This week, we'll be delving into the world of sound design and what it can add to animation.
What are sound effects, and where do they come from?
You know all those sounds that play during whatever cartoon and/or animated feature you're watching that aren't music or voice overs, well those are what are known as sound effects, and they come in all pitches and frequencies (my newly coined audio equivalent to things coming in all shapes and sizes) from footsteps and car engines to crashes and explosions and even more fantastical sounds like laser fires or even robot noises.
With this in mind, because animation is all about creating the illusion of life (so none of what's on screen is even real), you actually have to insert sound effects into your editing software after the animation is already completed, meaning you can get really creative with the sound design if you wanted to. (This is also technically the case with live action too but to a slightly lesser extent because you can't get away with as much as you would in animation)
When it comes to sound effects in animation specifically, there are around four main approaches you could take when it comes to how you go about it. (you can combine elements of all of these approaches of course but we'll be going over them individually for clarity's sake)
Syncretic
Syncretic sounds are a type of sound effect that's meant to sell you on the setting of the current scene in question, basically think of the ambience of the current scene in question whether it be out on a field:
or even the sound of rain pouring outside while our main characters are stuck in the house of a psychopath:
These sounds are important because they help fill out the atmosphere for a given scene and immerse the audience more into the world the characters live in, whether it be the pleasant field outside of Peach's castle in the middle of the day in Super Mario 64, Sid's dark and gloomy room in Toy Story or even a nature filled jungle in Madagascar, these scenes are improved by the existence of their respective syncretic sounds even if just subtly.
As someone who's actually made animations myself (even if it was in Dreams for the PS4/5), my personal use of syncretic sounds was mainly as background noises (I.E: wind sounds for when the tornado is terrorising Super Sheep in "Convention F-3" or even the vast emptiness of space in Captain Cartridge's "Operation Compact Disc" cartoon) to help sell the current scene's setting:
Zip-crash
Now we're getting into my personal favourite type of sound effects to both listen to and to make myself, Zip-crash is typically associated with your classic cartoon sound effects you'd find on something like The Flintstones, The Jetsons, Tom and Jerry, Looney Tunes, Mickey Mouse, Ext.
These kinds of sound effects mainly came about because back in the "silent" era, the only way you could watch movies was in a theatre with a live organ player (or even an entire orchestra if the venue was big enough) providing the entire soundtrack for the picture, including the sound effects. (depending on the size of the venue of course) As such, sound effects were often quite bombastic in nature due to the fact they needed to be played live. Fleisher Studios would go on to invent synchronised sound with 1926's "My Ole Kentucky Home" and then afterwards, Walt Disney came along and used the technique with 1928's "Steamboat Willie" which itself would go on to popularise the concept in the general public.
The main appeal behind the zip-crash sound effect type (at least for me) is that instead of trying to aim for realism, zip-crash often aims to express the feeling of the associated action so you can get really creative with how you go about making said sounds, whether you use a pair of bongos to represent a character running quickly or a slide whistle to represent a character falling. (and if you factor in being able to modify the sound into another sound like I do, you could even do things like turn the pressing of a key on a keyboard into the sound of a blue, super powered cartoon sheep firing his lasers or even a portal sound)
In this case, examples include when Wile E. Coyote falls off a clip in the Looney Tunes Road Runner cartoons:
And even whenever Scooby Doo, Shaggy or anyone else in the cast of Scooby-Doo (particularly the original Scooby-Doo: Where Are You series):
Examples of me doing zip-crash are quite plentiful, as it's personally my favourite type of sound effect to use and make myself, but the one I'm most proud of at the moment is Super Sheep's laser and the portals from my latest short thus far, Kyoto Kasuma: A Brawl In Development, since those two sounds were actually created as a result of me taking a keyboard sound I'd recorded for the purposes of a drum kit and distorting them until I liked the results:
Functional
Functional sound effects are exactly what they sound like on the tin, they're sounds that you would expect to hear in the real world, be they footsteps in some guy's house, buttons being pressed or even a car engine revving to go.
The main reason you'd want to use this particular kind of sound is similar to that of syncretic sounds, only instead of selling a particular scene setting, you're trying to sell the character(s) doing a particular action (whether it be throwing a punch, opening a window or even walking down the street), and as such you can be a little bit less subtle with your sounds if you wish
This particular kind of sound design tends to be a lot more common in feature films than it is in cartoons on television because more often than not, the feature films tend to get the bigger budgets due to the fact they're often designed to be theatrical experiences first and television content second. (although you do still hear some functional sounds on tv)
Examples of functional sounds include the likes of Sonic's footsteps as he run across the forest in the teaser trailer for Sonic Frontiers:
And the Tivo sounds that play as the Simpsons get a new TV with said Tivo:
In terms of functional sounds I've used, the only example that really springs to mind would be the tornado from Super Sheep in Convention F-3. Even then however, it was a sound I stole from the LittleBigPlanet series of games:
Poetic Authentication
Poetically Authentic sounds are when you make a sound effect for something that's fictitious (say a blue hedgehog boosting his way through lush green hills or a trash compacting cube robot) and try and authentically create what said fictitious thing might sound like if it were real.
This one is a mix between Zip-crash and functional because while the sounds you're trying to make are technically functional, the things you're making said sounds for are actually fictional in nature. This means you've got a lot more freedom to play around with the sounds until you get something you can be happy using.
Examples of this include Wall-E and Eve (and every other robot and piece of futuristic technology in the movie):
And whenever any of the master builder characters build anything in The LEGO Movie franchise at speeds no ordinary person ever could:
As someone who's made cartoon shorts myself, the main example I can really think of in terms of this particular approach to sound design would be the portals in Kyoto Kasuma: A Brawl In Development, as there I basically took the same keyboard sounds I used to make Super Sheep's laser beams and messed around with them until I got an approximation as to what a portal might sound like.
The Project Itself
Now that all that pre-requisite is out of the way, Now I can begin the actual project, where I'm supposed to take a piece of animation I already did but never added sound effects to and add them in to enhance the experience.
For this, I'll be taking the pendulum swinging exercise I did earlier and add a few sound effects to it, but before I do that, I'll need to introduce...
The Sound Log
A sound log is basically a list of sounds that one intends to use for a given project (essentially an asset list but just for sound effects), these will typically include what sounds you're going to use and where you plan to get them from (or if you're recording sounds, how you plan on recording the sound) so that you'll know who to credit once the time comes.
Now that that's been established, let's get on with the show.
Putting The Sound Project Together
Well somebody call Staples, because that was easy.
For this one, I mainly took more of a zip-crash approach to the sound design by turning the squeaky door into the sound of a ball swinging since like I said previously, zip-crash is my personal favourite type of sound effect to make and use due to the cartoony nature of it all.
As for the task itself, the only real steps I needed to do were get my Pendulum reaction video, my door squeaking sound I recorded the Monday we got assigned this task to begin with (which itself was a spur of the moment thing I just recorded because I liked the way it sounded, I ended up going on a little adventure across campus to find another door that would squeak like that because I didn't want to accidentally record another lecture that was happening) and the Sonic The Hedgehog (1991) platform collapse/boss hit sound effect imported into my playlist so that I could drag them onto the timeline and make sure the whole thing played out correctly.
The fact I used Shotcut to do this also helped since I didn't need to sign into Adobe Creative Cloud to access it on my computer at home.
The only thing I will say is that I did end up needing to add in Dire Dire Docks and Jolly Roger Bay's music track from Super Mario 64 at the last minute so that my video would better match the brief. I chose this song specifically because I figured it would fit in with the empty atmosphere of the white void as the ball crashes into the triangle
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