For my own submission I have selected a 2 minute clip of the long playthrough video that the team sent in our group chat. I put the clip into Ableton and identified the sounds I would need to enhance the environment of the game and mirror the virtual world with an interesting sonic world. I wanted to keep the sound design very simple, only adding ambience and sounds that would be naturally found in the world of the game, as my partner Rafaella had already done the synthetic sound design for things like when the bee pollinates a flower.
Above is my checklist for the final video sound design. I sourced all of the sounds off of Splice, a sound library that contains high quality samples. If this was a real job where I was designing the sound for a game and getting paid for it, I would have spent time gathering my own samples and making them more unique, but in the context of this project I felt the overall point was for me as a sound designer to arrange a soundscape that would fit the world as opposed to spending a lot of time creating and sourcing my own sounds.
Screenshots of Ableton project:
https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1AodHtXFgAuczk3NOCAY2aH4M5vO8ttIu?usp=sharing
As these images show, I kept things very simple, grouping similar sounds together and limiting myself to only using volume automation which often came in the form of fading the actual clips out. Grouping sounds together but having different samples that I chopped up allowed me to play around with textures without losing the characteristics of the sounds I was adding. I also changed the soundtrack because I really didn’t like the quick changes between the two scores, it felt awkward and sloppy. I decided to use one of the soundtracks I made that I feel encapsulates a slightly atmospheric and sombre mood as well as a hopeful and light mood, which calmly underscores the ambience of the surroundings.
It was refreshing to work in this way as I am used to heavy experimentation with processing and using effects/digital manipulation techniques to lead my workflow. In this instance however, I had a clear plan in place with specific sounds I wanted to add, which made the process a lot more manageable. I feel I did a good job and I’m excited to mix it further in pro tools using FB360.