer Part 3 (Footsteps)

Hey everyone and welcome back to my Microgame Platformer series! Today we'll take a look at how we can add footstep sounds to our character based on the animation, as well as delve into a little bit of C#. Have fun! Getting The Sounds Roaring and Ready For the footstep sounds, I decided to take some grass footsteps from a library and cut them up into 10 semi-equal variations. I normally like to do at least 10 variations for these sorts of sounds to get some good baseline randomness when we implement them…continue reading →

Microgame Platformer Part 2 (Ambience)

Hey everyone and welcome back to part 2 of my "Microgame Platformer" series. Today we're going to implement some ambience into the game (this time something that actually fits). I'll be going through both the design of the sounds and the implementation in FMOD. Let's do it! Getting An Overview When designing ambience, it's a good idea to take a look at the environment and map out sounds that you could add to your ambience sound. If we take a look at the starting area of the game for example, there's a bunch…continue reading →

Microgame Platformer Part 1 (Setup)

Hey everyone! Today I'm starting a new series where I'm going to implement sound and do sound design for the Platformer Microgame that you can get access to in the Unity asset store. This series is intended for you to follow along with, learn some new things about FMOD, Unity and C# and also get a good little project for your demo reel. I'm going to be using FMOD 2.04 and Unity 2018.4, so if you don't have those installed, do it now before we begin. Hope you have fun! Downloading The Project…continue reading →