tangibleSOUNDSCAPE

PLANET (D'kuk)

For this asset I actually used my guitar for all takes.  I wanted to test out how unique I could make the same exact poly synthesizer and guitar signal sound without sounding musical or completely unvelievable as an alien habitat.  Asset C seemed to be the crowd favorite but I'm glad I put that challenge in front of myself because it allowed me to explore a few new ways to look at the same signal.  I found once in the game it sounded very messy with all of the same frequencies all taken up by the engine so I ran some pretty severe EQ to cut a path for it to since through a bit more.

Teleport Out

If teleporting in screams synth I can find no reason why that would be directionally biased.  This is clearly another EFM tone which I'd used thinking I'd try and make the port in and out assets similar.  I had a great deal of difficulty achieving that effect so I just made them as individual entities.  Layered underneath this is just me humming a descending tone into a mic with real low frequency phasing to fatten up the low end.  After implementing this into the game, however, I did notice that it seemed to clash with the engine.  I just adjusted the pitch and volume on this in Wwise to  try working around the clash.

Teleport In

The very nature of a teleport screams Synthesizer to me. A simple EFM synth tone droning in fit the bill perfectly on this asset.  This was also the first asset I utilized my guitar and it was simply a processed harmonic to welcome the player to the game after porting in. The only feedback I received was to extend the lead in, which was good advice since the audio didn't match the animation well.  Since the modulation didn't work well with extending the note simply time stretching the lead in a bit was all it needed.

Fnoons

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These little guys were hog looking creatures that looked like gutteral was the way to go.  I personally liked my first take combining the donkey and a turkey with some reverb and distortions to get the right effect.  Thankfully the peer who gave me the best advice last round was back again with the suggestion to bump the pitch down.  Doing so brought out a nice growl underneath not just that asset but both of the other Fnoons beautifully.

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Final Assets

As I headed into this final round of assets I realized that I'd gotten lost quite a bit in my last set of assets.  In trying to incorporate and utilize so many different recorded sources I lost track of some simple concepts that made the final creation of the sounds more challenging than I think they needed to be.  My goal this go around was to create quality assets with a minimalist approach.  The goal here was to be as resourceful as possible by purposefully limiting my own options.

Engine

 

This was the revision that changed the most.  There was a nasty mid-range buzz going on in my first iteration.  I really like the realistic overtone but the buzz from the extractor fan still cut through distractingly.   It sounded more like a faulty bug zapper than an engine. Thankfully the meat of the engine signal was in the very low registers as I almost wanted people to feel the engine as much as they could hear it so that gave me a good amount of freedom to slap a severe low pass filter on.  Once I did that the 'bug zapper' mids changed into more of a low-bit rocket sound that supported the asset nicely.

Vaporizer  

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One of my peers gave me some much needed feedback on tweaking my vaporizor.  He mentioned that my vaporizors each seemed to be missing an impact of some sort post blast.  That said I went ahead and fabricated a signal that could serve as either blasting a Barnaby or something of a cooldown mechanism for the cannon.  This was the one sound I really liked as it stood so I really didn't tweak much, my peers seemed to agree as well.  

The Barnabys

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I was tipped off that camel's might make  good base material for an alien.  All it took was a little EQ to beef up the low end on my original attempt to create a deep rumble that really drew out our poor antagonist the Barnaby.  I also thought "What's the point of a vaporizer if you can hear it vaporizing what it hits?", which is where the spray bottle came in for all iterations.  The first iteration was a little overbearing though so I tossed in a low pass to tame it and let the Barnaby shine front and center.  If that combo worked on a camel, why not a tiger and a gorrila?    Well that's exactly where the other Barnaby's came from.

Planet (Kraktoh)  

 

This was one of my favorite assets to create. I agreed with the feedback given that the low tones originally were too close together and really toed the line between ambience and background music.  I added some more space and found myself having a hard time balancing how long to stretch the note so it didn't decay entirely but not so frequent as to be identifiable as music.  When the low signal decayed fully the whole ambience sounded naked and weak so it was an interesting experiment.  I ended up changing a note, extending the low tone to 3 bars and pulling back a little bit on the phasing of the CD printers to draw them out just a taste more.