The Exquisite Corpse 13- Shahid's Project Mixing

Shahid sent me the final versions of his animation to edit to, and it was fairly straight forward as he had only changed one thing on the foot, However, I think there was a framerate difference as the rest of the sound was out of sync, so I had to go back over and re-sync all of it. It didn't take too long, but it was fairly annoying.

Shahid seemed really happy with the project once I sent him his piece back. He said it was exactly how he imagined it and I'm really glad of that. I tried to create something a little bit uncomfortable, but not too much and I think I've taken all his feedback on board and done that.

The sound design is interesting to me as it's very minimalist, so it's a good way to show off my sound design skills, as there is nowhere for the audio to hide. I can't hide off mistakes behind some car noise or similar, and that's both great because you know people will hear your work, or worse because you will under scrutiny constantly.

'13' Shahid's Project- Creating a More Steampunk, Less Fleshy Sound

Shahid sent me some new animation the other day and I have been working on trying to get the robotic sounds right, as well the fleshy sounds. I showed Shahid this reference from a Doctor Who episode:

Shahid seemed to agree that he liked that type of clockwork sound, and so I started on making that. Once I was finished, he seemed to really appreciate the newer version.

However, he then asked me to turn the flesh sound down quite a lot, and eventually wanted rid of it. I still wanted to have that elements of organic material in there, so I tried it with using breathing that is ever so slightly robot-esque and and for the hand and the foot to have blood rushing sounds, Shahid really liked this, and aside from the bits of animation he had left to do, was really happy with the piece.

Other Sound Design Work- Tom & Shahid

Over the last couple of months I was approached to work on a couple of other sound projects alongside mine, Laura's and D-e3b1e.

Firstly, Shahid asked me to work on a three screen animation he is working on. It surrounds the idea of cyborgs, and focuses on particular body parts of a cyborg. My job is to create some sound design which has essentially three parts: An ambient sound running underneath the whole piece, organic sounds (or sounds of the body), and robotic sounds. What I have done so far is produce a test to get an idea of what Shahid wants it to sound like:

I did this by using raw chicken to create organic sounds, small servo motors to create robotic sounds, and a hugely manipulated sound of an underground train to create the ambient sound. Shahid liked the ambient sound, but said he wanted it louder. He wants the robotic sounds to be less harsh and more steampunk-like, and that the organic sounds should be more subtle. I have an idea of how to do this and spent some time recording things for it in the sound studio.

Secondly, Tom (an animation student) asked me to work on his animation which surrounds the idea of sleep paralysis. I have been working on this project for a while and have done a couple of different sound design tests for it. The first one was very creepy and conceptually was more about how sleep paralysis could make you feel (claustrophobic, trapped, uncertain etc.) and I think that worked quite well:

This was for his initial crit on the idea. Now he is working more towards a progression into that creepiness. So it starts out as pure foley and then works more towards that heavily manipulated and generated sound. For an edit of his animatic, he wanted me to do a bit of sound design for it. It's very rough, and has a long way to go but the pure foley I think is sounding fairly good, I just want to spend a lot longer on the 'inside the dream' side of the work:

Now I have to work towards finalizing what the sound design will be like and cracking on with the work.

'13'- Shahid's Project.

Shahid came to me the other day and asked me to work on his three screen installation. I am really looking to expand my skills in sound design for my career as much as I can, so I said yes. So, Shahid told me what his project was about, which is (in terms of sound design) a robotic arm and some organic sounds mixed in there. Shahid showed me some reference material, the opening scene from 'Blade Runner':

He said he wanted something that resembled the rumbling underneath this scene to run through the whole of his piece.

And the arm cutting scene from Terminator II which shows the organic noises he is after:

I mocked up something quite quickly for him, and he said he really like the rumble underneath, and that it was exactly what he was looking for.Which is a good start! He also said he really liked the mix of organic sounds, but that the the robotic noises were too modern and harsh (The video is in the next post) and that when he has more animation I should make it more steampunk like.