WRITTEN BY IAN HOWARD
SOUND EFFECTS EDITOR, BOOM BOX POST
One of the best parts about sound for animation is being able to completely start from scratch designing something. That’s why we love showing you our creative process on fun things we get to design! For this focus on the creative blog, we are going to dive right into showing you a cute little flying machine we designed. Check it out below!
Brainstorming
I went into this design knowing that I wanted to make a fun, light sounding helicopter with a slight cartoon element. As far as mechanical sounds, I was thinking about what a helicopter sounds like but also something like a small handheld fan (the type that doubles as a water mister for hot days like today!).
Step by step process
I started the design build with the propellers adding both a small fan and a pitched helicopter to add more of a lower wind element.
I then created the motor for the device that drives the propellers by finding both high and low motor elements and utilizing pitch shift.
After hearing those elements together, I knew I wanted to add a bit of a fun/cartoon element to the full build so I added in an additional motor steady that sounded a bit sputtery and poppy.
Once the final steady was created, I used the plugin Doppler to create passbys and Sound Shifter to pitch from low to high and high to low when the helicopter raised and lowered. I also added in some small engine revs to give the passbys more of a punch and to make it more personal that the character was in control of the flying device.
What worked/Didn’t work
When adding the elements together, I was doing a bit of testing with Doppler to see how it would be effected. Sometimes when you don’t have a mix of frequencies or ones that punch out more, Doppler has little effect. It was helpful for me in the process of creating the build to test out what it would sound like with Doppler before starting to add it all in to what I was working on.
Tips!
I think the biggest thing (especially when it comes to fun animation) is to bring it down to the basics at first and then adding in something fun to make it different and creative. Starting out with what I created I thought about a small fan and motors but adding in a fun/toon element really changed the way it sounded.
Client Direction?
The only direction the clients gave was to make it sound like a cute and small helicopter. Other than that, it was all my creative choosing!
If you enjoyed this blog, you should check out a few other blogs we did about creating motion, weight, and speed:
CREATING MOTION IN SOUND DESIGN USING PITCH
LUNCH AND LEARN: HOW TO CONVEY WEIGHT AND SPEED