Written by Kate Finan, co-owner of Boom Box Post
Jeff and I recently had the pleasure of working on a fantastic animated project that featured an incredibly vibrant city park filled with pets. There were dogs, horses, cats, sheep--you name it. When Jeff met with the creator, she expressed that she loved the idea of having human vocalizations covering the main pets on screen. Jeff and I completely agreed since it really spoke to the hand-made, warm, and contemporary feeling of the animation.
In fact, we loved the idea so much that we decided to create our own custom sound effects for all of the animals using just our own voices and a microphone. Thus began what I now like to think of as The Day Our Neighbors Realized We Were Completely Crazy. Jeff had family arriving in town that evening, so we threw up the mic, he closed the door, and let loose some truly amazing animal sounds at the top of his lungs. Jeff has this wonderful talent for just completely going for it when we do this type of thing. I have never heard a man neigh so loud. He bounced the files, threw them up on our server, and flew out the door for some much-needed time off with his family.
Luckily, that left me with a little more privacy to record my vocals. I decided to perform different dog barks, cat meows, hog snorts, and guinea pig meeps (which is probably my favorite pet impersonation in my entire repertoire. Why do I have a pet impersonation repertoire? Because I'm a sound designer).
Jeff went in a more barnyard direction and recorded cow moos, duck quacks, sheep baas, and horse neighs. All together, we had really covered our bases.
Here are some of the weirder animal sounds.... What the heck ARE these?!?!?!
And just for fun, here is Jeff basically just making fart noises with his mouth (yes, Mom, we do call this work).
The whole thing really came together in the mix when we chose different animals to feature in each scene and even cut them to sync with the four-legged characters on screen. It was so seamless that when Jeff mentioned the performances the the executives, they were floored that they weren't actual animals. Score one for Team Boom Box!