SOUND DESIGN BLOG
Welcome to my blog! This space is dedicated to highlighting and discussing some of my sound design work.
OVERWATCH 2| TITAN
With balancing work, family life, and trying to stay active, it can be difficult to find the time to take a break and actually play some video games. Last week, I managed to finally get around to playing through the Invasion story missions in Overwatch 2. Almost needless to say, I really enjoyed experiencing the gameplay, cut-scene story development and of course, the sound design! This week I set out to re-design a short cinematic segment of the Invasion trailer. I knew I wanted to focus a fair portion of my creative energy on the Null Sector Titan sounds. I passed some of the foley sounds I recorded through a vocoder for some dynamic robotic vocal textures. I had a lot of fun (finally) playing the Overwatch 2: Invasion missions and just as much fun re-designing some sounds for this cinematic.
GOD OF WAR RAGNARÖK| LEVIATHAN AXE
The leviathan axe is such a cool weapon and I knew going into this design that I wanted to use some equally cool (pun sincerely not intended) sonic textures to emphasize its unique abilities. I recorded some sounds of ice breaking/cracking which I still incorporated into my final design, but I also wanted to capture some more interesting, crackly, liquid-y textures to work with. In comes the DIY Hydrophone! There’s no shortage of amazing, quality hydrophones on the market, and after completing this design I’m certainly going to explore getting one. However, I thought it would be a fun (and cost effective) experiment to see if I could makeshift my own by wrapping a piezo contact mic in some water-proof sealant. Turns out it kinda works! Definitely not up to the quality standards from a real hydrophone, but it was able to capture some really interesting sounds. Anyways, I hope you enjoy this re-design as much as I enjoyed making it!
MARVEL’S SPIDER-MAN | WEB-SHOOTER
I have a fun video planned for next week, but in the meantime I thought I’d share a short breakdown on the Spider-Man web-shooter re-design (that’s too many hyphens) I made from a couple of videos ago! The focus of that video was highlighting a dynamic movement velocity system I developed in Wwise (if you haven’t seen that video, check it out if you like), but I received a couple of questions on how I made the web-shooter sounds. So, here we are! I really had some fun with this design. From finding the right impact transients to getting messy with the fruit squeezing foley. Although it wasn’t the main focus of my previous re-design, the web-shooter design actually kind of became my favorite part!
WORLD OF WARCRAFT | DRAGONFLIGHT
I have been doing a lot of sci-fi designs as of late and wanted to push out more fantasy style work. What better game to challenge myself with a fantasy cinematic re-design than WoW, right? This re-design was a ton of fun to work on. From sourcing foley sounds, to processing some of the layers into magical arcane textures!
STAR WARS | JEDI: SURVIVOR
If you get to know me you'll swiftly discover that I'm a Star Wars fan (and yes, that includes the prequel trilogy...don't @ me). I love the movies, the books, the games, but moreover the indistinguishable soundscape that made me fall in love with sound design when I was a young kid. This re-design was particularly challenging for me as I'm more familiar with the IP of the Star Wars universe more than any other piece of entertainment that I know. That familiarity caused some roadblocks along the way as I attempted to pay homage to the original lightsaber sound, but strive to deviate and create a unique sonic footprint of my own.
MARVEL’S SPIDER-MAN | WWISE IMPLEMENTATION
Back at it with a new re-design this week! With the second installment of the series creeping up next month, I challenged myself with re-designing the falling whoosh effect from Marvel's Spider-Man. In this video I recorded some foley for the sound of wind flying past Spider-Man's suit, prototyped the functionality of the sound with layers of wind and cloth movement, passed that prototype into Wwise, and then showed the final product in all it's whoosh-y glory. This was a really fun exercise! Especially getting to flex some more technical muscles via modulating effects/parameters in Wwise with an RTPC. (p.s. I also had a lot of fun re-designing the web-shooter sounds! I might make a video about that process soon).
OVERWATCH | ILLARI HIGHLIGHT INTRO
With Overwatch's introduction of their most recent hero, Illari, I thought I would take the opportunity to try my had at re-designing some sounds for her highlight intro as a fun challenge! In this video, I show one of the sound sources I recorded for the re-design. As Illari's lore and weaponry have close ties to the sun, I wanted to record and manipulate some high-frequency, tonal sounds. Turns out, rubbing two glasses together will get you there! I show the recording process, the processed glass sounds, the additional foley/mechanical weapon sound effects, and finally all of the layers put together.
LEAGUE OF LEGENDS | EZREAL ARCANE SHIFT ABILITY
Had some fun re-designing the audio for Ezreal's Arcane Shift ability from LoL. Thought I'd also include a small section of the sound source I recorded for the re-design in the video. For the teleport blink I wanted to start with some rapidly oscillating high-pitched transients, and being an avid coffee drinker, I thought using my latte frother on some metal objects could produce something interesting! It's heavily processed, time-stretched and morphed into something completely different than where I started, but I guess that's just part of the fun of creating. You'll never know where you might end up!
UE5 METASOUNDS | SCI-FI WEAPON PROTOTYPE
I had some time this past weekend to play around with UE5's MetaSounds. This is my first (very basic) foray into seeing what I can do with the engine. I'm so used to the workflow of Wwise and FMOD, but it was really fun to try something new and breakout of my comfort zone. Here I put together a fairly rudimentary sci-fi rifle fire sound. It consists of 3 layers: - Main Layer: holds bulk of transient sounds - Sub Layer: sub tones/explosion tails - Sweetener Layer: heavily processed mid-tone rumbles I passed the sub and sweetener layers through their own respective compressors, whilst using the signal from the main layer as a sidechain trigger. I also modulate the output volume of the sub/sweetener layers with an LFO that had a randomized rate for variety. Certainly a fun start into utilizing MetaSounds more in the future!
HORIZON FORBIDDEN WEST
I had so much fun and learned a lot from my recent challenge of doing a time-based sound design blitz that I decided to do another one! This one proved to be quite the challenge for multiple reasons and in full transparency, I went a little over my allocated time of 6 hours to get this one done. Nevertheless, I had an absolute blast making it and I'm excited to hear what you all think!
WARHAMMER 40K: SPACE MARINE II
Had an opportunity this past weekend to work on a sound re-design blitz. I set myself a time-based cutoff of 6 hours to produce a full audio pass of this cinematic from Focus Entertainment's Space Marine II. Had a lot of fun working on this project, even with working on a relatively tight time budget. Definitely a great exercise in mix prioritization and focusing on the most prevalent components of a scene to elicit an emotion.