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What does a Mustang, a parking lot, and ten pounds of ice have in common? They’ve all played starring roles in our journey to capture our own custom sound effects for shows like Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and more. In sound design, originality matters. Whether it’s the roar of the Shellraiser or the chilling movement of an Ice Dragon, there’s no substitute for getting your hands dirty and your mic in the middle of it all.
We’ve gathered five of our favorite behind-the-scenes recording sessions that showcase what it takes to build immersive, character-driven sound from scratch. Each one includes real recording footage, final demo clips, and a glimpse into the creative process. Hope you enjoy!
1. Inside Sound Design: The Sound of Shellraiser
We hit the road (literally) to record a 1966 Mustang GT and craft a one-of-a-kind vehicle library for Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. This video breaks down how we approached the recording process and includes an interview with our team as well as the executive producer, Ciro Nieli.
Watch the full video
2. Recording Roller Derby Sound Effects
Whooshing pass-bys, hard stop skids, clacking footsteps: this session focused on roller skates and blades for an upcoming action-heavy episode. In this post you’ll find videos of our recording techniques, the variety of surfaces we used, demo audio of the finished results and hear from Studio Engineer Tim Vindigni and Supervising Sound Editor Tess Fournier about the session.
3. Ice Dragons
We brought fantasy into reality when we recorded icy textures and transformed them into the motion for TMNT's Ice Dragon characters. This post includes video of source recordings and processed sounds that became icy wing flaps, impacts, and movement layers.
Explore the Ice Dragon recordings
4. Non-English Dialogue Recording
We can never get enough non-English vocal material in our library. In this recording session, we built up the library with a series of efforts and non-English character performances. While this wasn’t for a single project, these recordings give us a versatile pool of vocalizations for background chatter, creature layers, or fantasy languages for editorial across all of our projects.
5. Recording Terracotta Pots
When glass is off-limits, as it often is in children's animation, we get creative. In this session, we recorded a series of terracotta pots breaking in various ways to simulate impacts and breakage textures without using real glass. The result? Unique, organic alternatives that hit all the right frequencies.
These are just a small glimpse into the day-to-day recordings we conduct for our sound design needs. Whether we’re smashing pots, skating around the lot, or braving subzero textures, it all starts with the mic. We hope you enjoyed these posts and feel inspired to share your own recording sessions. Stay tuned for more behind-the-scenes recording sessions!