🐚
2025.07.01 - 2025.07.29
Qistina Nuralya Maria Binti Azly / 0354180
Sonic Design / Bachelors of Design (Honours) in Creative Media / Taylor's University
FINAL PROJECT: GAME AUDIO
Table of contents
1. MODULE INFORMATION BOOKLET (MIB)
Week 11 - Week 12 & 13 - Week 14
1. MODULE INFORMATION BOOKLET (MIB)
This is the Module Information Booklet for this module:
2. LECTURES
Week 11
Physical Class
We were given a lecture about Cue-spotting and how it relates to our preparations for our Final Project.
Cue-spotting is the basically process of deciding where music, sound effects, and other audio elements should be placed within a film or video. It involves a "spotting session" where key creatives like the director, editor, and composer review the film to determine the placement and timing of said things. In our case, we had to do our own individual spotting sessions as some of us had different games in mind.
After the lecture, we went to our Game Audio Exercise.Week 12 & 13
Physical Class
No classes as Mr. Razif made those two weeks time for students to record in the Audio Recording room in D3.03. My recording session was on Friday of Week 12 so I had a free week after that to solely focus on my Game Audio.
Week 14
Physical Class
I unfortunately couldn't make it to the class as I wasn't feeling all too well that day (╥﹏╥)
3. EXERCISES
Week 11 - Game Audio
During class, Mr. Razif taught us how to be creative with our game audios. He showed an example of a "magic spell cast" sound effect where he used multiple layers to create the desired effect.
I decided to go for a typical magic wand cast vibe where there would be the initial "Whoosh" and then the transformation build-up of the spell on something and finally the "pop" of the spell finishing with chimes to accompany it.
Audio Preview:
4. GAME AUDIO
Task: Students will given a choice of game play video. They will then need to create the sound and bring the game to life. Students will have to plan and organize their studio recording session for Foley and voice recording. They will also have access to the portable recorder if required.
4.1 Cue-Spotting
The game I decided to choose to work on is Hollow Knight! I picked this gameplay video specifically because I've played it before and so I had a sense of familiarity but despite that, I still wanted to have my own creatives liberties on the sound effects and not stray too close to the original source.
I first started with around 13 different sounds that I could identify cues from the video of the gameplay video. These were simple enough in that when an action was done, the sound effect would cue in. However, I realised I needed a couple more with the Cave Ambience, and separating the normal statuses of the enemies and their aggravated status.
I then did a rough estimate of the timestamps where the sounds would happen/cue in and compiled it into a storyboard.
4.2 Recording
During Week 12, we didn't have class but Mr. Razif let us book our spots for recording sessions in the Uni's Audio Recording Room. I picked morning Friday of that same week because I wanted to get recording done quick.
I let Emily and Arata, my session mates, go first so I helped them with naming files and cueing when her recordings started. For Arata's turn, I helped Emily for a bit and taught her on how to start the recordings so she could be the one in charge for this turn.
In total, I prepared 13 things for me to use for recording.
Ones I used:
- Fan
- Cloth
- Rings
- Chopsticks
- Big brush
- Small brush
- IPad (as platform)
- Scissors
- Velcro
- Cutter
- Nightlight that made a "blow" sound when squeezed
- Chunky bracelet
Emily and I were actually both doing Hollow Knight so she helped me by lending me some of her materials too! I used some tinfoil and also her knife sharpener.
I did stay back longer till the afternoon session since I was last in the morning session. Because of that, Mr. Razif also asked me to help Brian, the only person booked for the afternoon session, with recording. In total, I spent time in the recording room from 9am to around 2pm.
For the last few sound effects, I recorded them at home.
4.3 Editing Process
Audio Journal
Additional Process
For the groans, I used my voice to blow into a bottle and tried to layer it with another audio of me just making random noises. I played around with noise reduction and at some point the noise reduction gave a weird effect to my voice that I liked so I decided to use that.
As for the challenges I faced, it was mainly because of the Audition program itself that lagged on me that made be annoyed and frustrated at times. But I persevered through it.
There was another occasion though where my audition just was not playing the audio correct and cut off after the second or third time replaying it. I chalked it up to maybe the sound was too high pitched hence the cut off but it overall didn't affect much of the audio as the final sound was okay and undisturbed.
Timing
When adjusting the timings, I had to change the panning and volume in accordance of the sound source's placement on the gameplay screen. I.e. like when the flying bugs were on the right side of the screen, I made sure the sounds transitioned smoothly across right to center/left.
Finally, I finished up the last few timings of certain effects and then added a Reverb effect to the master so the cave vibe would be spread throughout all the tracks.
Final Audio:
After that, I exported everything to Premiere Pro to combine the video and final audio together.
4.4 Final
If there is an error, view or download all files here:
https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1XL__Vi2bEAaZtOz-Q9r39S57NLcbTy3v?usp=drive_link
5. REFLECTION
This project was a nice send-off to the module as I love video games. Hollow Knight is especially fond to me because I played it once before and remembered how much I loved the game; with its soundtrack being one of the reasons I love it! But for me to be able to recreate something I was already familiar with was a bit challenging since I wanted to try not to copy the original too much as having my own creative differences with it sounded more fun. Basically, creating something new is much more fun to me than trying to one-to-one copy something.
As for the whole experience, I'd say I've learned a lot on this final project especially when it came to my workflow. I'm not the best organized person there is so I often jump back and forth from different workspaces and to a fault, it leaves my brain a bit jumbled but that was my own fault. But halfway through this project I managed to minimize, as much as I could, the brain-jumbling by focusing on each category of sound effect first and 0nly then tweak their timings on the video later.
Overall, this module has been really fun! Am I the best at sound design now after all these projects? Definitely not but I've learned so much and left more room for me to learn in the future as I have left this module feeling very interested in sound design and most likely will look further into it once I get further into my animation degree! ꉂ(˵˃ ᗜ ˂˵)
🐚
Comments
Post a Comment