Audious Sound Design - A Curious Tale - Podcast Episode 2

The second episode of the A Curious Tale series of Audious Podcasts has just gone live.

This episode discusses some of the problems in making the Pocket Watch sound effect.

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I hope you're enjoying playing Clover: A Curious Tale.

If you have not played it yet, the game is available from Blitz 1-Up

Audious Show Reel

Here is an updated version of the Audious Showreel.

This showreel contains clips from Binary Tweeds and Blitz 1 Ups new release Clover: A Curious Tale.

Audious Sound Design - A Curious Tale - Podcast Episode 1

Clover, A Curious Tale is now complete and due for release on Blitz 1-up Wednesday 3rd March 2010.

Clover has been an on-going project for Audious over the past year and a half, and to celebrate the games release we have recorded and new series of Podcasts.

The first episode showcases the Cobweb breaking sound effect from the game.

If you already subscribe to the podcast, it should automatically download the latest episode. If not you may need to update the subscription manually in your Podcatching software.

To set up a new subscription follow one of these links:

Using iTunes? Click Here

Using another Podcatcher? Use the following URL to subscribe: http://www.podcastnetwork.co.uk/podcast/audious/audious.rss

If you have any problems setting up a subscription, please leave a comment and I'll get back to you as soon as I can with a solution.

For more information on Clover and Binary Tweed please check out the following links:

Binary Tweed

Clover - Blitz 1-up

Clover Round Up - Conclusion

Well, it's been a little while since the last part of the Clover Round Up. I promise you that the long wait has not been due to laziness (not 100% anyway). Shortly after writing the 3rd part in the series, I received word from Binary Tweed that there was to be a NEW version of Clover being commissioned by Blitz Games Ltd and Audious was to continue with the work on sound effects.

Having received this news at the start of summer I had hoped to start work on this straight away, so I delayed the Conclusion to this round up. A few months and short trip in the middle east later, I finally received the list of required sounds and work has started on them.

So, I guess it would be rather hard to conclude this work at this point, because we havnt actually finished worked on the game yet. It's nearly there tho.

Clover Round Up - Mixing The Sounds

With the Audious Sound Design - Clover Podcast Series airing every Monday, it is now time we took a look at the third installment of the Clover Round Up.

In this part we shall discuss the mixing process used to create the complex sound effects that were identified in the previous installment. We shall continue to focus on the rock crumbling sound effect.

Lets identify the 2 parts of this sound:

The Pick Axe Strike - This is the attack of the sound

The Rock Crumbling - This is the decay of the sound.

As you heard in the example in the previous update, the Rock Crumbling sound effect was made from a number of different sound elements. Both parts are made up from more than one element. These sounds were imported into pro-tools and put into their own individual tracks as shown in the picture below.

The Pick Axe Strike was constructed from 2 different strike sound elements. One was a hammer striking a piece of wood, the other was the same hammer striking a stone. The two elements were carefully placed within the time line so that the strikes happened at the exact same moment. The two different tones would then combine to create a bigger sounding strike.

The positioning of each sound element for the Rock Crumbling part on the time line was also very important. I did not want any given moment to be over cluttered with sound, whilst another moment being empty. I also did not want to have too many attack peaks at any one time. The idea was to have a constantly rumbling decay where the rock falls apart. The use of Volume automation was great for fading in and out parts of the each sound element. This helped alot with achieving this goal.

For those who are not geared up on Sound Engineering Terminology, this is a fantastic feature in Pro-Tools that allows you to adjust levels such as Volume, Effects Mix, Left/Right Panning and many many more on the time line display. In the picture below the thick black line with the white dots on it is the automation line for volume.

Another sound was added to the mix which has not yet been mentioned. This is was a 60Hz sine wave which was trigger to play underneath the Rock Crumbling sound. The signal was placed very low in the mix because it was intended to compliment the rumbling effect.

Each part of the sound effect was mixed individually to help separate the sound as two different sound sources and then bounced down together to create the final effect.

Here you can here the sound effect as it appears in the game in this low quality sound example:

I also identified the drip sounds as another complex sound effect. However, unlike the rock crumbling sound effect, the drips were not constructed from several individually recorded sound elements. No, infact the only sound recorded for this effect was a dripping tap.

The sounds that you hear with in the game have had a number of layers of different reverb and delay effect. It was important to ensure that in this situation the reverb and delay times did not match to help to create the randomness of a large chamber or cave like atmosphere.

The next blog will bring my work on Clover to a conclusion. I'll outline some of the things that I have learnt from the project and tell a few stories of things that I got up to on the way. If you're lucky, maybe I'll even chuck in a couple more of my favourite sounds ;-)

As always, if you have any questions please leave a comment.

How to subscribe to the Audious Podcast in iTunes

The Audious Podcast - Clover Series is now live.

If you want to listen to the feed just add this url into iTunes or your podcast tracking software:

http://www.podcastnetwork.co.uk/podcast/audious/audious.rss

To find my Podcast in iTunes follow these steps:

* Open iTunes

* Click on the drop down menu labelled Advanced and then click on Subscribe to Podcast...

* A little box will appear asking for the Podcasts Url. Copy and paste the url above into the box and click Okay.

Alternatively, you can search for 'Audious Sound Design' in the iTunes store or click here

If you need any help setting up the subscription with your podcast tracking software, just leave a comment and I'll get back to you as soon as possible.

All New Audious Podcast

Hello Peeps.

Just a quick note to say that Audious have just finished recording a new series of Audious Podcasts.

This series will come to you in 5 1-2 minute parts. Each episode will contain 1 or 2 sounds with a short discussion. The series is being run to compliment the Clover Round Series of Blogs.

We're hoping to have the first episode live at some point soon. We'll keep to posted on when its out and how to find it.

Have fun and catchya laters :)