Field recording has been obviously hampered by trying to reduce time outside, so I wanted to share some other projects I’ve been working on.
I’ve created a small group for sound designers looking for feedback, critique, and collaboration. I’ll talk more about this soon.
The latest design we decided to tackle were these incredible 3D/AR magic trading cards designed by Robbie Tilton*** (https://twitter.com/robbietilton).
He released a series of these different cards and the consistent nature of the delivery with the variety of card faces made them an obvious choice for some redesign fun. So I thought it’d be fun to show some of the though process and design that went into this challenge. If you’d like to join in one a future challenge just shoot me a message.
To start, the below video is a compilation for some of my redesigned card faces.
The initial videos from the artist show the video starting with a reveal of the card face right away. While this works for quick delivery, especially on social media. It’s difficult to establish sounds and create a more compelling story.
So I started with editing the videos to start with a rotation of the back side of the card, then transitioning to the front side. This allows for a generic backside sound design for each card. Assuming these would be revealed to a player this can help us build suspense more. Then transitioning to the card face for a bespoke audio treatment, before returning to the backside for a consistent resolution to the sound.
Essentially we’re taking the “story” of each card from simply be an; “Action” - “Resolution” arc. To a more complete; “Anticipation” - “Action” - “Resolution”. This gives us a bit more time to tell our story with sound, and even makes it easier to create all these designs because we know the “Anticipation” and “Resolution” stages of this design will be the same for every card.
So that’s what I opted to start with designing first, below is an image of the edit for the generic design. Various impacts off the start to establish the sound and then some treated whooshes for the card rotation. A pitched down paper umbrella made for this earth like movement texture which help to find a gap between the diegetic paper sound of card, but not be quite so literal. While the gap in the middle of this stem allows for the bespoke designs for the card face to poke through.
Designing sounds for the rotation of the card helps provide some obvious “whooshes” and transition layers.
The thunder off the start I feel helps to provide an initial impact sound that fits the overall mystical aesthetic, and was a sound I recorded this year. (If you know Vancouver weather, thunder claps are like the equivalent of finding a unicorn. So to record one as well is incredibly rare.)
Once that design was taken care of, it could be copied and pasted to the rest of the cards. This also made it easier to work on the unique sounds for each card, now that the sort of intro/outro sections were taken care of and an overall tone was established.
Taking a look at the health potion design, I found a good reference in “Hades” (which I was playing a lot of at the time). Super simple but effective health design in that game with a breath, bell, and heart beat. So I wanted to try mimic that sound.
A drum hit, and tingsha cymbals off the top help give a rewarding and positive impact. Those elements help to make the cork pull a bit more rewarding too, as the squeak from a cork isn’t necessarily the most rewarding sound by itself. There are two hard panned exhales which help with some natural chorusing and width. As well as some bubbles and water movement for the visuals of the liquid and then some fizzing soda can opening sounds too. Finally, in the background there’s some barley audible voices from a quiet dinner party kind of laughter ambience. Just something to help provide a reassuring atmosphere and the right kind of laughter can do that trick sometimes. Obviously processing on most of these sounds, but I think the one to draw attention to is a bit of tremolo on the sustained bell and drum hits to give them a little bit of movement and help them from becoming too harsh and sustained for too long.
I think all of it combines for a pretty rewarding and (what I hope) makes the player feel more refreshed with their new health potion card.
I won’t do this deep dive into each card, but here you can hear the results when we combine the generic card layers with each unique card face sounds for a final result.
Overall it was a fun challenge and nice to dive into the world of magic a little bit more. I’ve done some trading card design work in the past, but not much with a heavy focus on magic or fantasy type themes. So this made for a fun prompt and it was nice to hear everyone else’s work.
If you think this is something you’d like to try too, shoot me a message (twitter or email are best) and just ask. We have a small group of sound designers at various levels and it’s fun to provide a consistent prompt to everyone and see what the results are. Makes for good conversation, inspiration and way to get some feedback and critique in a casual setting.
Thanks for listening.
***Sound design, clips, and references here have no affiliation with the artist or their intended final project. This publicly shared content, usage is for educational/experimentation purposes only.