WRITTEN BY JESSEY DRAKE
SOUND EFFECTS EDITOR, BOOM BOX POST
In my opinion, creature vocals are crucial to sound design. Nobody wants to see a gigantic dragon on screen and then it sounds lame… It should stand out and fit the part! So, where do you start when you want to design a ferocious dragon? There is no right or wrong way, but Jessey can give you some insight on how she designs her dragon vocals!
What was your brainstorming process?
For these, I wanted to go the classic Jurassic Park route and use natural source sounds and combine and pitch them to create creature vocals. So, animals like pigs, warthogs and elephants are some of animals I used as the foundation of these creature vocals!
Could you give me the step by step process of what you added first, second, etc?
Basically I pitched down the various animal sounds and mixed them together to create the base sound. Now that may seem really simplistic but creating creatures that way takes time to find the right balance and character. After getting to that point with each vocalization, I ran it through a vocal transforming processor, called Manipulator. While working in the plugin, I was paying close attention to how the base sound effect was effected by further pitch adjustment, the stereo spread, formant manipulation and any harmonics I wanted to add into the original effect to give color to the vocals.
Did you run into any problems/what worked vs what didn’t work?
Everything with vocals is trial and error to get that exact sound you want. So yes while adjusting parameters with the plugin, I did run into applying too many harmonics and too drastic of a pitch adjustment.
Any tips on what really made these vocals cool and on making creature vocals in general?
I think it was Walter Murch who said that sound design/film editing should be approached with the "less is more" concept. And really that can be applied to creature vocals and sound design as a whole. We can sit and combine a ton of sound effects to get that perfect sound, but at the end of the day our ears can only hear so much. So, it's best to find the effects that work and keep it simple.
How did you make these vocals unique compared to other creature vocals?
These creature vocals are pretty unique in that there are some really interesting combinations of animals that were used to make these. And, while they feel big and bad, they also feel very natural in that you can envision them coming from an actual living and breathing animal!
WHAT YOU’VE ALL BEEN WAITING FOR…
Now that you have an idea of her process for creating these vocals, check out how they turned out!
If you enjoyed this blog, you should also check out:
CREATING MONSTER VOCALS WITH VOXPAT
TOP 5 TIPS FOR CREATING HORRIFYING MONSTER VOCALIZATIONS
CREATURE SPEECH SOUND DESIGN CHALLENGE: PART 1