Week of 2/4

This week, I worked on my first draft for all of the gas cat’s combat sounds. My process for creating these sounds was looking at reference materials provided by the design team, gathering samples from Pixabay, a free sound library, then finally compiling and editing the samples in BandLab.

Designing sounds for a gas creature was a challenge, since gas doesn’t necessarily have a distinct sound. Some samples I chose included inflating and deflating balloons, hissing pipes and motors, an airplane taking off, aerosol spray cans, and sparking torches.

One strategy I used for editing was pitch and speed shifting. Sometimes, the layered gas hisses sounded too similar, so I added variety in pitch to give the sound more depth and texture. I also often sped up my samples to fit the fast-paced motions of the gas cat’s attacks.

Week of 2/25

This week, I was tasked with creating environmental sounds for the map hazards. These included the electric fence, lava pool, river rapids, poison puddle, and shining gems.

The electric fence is found in the plasma area of the map, so I tried to search for samples of violent shocks similar to a Tesla coil. I gathered many different samples of rushing water for the design team to choose which best fit the feel of the rivers in-game. I used samples of boiling water for both the lava and poison hazards, pitching the lava lower and adding more bubbles and a higher hum to the poison to differentiate them. For the shining gems, I combined samples of wind chimes with ice cubes shaking in a glass, adjusting their volumes and speed as necessary to make for one cohesive loop.