Last summer I found myself with a little extra time on my hands and a big idea. Coming on the heels of an original Boom Box Library offering, “Magic Chimes,” which I recorded back in 2021, I wanted to expand on the idea of an all encompassing percussion library. I received classical training as a percussionist at the Indiana University School of Music (now the Jacobs School). We would spend hours in master classes focused on one instrument, perfecting for example, the ideal triangle performance. Hours. On the triangle. Needless to say, I felt qualified for the task. Here’s my chance to revisit those roots and put together something really special.
Last year, we published two blogs that listed classic cartoon sound effects and the emotion they convey to the audience. In those posts, we outlined the toony sounds we associate with happiness, anger, sadness, humor, scared, disgust, love, and boredom. Toon sound effects have been provoking emotion for decades. With so many classic toon sounds to choose from, how does one know which to use? Our hope is these blog posts help those stuck in their sound editorial from having to sift through their entire sound library looking for the perfect sound. You can read part one HERE and part two HERE!
I am currently knee-deep into recording an extremely comprehensive auxiliary percussion library for Boomboxlibrary.com. The idea is to produce pristine recordings which we (and other sound editors) can use as source material for new creative sound design.
As the recordings pile up (and I procrastinate having to edit them all) I have been playing around with some of them, just to see if my hunch was correct; that these would help me create great cartoon sound effects that are high quality and new but harken back to the classic Hanna Barbera sounds we all know so well.
Recently we published a blog that listed classic toon sound effects and the emotion they convey to the audience. Our hope was that it would be a helpful tool for anyone stuck in the editorial process. This is part 2! Continue reading to find out how our editors approach the following emotions with classic toon sound effects: Scared, Disgust, Love, and Bored.
At Boom Box Post, since we focus in sound for animation, I thought it would be helpful to create a list of classic toon sound effects and the emotion typically associated with them. In this post, we will be focusing on the following: happiness, anger, sadness, and humor.
Comedy is alive and well in both live action and animation. And as any sound designer worth their salt knows, our job is to support the script which often means supporting comedy. The best sound design can highlight what is already great about the picture and elevate it further by helping the audience to focus on it. So, how do we support a funny moment without dipping into our toony toolbox?
From giant mecha robot fights, to ancient black magic or car chase sequences, the types of projects we work on as sound designers come in all different shapes and sizes. Animation particularly as a medium continues to surprise me, and you never know what to expect when you open up a new episode for the first time.
Through all of the genres, styles, and stories that we get thrown our way, one of the things I see editors consistently have a difficult time with is, you guessed it…TOON! I know that may seem surprising, and that on the surface the concept of “toon” might appear basic or juvenile. But the reality is toon is a tricky beast that can be tough to master. Whether it’s a toony series, toony sequence, or the occasional comedic accent, I want you to be ready if you ever find yourself working in the world of toon. So for this blog post, I decided to give a crash course on “The Art of Toon.”
Many of the sound effects established in classic cartoons remain a staple in our libraries today. This got me thinking, if I were a cartoon SFX which one would I be? I decided to make a quiz to find out.
At Boom Box Post, we primarily work on animated television series, which means that much of our design work is linear and lives within the context of the story. However, every once in a while we’re thrown a fantastic curveball and are asked to design for something outside of our usual sound-for-picture role.
Recently, one of our television series came to us with a design mission: to create the sounds which would be integrated into a toy based on a train which would appear in a future season of the series.
At Boom Box Post, we specialize in sound for animation. Although sonic sensibilities are moving toward a more realistic take, we still do a fair amount of work that harkens back to the classic cartoon sonic styles of shows like Tom and Jerry or Looney Tunes. Frequently, this style is one of the most difficult skills to teach new editors. It requires a good working knowledge of keywords to search in the library--since almost all cartoon sound effects are named with onomatopoeic names rather than real words like “boing”, “bork”, and “bewip”--an impeccable sense of timing, and a slight taste for the absurd.
I used to think that you were either funny or not. Either you inherently understood how to cut a sonic joke, or you just couldn’t do it. Period. But, recently, I began deconstructing my own process of sonic joke-telling, and teaching my formula to a few of our editors. I was absolutely floored by the results. It turns out, you can learn to be funny! It’s just a matter of understanding how to properly construct a joke.
A while back, I was asked to “stretch my creativity” a bit and record some original sounds for a new series here at Boom Box Post. My objective: create a fresh take on the classic “rubber stretch.” We wanted something new and different that still inspired the same feelings of tension and impending release that the classic balloon rubbing/cable twisting has. I ended up working with a recording of my finger running along the sticky side of a strip of packing tape.
