Todd Pickens' Environment Pack: Sound Design

I was very fortunate to be given the opportunity to work with Todd Pickens on his upcoming environment pack. Thanks Todd for giving me the shot to show off my artistic capabilities. The following plan will detail how Todd and I approached sound design for his environment pack and hopefully give the community some audio ideas for their projects.


Sound Design Approach:
Sound is an integral part of any environment design and comprises approximately 50% of the atmospheric mood. In some cases the audio of a scene will supersede the art in creating the mood for a specific environmental element(s). Regardless of the environmental goals, a sound designer must work closely with both the artists and producer of the material presented.

The first step of the sound design for Todd Pickens' environment pack was to meet and understand what Todd, both the artist and the producer, wanted to accomplish with the environment. Once the initial meeting was completed, the conceptual work began. Todd did an excellent job of providing visual concepts that set the mood of the environment pack. I can not stress enough how important reference art is to sound design. Constant communication was critical throughout the entire artistic process, and any concept art was followed up with rough mixes of the sound effects. Just like placement art, placement sounds were used to help both Todd and I map out the overall direction of the project.

As the conceptual process continued, we faced some technical challenges. Those technical challenges were identified and a punch list was created in order to address the technical issues. Once the technical challenges were addressed, the real design work began.

Environment:
When Todd delivered the first rough map and art assets, I started my work. Since the brain filters out low level or "unimportant" sounds, kind of like your eyes ignoring your nose, the first environment sound I addressed was the "what you don't hear" audio. This became the foundation or anchor for the remaining sounds in the environment. The rest of audio was layered upon the perceived "what you don't hear" sounds. Each audio layer was placed so that pitch and volume was relevant to the previous audio layer or enhanced the base audio layer. An example of this is the corn field audio in relation to the ambient storm audio.

Models:
Todd had some very specific plans for a few of the models in the pack. Designing sound for models, such as the windmill and watermill, can be a tedious undertaking. Starting from rough models with animations, Todd and I worked together to obtain the "desired" effect. Animation timing and sound synch were the keys to setting the mood for the animated object. Refinements on both Todd's and my part were necessary to create both a visual and audio effect that worked.

Rough Watermill with Animation:

Final Watermill with Animation:

Final Watermill Sound
Watermill Sound Effect

Final Steps
As the environment progressed and refinements were implemented, new sounds were produced to round out the environment. Todd and I had to be flexible as things came together. Sometimes this would require Todd to make model and animation adjustments and me to remix some of the audio effects. I think the end result was well worth all the hard work.

Conclusion
Most of the sounds in the pack consisted of multiple audio recordings/tracks mixed together. Since I am a perfectionist around audio, I will continue to adjust the mixes until release. I hope everybody who purchases Todd's new environment pack has as much fun working with it as I did. Feel free to shoot me an e-mail if you have any questions regarding sound design. Thanks again Todd for letting me help out.