Nathaniel DeRusha - Sound Designer (Morning Calm Studios)
Here is my final demo reel a course in Video Game Audio. For this project, I created and implemented every sound that you hear in this video. As the sounds needed to be created for both the cutscene and the gameplay, I created a ProTools project to manage the sounds and keep them consistent between the two projects. I did all of the voice over (ADR) work myself and utilized the Pitch Shift II plug-in for the vocal effects. For all of the game sounds, I accessed the Westone Music and Sound Library for all sound effects. The final project was assembled in Final Cut X and exported as a QuickTime video in the H.264 format.
I loved this particular Full Sail project. This was one of the many Project and Portfolio classes that I took for my undergraduate degree in Audio Production at Full Sail University. This is about the McGuffin device, a mysterious object retrieved from deep space... This assignment was built using Wwise and linked to a pre-made game with the Unity game engine. While I am not a game designer (yet!), I had to interpret the game code and link all of the audio assets to the Wwise software. This system of banks using a parent-child hierarchy was rather complicated to keep organized. Adding to the difficulty was creating distance parameters that attenuate the sounds as the player gets closer to the elements such as the computer consoles, power nodes, and the McGuffin device itself. This project completely changed my perceptions as to what an audio designers role is in game development.
Another great video game project courtesy of Full Sail University! This was the first sound design for games project I had and introduced me to the art of foley. It was also my introduction to Wwise. The game was provide pre-developed and I had to create all of the sound content, from the landscapes to the creatures. The sounds came from the most unlikely of places!
For the landscapes (Krahto and Fnoon), the source was a vacuum cleaner. I used Protools to stretch the time of the audio file which also lowered the pitch significantly. this gave the landscapes a mysterious mood that was enhanced by a lot of reverb. To differentiate the environments, I stretched the file to different lengths for a pitch variation and tried using different reverb settings. For the creatures, I used the Westone Music Library to experiment with different animal noises and altered the sound using time stretch. But the best part was the exploding sounds as the creatures get vaporized.
With this portion, I enlisted the help of my wonderfully patient and creative wife. I was having some trouble finding a perfect "splat" sound. Every file I tried just didn't sound right. So my wife and I set up in the garage at our house, armed with a Zoom recorder, a condenser microphone, a few different bowls, and a bunch of squishy fruits and veggies. We took turns squishing the fruit and surprisingly found a terrific series of splat sounds. Turns out the bananas and tomatoes in a metal bowl were the winning combination! Add in a little reverb and voila! Exploding alien city.