Category Archives: Blog

Award Nominations for Audio Drama work

Over the past year (and a bit more…) I worked with Brandon Crose of Crose to Home Productions to develop their new Audio Drama ‘The Ordinary Epic‘

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As it seems to be the season it looks like we are in the running for some pretty cool awards in the world of Audio Drama. The show has been shortlisted for the BBC Audio Drama 2020 awards and nominated for the Audio Verse Awards 2019, including ‘Best Action Sound Design’.

The show is a serialized fantasy tabletop audio drama about the real and imagined lives of five friends and the challenges they face together. This provided a great opportunity for me to play between high fantasy sound design and juxtapose with gritty realistic and mundane ‘IRL’ sounds.

This was a real passion project for me and whilst it had its challenges I’m very proud of the final result. If you have any interest in nerd culture, fantasy or even table top games I would love to hear your feelings about the show.

Here’s what AV Club said about the show:

AV Club

‘…When these players drop into character, the sound design cleverly shifts from that of a small, enclosed basement to the wide, echoing fantasy world they romp around in. We can experience the game just as they do: as a living entity that reflects their conversations and their arguments in the real world, but also brings us a sweeping soundscape and beautiful musical design. [Elena Fernández Collins]’ 

Planet Coaster DLC

Over the past 7 months I’ve been thrilled to work with Frontier on their continued development of Planet Coaster. To not only be familiar with the game as a fan, but to get really personal and in depth into their audio has been an amazing experience.

So far I’ve be fortunate to work on:

  • Patch 1.3.7, bringing the first official real world coaster into the game,
  • Spooky pack bringing new halloween themed content
  • Anniversary Update 1.4 overhauling the management systems and adding new guest/staff mechanics
  • Adventure Pack, adding additional tomb and jungle themed content

Getting this involved in such a massive and innovative setup, including a preexisting Wwise project has been an interesting challenge. Coming in at this late stage has given some unique challenges, working around limitations that have been in place for over a year, whilst also being a fresh pair of eyes/ears to spot where we could improve  Examining both new and old content a like.

Scottish Ferry Recordings and their FMOD implementation

For New Year I was lucky enough to travel to the Isle of Tiree, and since I had just got my Rode Blimp, I thought I’d put it through it’s paces on board the car ferry.

Whilst I had to pick my moments to avoid my fellow passengers, I was able to get quiet a lot of solid recordings from different areas of the boat at different times, including docking and cruising speed.

It didn’t provide a great amount of difference when traveling between a stationary and cruising speed, so I’ve tried accentuating it in an FMOD event. I also separated a more windy take of the recording to use on a Height parameter, to represent the player pulling the camera back for a higher shot.

 

You can download the event here: DOWNLOAD

Or listen to the separated assets here: SOUNDCLOUD

Feel free to rip the assets out and use them yourself if they’d be useful to you. I have some more as well so if you’re in need of a car ferry ambience set, drop me a line.

Obviously I have to indulge some holiday photos as well, including the cow that liked grazing by the house every morning.

Cathedral Bells Recording

So I’ve been living in Chichester the past few months. Every week I have heard the bells of the massive cathedral. I got in contact with the local bell ringing group and they were lovely enough to let me in for a listen. I did some preliminary recordings and plan to go back to get some better ones.

It’s fair to say I need a better limiter for the “close mics” in the bell chamber.

The recordings from the ringers room where interesting, but where spoiled somewhat by some chatting and the pull of the ropes. The most disconcerting thing about the evening however, was that the bells made the whole tower shake…

It wasn’t a pleasant experience carrying the equipment up these 100 steps when the building was literally swaying!

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Once I’ve been back and edited them I’ll should be able to share them. I’d really love to do some round robins of each of the 8 bells. But I cant interfere with the bell practice too much.

 

Game Audio Education Update

The Game Music and Audio Courses were officially announced a few weeks ago.

You can check them out here:

www.thinkspaceeducation.com/gma/

I’ve also been managing their social media on the side. Including a short blog today on what it means to get into games. http://thinkspaceeducation.com/blog/

I’m not able to share too much on my Sound Design projects but in recent months I have been super busy with a variety of clients including Stormy Peak Entertainment. I will hopefully be able to show some of the Fmod stuff I have been working on with them.

I was also able to work with Sound Designer Andy Gibson on our new Fmod tutorials. It was a great few days and I look forward to getting the final edits back so I can work on the text. 

Get in touch if you have any questions on my work with ThinkSpace or my Sound Design.