Creature Sound
I received such a huge feedback about the lion recordings I did for ArcaniA that I thought I would give some more details. This post is about how I create sound effects for monsters.
First steps of course are to analyze what kind of monster I have to design sounds for. Let’s say I have to create a sound for a large fire demon, something like Runes of Magic’s Demon Lord. The size and character of the creature influences my first attempts to get great basic sounds to start the design. Also I am always looking for special, characteristic sounds, that I can use repeatedly through all kinds of different sounds. Let’s say in this example I use a low, threatening gargling sound to give the fire creature its characteristic sound. I would go into our recording booth and record, in high quality 192 kHz, 24-bit mono, a belching sound with my own voice, sounding like this:
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After recording my voice, I edit it and remove noises and other unwanted audio using an audio restoration tool. Then the cleaned basic material will be processed in different manners. Mostly they will be pitched and equalized, but sometimes I use distortion or other effects, too. I also add some special reverb rooms at this point to change my body into something else. In this case I used Altiverb and its included impulse response of a Djembe to get a warmer and fuller character than my body provides.
That done, my voice sounds a little bit more characteristic for a fire demon:
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OK, I got my basic sound, now I do the same with other sounds I need. I also recorded a deep, long and breathy inhaling sound and some screams. Edited in similar ways as described above, the end result looks like this in ProTools:
I especially distorted and added enhancer effects to the inhaling sound.
I used just a few layers for this creature, as this is an example. Sometimes I use even less, but mostly I got more layers to design a organic but monstrous sound. That’s all there is to it. Listen to the short final sound.
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Very interesting! Can’t wait for more posts about audio design in Arcania.
I took the liberty of translating your post and publishing it on Gothic Italia (http://www.gothicitalia.it/arcania.aspx/articolo/audio-design-dei-mostri-axel-rohrbach) with a couple of links back. Hope you don’t mind.
Hi Lorenz,
there will come up some more. This was just about a possible general workflow. Unfortunately not specifically for ArcaniA since I am not allowed to post any information / screens of ArcaniA right now. Anyway: you are pretty much welcome to post links of my homepage, I appreciate that!
Best,
Axel