Sound Design w/Fernado Gimeno (New best friend)
Sound design is where is where I shine
No but really, I’ve had a lot of experience in designing sounds, so where I saw this lecture coming up, I knew I had a lot of input as from my experiece, sound is underestimated in how it delivers impact to player experiences and it can be used in many ways.
What can sound deliver
Immersion
Spatial Awareness
Gameplay cues
Changing the mood
Reward association - I would think of the classic Zelda box opening (you know the one)
Atmosphere
Transitions
Announcing Information
So it can really be delivered to really enhance the player experience in a manner of ways, but it also has applications to IP recognition, like I stated earlier with Zelda, you already know the sound so it becomes engrained and one with the IP. But in order to create these sounds how does one do so, with the technical term called Audiation, using your mind and how you hear things, but also by making silly sounds wiht your mouth.
WE CAN DESIGN THAT WAY, which I think is incredible. You as a person can be speaking complete gibberish and then make a whole song out of it (speaking from personal experience). But there will be occasions where designing the sound will incoporate these techniques but have to fit with the Art Direction or description of the world.
Classic example, that the scene could be someone taking a serious fall down the stair and instead of loud bangs, you hear clown noises….. this would just take the consistency of the scene out of it, unless that’s how it has been purposely designed in that context. As a class we had a pretty interactive session going over the beginning of Bioshock Infinite, where first we tried to detail what sounds were going to be made and when, and then afterward listen to what it actually was like. really biting into the game audio.
We even had a little workshop where he gave us a few of the sounds he has made in the past and allowed us to manipulate them using Audacity which is still used by industry professionals however, it’s not the industry standard, whilst having all sort of manipulation tools of Audio.
Later on, he even helped with some sounds on the upcoming Digital protoype, where I showed him a clip of a sound I wanted to use being this one for shooting sounds:
He gave me suggestions of layering and upping the attack to amplify the impact it would make if it was to become a shooting sound, I even suggested adding on that, where the distortion could add that impact as well to which he agreed and then said “you really can experiement with it”
Most of the knowledge he gave helped me gain some perspective on what I might want to do later on as a passion project and really push audio to another level of Game Design.