Sound Evaluation

Reflecting on the final outcomes I have created for this sound design module I believe my ideas and creativity of them may have been my strongest aspect, second to my soundtrack work. However, I also believe that I could have significantly improved it all if I had better skills with the required programs and editing software.

During this project, I have realised that in a majority of my work I tend to struggle once the more complicated applications are involved, such as the editing software for this module. I believe this is because I am easily overwhelmed and confused by them all, as they are rarely beginner friendly and require more skill to use effectively. My strengths lie more closely towards brainstorming, design and aesthetics.

While at first, I did struggle with composing my ideas in software such as FL Studios, Adobe Audition and Audacity I still very much enjoyed experimenting within Arcade. With some minor experience in music previously as a hobby, I was very interested in the soundtrack creation part of this module. While testing out various instruments and samples within Arcade, I enjoyed imagining how I could utilise each sample, including thinking ahead to how I could edit them to match the sound I wanted to create.

The soundtrack I had created for my final outcome I wouldn’t consider to entirely matching to my original ideas. I especially struggled with the more classical music elements that I wanted to include. I believe working with a more jazzy genre that I wanted would’ve required far more musical knowledge and understanding than I personally have, and so in the end I regrettably did not include that element in the music. Instead, I have created a brief electronic track using a synth piano and beat, as well as some ambient noises underneath it. I attempted to create a loop with this soundtrack, so it could be played seamlessly as ambience in the background. Creating this loop was more difficult than I expected, so it is not entirely seamless, however in the end I think I did somewhat achieve a successful loop.

I also decided to include the ambient noises of city streets, electronic sounds and cars quickly going by to create a sense of space. I have enjoyed studying the sound design of other games in the past that effectively uses music and sound effects to help tell a story, and so it is often something I consider in my own work. Even if it is subtle or goes unnoticed, these sounds assist the imagination of the player and set the scene without the use of words.

When looking back at my sound effect work I believe the biggest flaw in it was not using proper sound equipment. For a majority of my work, I used my phone, which is quite an old model, and I think that shows in the quality of the sound effects. I believe the editing process did help significantly by reducing the abundance of white noise in the recordings and normalising the loudness as there was a lot of peaking.

The most successful creation of my sound effect work I believe is the gun sound effects. From one recording, I was able to create multiple sound effects with slight differences to add variation so the same sound effect didn't have to be used every time a gun would be used in the game.