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Role Research Video Game Sound Designer Since my main passion is music and audio work, my choice for this assignment is a Sound Designer for video games. I have been lucky enough to produce music for video game and I’m currently researching sound design tools and processes for video games. Background In order to become involved as a sound designer in the video game industry, there are several areas of expertise required to be able to produce quality audio. The first is to have a knowledgeable background in microphone techniques. This is important for creating sound effects / foley and for capturing ambiences by field recording. The second is to have an understanding of digital signal processing for effects manipulation and sound object creation. There is one last area that is important and this is having a good understanding of computer programming language. It is crucial for the sound designer to communicate with the audio programmer in order to implement the sound assets properly and to design sounds that fit the specifications of the audio engine(s). According to Rob Bridgett who is currently the Sound Director at Radical Entertainment in Vancouver comments in an article on the website Gamesutra, it is important to have a clear understanding of the capabilities of the game console in terms of storage capacity, RAM, and processing power. By having a good grasp of this knowledge, a sound designer will know what type of file format to work with, how smart the audio engine is in terms of handling audio manipulation such as occlusion in realtime and the amount of audio assets that can be used for such a game. The other necessity is being able to work with specific tools that are developed by the actual video game companies. These are tools that were created in conjunction with the audio programmer at the request of the sound designer. For example, converting file formats is very important to be able to transfer assets from one gaming platform to another. A typical batch processing software might be able to handle a 100 files or so but to be able to batch process 1000s of files at a specific format might require customized software. This is why it is important to have good communication skills and address these issues to either the audio programmer or the Sound Director.
Winter Stone Productions The Work As a Sound Designer, there is pressure to deliver the audio assets on time and that means having a good grasp of the audio equipment used such as ProTools for audio editing and synthesizers for designing sound objects. Documentation is extremely important because as a Sound Designer, you might be working with several hundreds of samples so name conventions, file backups, and labeling are essential for an efficient work flow. Communication with the rest of the department is critical in order to get approvals and critiques on the work. One must not take the criticism personally, its just business. The Sound Designer must have a strong imagination, because sometimes they are required to create sounds for objects that do not exist in reality. So through foley and synthesis, the Sound Designer must be able to combine various sounds and textures in order to create one unified sound. Getting into the business The job of a Sound Designer is very competitive. I remember speaking to a friend who used to work at Radical and she mentioned they get over 75 resumes a week! Yikes! References: http://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/2321/designing_a_nextgen_game_for_sound.php?page=1 http://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/3806/a_sense_of_fun_anybody_could_be_.php http://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/3814/nextgen_audio_squareoff_.php http://www.epicsound.com/resources/audioneeds.html http://www.elasticspace.com/2005/02/sound-objects http://www.winterstoneproductions.com/
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