As an animation dialogue editor, I usually work with clean and high quality recording files. However, in the past two years, the pandemic changed a big amount of my work routine. The files I received are mostly recorded by voice actors themselves at home from Zoom meetings. Some files are recorded from a bad microphone position, some are recorded in a reverberant space, and some have frequency humming in the background. I spend a lot of time cleaning up the recording files as best as I can, so I’m always on the lookout for a good noise reduction plug-in. DNS One from Cedar has a good reputation from a lot of mixers and dialogue editors, so I gave it a try.
I have come across a few free Chrome extensions that I have incorporated into my day-to-day workflow. These extensions have made a big difference in my productivity and I would love to share them with all of you.
Creature vocals or monster vocals, if you will, are one of the more conceptually challenging elements to telling a story through sound. I always struggle with, “Is it real enough?” or “Is this vocal believable for this creature on screen?” Of course, that’s a matter of personal opinion and experience, but there are some approaches that make the design process of these vocals a little more palpable and easier to arrive at the “finished” product.
Today I’m going to be discussing a virtual instrument called Gravity by the folks at Heavyocity. It’s loaded into and powered by Kontakt Engine by Native Instruments. While Gravity itself doesn’t have a free version available, Kontakt is available as both a free version and full version. Gravity is an incredible, extensively customizable virtual instrument designed predominantly for use in modern scoring. It’s comprised of 4 instrumentation sections: Hits, Pads, Risers, and Stings. Each of these 4 main sections breaks down further into complex blends of the loaded-in beautiful, high quality samples within the category as well as the simplified individual samples for additional customization with the effects and other adjustable parameters.
Space Controller allows for a new way to pan sound sources instead of the traditional method of using knobs, joysticks, or a computer mouse. There is a separate app for mobile devices which allows the device to be used as a movement reader to pan the sounds according to the position of the device.
Collaborating is a big part of our industry. Even in sound editorial, where we are usually by ourselves in a room when we work, we collaborate in projects with mixers, supervisors, Foley artists, and also share editorial with other sound designers/editors.
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.”
I decided to give the super-awesome and totally free Zebralette Sythesizer from u-he a try. I’m not very experienced when it comes to synthesizers. I’ve had fun messing around with them on occasion, but I am far from a proficient synthesizer user, so I decided to get my feet wet and do some experimenting. I am SO glad I did.
TDR Nova is an intuitive and user friendly free plugin made by the company Tokyo Dawn Records that could be a good replacement for your stock pro tools EQ plugin! It has a lot of cool features that can help you fine tune your audio. Let's take a look at some of its features!
In past blog posts, we have mentioned different ways to optimize Kontakt, or other samplers, to digitally walk foley for our shows and how advantageous it has been in animation. It often involved pulling walk cycles into Pro Tools and cutting up small samples then exporting the samples and pulling them into Kontakt. This method, although convenient, is not the only way to create footstep samples. In this blog post, I will do my best to give instructions on how to create samples without having to cut up the original audio file in Pro Tools; and instead splice or split the original audio file within Kontakt then mapping it to your desired keys, keeping the source file intact! Woohoo, get excited!
This is a module from Izotope RX that I’ve used quite a bit! De-bleed works just like its name. It reduces the unwanted sound that bleeds into an open mic. In one of the shows I worked on, they recast one of the lead characters after they did the production shooting which means I needed to remove his voice underneath any other dialogue so I can replace with ADR in there. De-bleed performs a great job in this situation!
If you’re a sound editor, then you know how important having a good sound library is. Not only is it important to have a well rounded library but it is also necessary to continue adding to it. I’d like to introduce you to a fantastic web based sound library called Soundsnap. This website is great for editors of all experience levels and since we’re getting close to the holidays, it could be a great gift! Check it out below.
The latest gear and hottest plugins are regularly trendy topics of discussion in the sound community. But for this week’s blog post, I’m going old-school and throwing it all the way back to good ol’ PHASING! (Hold for applause)
Now, I bet you are thinking to yourself, “What is phasing exactly?” or perhaps “How does it apply in the real world?”, and most importantly “Do I even need to know this?!” Well, you’re about to find out…
Whether I’m working on a Halloween special or just a spooky scene, I often find myself needing to make scary vocals. There are so many ways to achieve a haunting voice, but I’m going to talk about a few tools that I like to use. To get started, you need four plugins and a vocal recording. This can be laughing, a spooky saying, or even an elongated breath.
Over the past few months, I have come across a number of google chrome extensions that have really improved my daily workflow. In this post I want to spotlight 5 of these chrome extensions in hopes that they can help you stay organized and productive during this time of mayhem.
Hi all! Today I’m going to be discussing the DeHumaniser II plugin by Krotos. It’s an excellent plugin for creature vocal sound design that’s really fun to use. There is also the Simple Monsters plugin which is a simpler, less customizable version of the same plugin, but at a more affordable price tag ($99 vs $399 for DeHumaniser II).
One of the things I've noticed working in animation is that you have a world of possibilities to create all kinds of sound design of monsters, spaceships, crazy rides, or even the sound of a giant squishy ball rolling out of control! A lot of the times, these sounds have to feel heavy and at the same time have movement to them. But, how to you get something to feel heavy and big, and also make it feel that it can go fast? Check out my process below!
Sound Particles is a 3D audio software that uses particles. Each particle corresponds to a 3D audio object which is then captured using a virtual microphone. This allows for very interesting and creative sound design as we can place the audio source anywhere in a 3D virtual space. Instead of working on a linear workflow, Sound Particles allows us to visualize and place each sound in a 3D space. Check out a few cool designs we did below!
Dynamics processing is valuable for many kinds of audio work. Compressors, Limiters and Transient Shapers have become so ubiquitous that you would struggle to find a piece of recorded music, film or television show where one of these tools was not used. These processes have applications for the sound editor as well, allowing you to control dynamics in your own recorded sound effects or beef up a key element in a build for a big moment. In this basic overview, I’m going to talk about a specific plug-in for the three types of processing mentioned above, but the principles discussed here can apply to any manufacturer’s software, or even hardware tools.
What is Soundly? Soundly is a freemium audio library management software that lets you organize, tag, and audition your sound effect and add them into your projects in a concise and incredibly simple way. For this blogpost I decided to put myself in the shoes of someone just starting off in the sound editor world. When you’re just starting off in the industry your budget is going to be your biggest limiter. You don’t have the freedom to drop a ton of money on multiple professional grade libraries and a reliable audio library management software to get started on your work. Sometimes the free option is really the only option. This is where Soundly comes in.
