[Riot Creative Contest 2017] - Philip Spann

spannsounds

Just heard about this at the LA Game Dev Drinkup, a little late to join the fray but there is still a little over 2 weeks so I think that's plenty of time to get all the original recordings I need!

Prepping my session tonight in Pro Tools and will do a round of spotting/markers.  Just now getting it imported into the template as something was up with the vid as far as Windows codecs are concerned: had to convert--I'm guessing you're a mac environment at Riot.  Watching the video, affirmed why I always liked Rakan--should be fun to convey that sense of movement.  Other notes: Zed's mouth is conveniently behind a mask... I could make him say anything hehe. 

Tomorrow, I'll start wild tracking some basic foley assets for this project to edit the basics in place to mold the more exciting sound design around.  No libraries is tough, so I think starting by making a quick and dirty custom library to cover impacts, whooshes, clangs, steps, cloth, etc will go far and not take long.  Luckily I know I have a chicken carcass that was suppose to become ramen stock and some squishy fruit/veg in the fridge and as a cosplayer I have various cloth textures for days.  I hope chicken stock tastes the same even when all the bones have been mangled... ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

We'll have to find out, I'll check in with the results!  Both sonic and culinary of course

spannsounds

Got a lot of Foley assets recorded today; cloth, whooshes, ambiances and footsteps in a rapid-fire session.  I'm editing and cataloging them into separate WAV assets now for editorial now.  Tomorrow I'll take a dive into my synthesizers for sweeteners and record the remaining metals and props for the first edit.  Should be fun!

spannsounds

Went digging in the synths today, still just wild tracking assets into a custom library that I think will be useful in editorial.  Shout out to my favorites from Tone 2: their Gladiator and Nemesis synths especially.  I find they have pretty powerful effects sections and you can stumble into a lot of great sounds tweaking the various dropdowns.  I'm hoping these make some useful layers in the bigger onscreen effects.

I'm pretty booked the next few days but will try to add a few more well edited and meta-data tagged sounds each night.

spannsounds

Unfortunately was running a nasty fever last week and lost quite a bit of time on my back that I was hoping to find and record more props.  But, I should still be able to make it on time--I've certainly made much tighter deadlines on bigger edits before.  Enough of my custom Foley was already recorded that I went ahead and started the edit tonight.  I've always liked doing my edits categorically: so I'll do a pass for all the whooshes, then all the footsteps, all the small punches and impacts etc.  Then I go and do the 'large effects' or set pieces separately.  I found that really helps keep things the ball rolling particularly in action scenes where the smaller sounds can get dense.  It's always easier to have everything tagged and decide if clips need to be muted later.  Anyways, my goal is to knock out all the general Foley tonight with my custom library so I can rest my Editor hat and put on the Sound Designer cap and work on the bigger magic and movement sounds the next couple nights.  Here goes!

spannsounds

Got the basic Foley assets down up to the red room last night and have been working out some of the spells and Rakan's bigger 'flight' movements at the moment (I like writing these for a quick tea break).  Discovered I need to take a trip outside tomorrow to get some more grit in my steps and slides, spell effects are turning out to be largely synth based.  Actually, I'm using more synth assets than ever since I'm disconnected from my usual library, I'm having to use various white noise hits to add swells and chunk where I'd normally reverse cannons or explosions that I have handy.  I think tomorrow night I'll bust out my Nord Lead 2 and start farming it.  I even added some synth elements to the BGs in both scenes just to add some sort of texture (I normally really hate stale backgrounds but I don't have a lot of personal wildlife recordings that would fit so I made some virtual 'croaks' and 'caw's to pan around--we'll see if they make final mix).  

spannsounds

Been attending NAMM this last weekend and had a real blast.  Wish I had some of the synths I tried out at home to record sounds off of

Anyways, time is running out so tonight I just made sure to have every sound tagged.  I have all day free tomorrow so I'm looking forward to locking myself in my office and mixing this down.  I know some of my base assets aren't where I'd like them to be but I think this contest has mostly been a good exercise in recording and especially synthesis.  Best of luck to everyone!