Maha

Last semester in my Art & Design minor paper, I created a rhythm game with my classmates Michaela and Matt. This semester we’ve decided to develop this project into a fully realised game building on the initial concept and pushing it further. 

The original concept was based on a loose idea from Matt Laguda. He wanted a dating simulator in which all of the different interactions with characters contained no text or voice acting but instead would play different musical sounds. The player would be left to decide what choices to make based on their interpretations of the noises made. I suggested that it would be funny if the reason for these interactions was that you were just dating musical instruments and we were quickly enamoured by the idea. 

The brief for this minor paper was to design a game using permaculture principals and as a result we chose to lose interaction through sound. It was at this point that our artist, Michaela Dodd came on board the project. The main permaculture principal we focused on was “The Edge Effect”. This effect describes the way that when two environments meet at certain place they often create a unique environment containing species from both, as well as species unique to that environment. Taking inspiration from this idea, we decided to merge a dating simulator with a rhythm game, creating our own unique genre.

As I stand here in the final hour of this project, yearning for my bed I take a moment to look back on this adventure. It was the best of times and it was the worst of times.

I’ve learned a lot during this project, although not much about audio. Everything I learned this semester has been about the importance of organisation and leadership. We never had a clear leader when we started this project, something we should have done. We also never really organised our work in a meaningful way. What ended up happening was that communication between us and our clients was slow and difficult to maintain, there were periods where I would go literally weeks, sometimes even a month without knowing what I was supposed to be doing someone. It seems ridiculous because it’s such a simple thing. Communication and organisation were just never dealt with. 

The easiest way to remedy this solution would be to have a weekly meeting at the same time with each different group. We never had structure and that really bit us in the ass and limited our potential with this project. It’s going to be one of the things that I really focus on with whatever I’m working on next semester.

Contextual Statement

Audio, Applicable through endless circumstances and scenarios, is often necessary when bringing vital multi-dimensionalism to projects and work. Specifically, within the realms of film and video games, audio serves to further suspension of disbelief. It is quintessential in evoking emotion, investing, enticing and immersing users in digital experiences. A substantial portion of this project is based around video games so we will be talking in that context. It is a relatively young field of study with “scattered” research available (Collins, 2008) - the power of music to manipulate the listener's emotions is well-known (Williams, Lee, 2018).

As an anecdotal example, imagine you are a movie theatre and the sound cuts off; the movie loses all gravitas and momentum. Imagine if the visuals were to vanish but the sound remained, the movie would still retain its power over the audience, and in the right context could even be misconstrued as a part of the film. Sound is what really brings a film to life, and the same can be said for video games as well.

Throughout the wider tech industry, the ability to collaborate and cooperate effectively with partners and clients of different disciplines is an essential skill needed to accomplish successful work. The business models used by successful, independent sound design studios such as Native Audio Ltd (“Native Audio » Original Sound,” n.d.) , Liquid Studios and Park Road Post Production are prime examples of professional audio incorporation into industry work. For instance, Park Road has worked on renowned titles such as King Kong, (Jackson, 2005) and The Hobbit (Jackson, 2015). These three prestigious studios are what we most strongly wanted to emulate.

We were interested in using our collective appreciation of audio as an opportunity to network with our peers. We also wanted to expand our production skills and build upon our overall ability to navigate through multi-party teamwork.

Conceptual Statement

Our project “The Kitchen” (“The Kitchen,” n.d.) is a model sound design studio that Bruno Fernandes, Oscar Randle and Joachim Pearson have constructed within the COLAB studio space at AUT. Our goal has been to construct an audio library to provide colleagues with catered sound design and original music pieces for their respective projects. In doing this we have also aimed to establish and maintain a professional image and work ethic. This library is assembled in the online platform ‘SoundCloud’ and will be showcased via a finalized selection of tracks presented on iTunes. A video demonstration showing our work being used within each respective project will also be shown.

The first issue we faced during the early project phrase was the extremely limited clarity our clients had in respect of their work concepts. Our clients were unable to provide us with clear instructions as to what audio they required, because most projects were still in early development. Our project at this time had a very simple but stable concept, and we felt ready to commence with our work. However, we were unable to begin construction on audio that would be usable in the final iterations of these projects because of our lack of clear thematic instruction. We anticipated this constant fluctuation in themes and ideas from our clients, and thus knew that large segments of our work would often be rendered unusable.

We tackled these problems by building a sound library, which would encompass a multitude of genres and styles appropriate for many themes. Most groups had one or two initial thematic ideas that equipped us with what we needed to start making basic demos. Working in this fashion enabled us to create a process of regular communication and collaboration with our clients while still making meaningful progress. The library also gives us an artefact that can be reviewed on its own merits as well as its contribution to other projects. We implemented a one-track-a-day group policy early to ensure that a suitably sized library was produced.

After an initial period spent constructing this library, our clients’ projects had become much more concrete. In response, we adopted  a more focused approach, by working closer with the groups and delivering more polished works that could be slotted into their projects.

Our largest issue was the workload associated with managing multiple groups at once. Although we could handle the production demands fairly easily, the time spent trying to communicate with our clients and clearly understand what they wanted from us slowed our progress significantly. This was particularly because we did not have a dedicated manager or P. R. representative. We attempted to implement methods to help facilitate communication, such as the creation of a Facebook page where clients could contact us with requests and for information. This was intended to make conversations accessible by all three group members, and could keep communications recorded and documented. However, this did not function as intended. In the future, an established weekly meeting with each client would be an efficient way to overcome organisational issues.

In review, this project was a partial success. Although we struggled with management on a regular basis and our library was not as large as we initially aimed for, we created simple branding that we’re very happy with. We also ultimately provided polished, quality audio to five different groups. Our team established a meaningful and functional network of communication with over a dozen colleagues and concluded our respective collaborations so that all parties were satisfied. Our most important goals were met in these ways.

Methodology

The methodology we used to keep our project in check was fairly simple; constant communication with the groups to make sure that all parties were happy with our progress. Our library was very useful in this respect because it allowed us to very quickly suggest ideas to our clients if they were lacking direction themselves.

From a technical standpoint, the production tools we used were primarily FL Studio (“FL Studio Mobile,” n.d.) and Logic Pro X (“Logic Pro X,” n.d.) to create our works along with a cornucopia of virtual studio technologies and other audio plugins. SoundCloud was used as a platform to support our digital sound library. Camtasia Studio (“Camtasia Studio,” n.d.) was used for video editing. Adobe Photoshop (“Buy Adobe Photoshop CC | Best photo, image and design editing software,” n.d.) was used for graphic design and branding creation. Facebook (“The Kitchen - Creative Technologies - Home,” n.d.) was also used to support communication via a social media presence.

In summary, all three group members contributed an equal amount of work, with emphasis on different areas. Joachim supplied the original concept for this project. Bruno contributed the most work in actual sound production and added the most to our sound library. Oscar edited our video presentation with assistance from Joachim and has managed communications with the most groups. Joachim wrote the majority of this document, with assistance from Oscar and Bruno. Joachim also covered the widest variety of genres within the group. Oscar adopted a minor leadership role within the group about halfway through the semester during a time of stagnancy where we had little direction.

Role definitions (that are not self evident).

Collaborative coordinator - The group member who had the most overall communication with a client. This member managed orders and requests from their respective group(s).

Sound production extended to - This means that a group member produced audio for a certain group at one point in semester. Whether their work was used in the final iteration of their projects is not a factor.

“insert sound/musical focus” lead - This is the style of audio that each member focused/is most skilled in. Work produced for other parties reflects the necessity of these focuses in respective projects.

Joachim Pearson: @joachimpearson​

Original concept designer/developer.

Sound designer.

Synth and ambiance lead.

Graphic designer.

Lead collaborative coordinator with ‘Three way glass‘.

Video Editor.

Sound Library constructor

Sound production extended to ‘Peruvian Apple’, ‘BunnyMeta’, ‘Healer’ and ‘Three Way Glass’.  

Oscar Randle: @oscar-randle-bct​

Conceptual developer.

Graphic designer.

Sound designer.

Instrumental/melodic lead.

SFX lead.

Lead collaborative coordinator with ‘The Legacy Project‘.

Lead collaborative coordinator with ‘BunnyMeta‘.

Lead collaborative coordinator with ‘Peruvian Apple‘.

Video Editor.

Sound library constructor.

Sound production extended to ‘Legacy’, ‘Peruvian Apple’ and ‘BunnyMeta’.

Bruno Fernandes: @natesume​

Conceptual developer.

Sound designer.

Beat/electronic lead.

Lead collaborative coordinator with ‘Healer‘.

Sound production extended to ‘Healer’ and ‘Legacy’

Assessment equipment obtained.

Primary sound Library constructor.

Bibliography:

Buy Adobe Photoshop CC | Best photo, image and design editing software. (n.d.). Retrieved June 17, 2018, from https://www.adobe.com/nz/products/photoshop.html?sdid=VG52KMPM&mv=search&s_k

Collins, K. (2008). Game Sound: An Introduction to the History, Theory and Practice of Video Game Music and Sound Design. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press. https://books.google.co.nz/books?hl=en&lr=&id=gnw0Zb4St-wC&oi=fnd&pg=PR7&dq=Collins,+K.+(2008).+Game+Sound:+An+Introduction+to+the+History,+Theory+and+Practice+of+Video+Game+Music+and+Sound+Design.+&ots=4cg1lsynlI&sig=NGcxLwJUGdNj4XGwkEXAkWMEAuU#v=onepage&q&f=false

Camtasia Studio. (n.d.). Retrieved June 17, 2018, from https://camtasia-studio.en.softonic.com

FL Studio Mobile. (n.d.). Retrieved May 29, 2018, from https://www.image-line.com/flstudiomobile/

Jackson, P. (2005). King Kong. Retrieved from http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0360717/

wcid=AL!3085!3!86014907704!b!!g!!adobe%20cloud%20for%20photographers&ef_id=WvynjgAAAMAcqmjc:20180617091621:s

Jackson, P. (2012). The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey. Retrieved from http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0903624/

Logic Pro X. (n.d.). Retrieved May 29, 2018, from https://www.apple.com/nz/logic-pro/

Native Audio » Original Sound. (n.d.). Retrieved May 29, 2018, from http://nativeaudio.co.nz/home/

Park Road Post Production – Post Production. (n.d.). Retrieved May 29, 2018, from http://www.parkroad.co.nz/

The Kitchen (n.d.).  Retrieved May 29, 2018, from Bruno Raphael Fernandes Moreira,  Joachim Peterson, Oscar Randle &

(2) The Kitchen - Creative Technologies - Home. (n.d.). Retrieved June 17, 2018, from https://www.facebook.com/The-Kitchen-Creative-Technologies-1795303877431500/

Williams, D., & Lee, N. (2018). Emotion in Video Game Soundtracking. Springer International Publishing.

Bruno, Oscar and I have talked a lot about how we wanted to present this project. There were ideas of creating our own interface using unreal engine that we could display our music with. We talked of five different boxes, one for each group with a different set of headphones extruding from each. We talked of one large box with a single pair of headphones that cycled through all the music we had made. 

This is the final iteration of the piece I made for 3 Way Glass, and can be found in their game: LUMOS

Three Way Glass

Cara Najar initially came to me with her team and pitched me this nordic, celtic adventure with strange fantasty mythology and I was incredibly into it. I love fantasy and I love mythology, I love ancient history and I love video games. 

I created to great little demos for the group which is now known as 3 Way Glass and a couple of weeks later they crushed my dreams by saying that they’d completely abandoned this concept and were now looking into a game that would explore fear. I’ve never really partaken in horror games but I’ve always appreciated the niche and looked forward to working on the soundtrack, although I lamented the loss of my precious demos. 

I initially tried to morph one of those demos, twisting it to make it darker, but the outcome was clunky and had too much focus on percussion, too little on ambience. So I abandoned them truly.

The brief was to create something that invoked fear, rather than horror, which they told me was a distinctly different idea. In the creation of this piece I strove to stay away from sonic horror cliches, like the violin bow across a cymbal for example. Instead I browsed hundreds of different ambiences for those sounded unique and invoked a darkness and fear. One of my favourites is a very deep vocal synth that sounds like throaty, bassy chanting. When I showed them the first demo they liked it but said it didn’t sound musical enough. Although they loved the way the chanting sounded and thought it was a nice nod to the games nordic roots, they felt it didn’t fit with current focus of the game. That focus is on light, and its absence to create fear and the fear stems from a large insect living in the cave. I had to concede that I agreed with them and Iowered the volume of the chanting so that it would blend into the rest of the ambient background noise.

Made this whilst killing time with my girlfriend

I wanted to talk about some issues we had with stagnancy at various points in the project. Before the mid semester break none of us really knew what we were doing, our groups weren’t communicating with us and we didn’t have a lot to do other than flesh out our library. It was quite demotivating. we ran across the same issue about halfway through this half of the semester, people weren’t talking with us so we didn’t have direction. 

What we did in that scenario wasn’t productive, we let ourselves get discouraged too easily and fell into lethargy rather than taking initiative and trying to solve our problems.

This is the most recent iteration of a track that I produced for 3 Way Glass’ project: ‘Lumos’

Polish (again, the verb not the nationality)

It’s getting pretty close to the end of semester now and we are all finalising the tracks to for our clients’ projects. I’ve produced quite a lot at this point but most of the stuff that I’ve made for other people has been dropped without much thought by the groups. 3 Way Glass is the only one that I’ve been able to keep as my sole charge. 

A lot of the polishing process comes down to extending these tracks and making plunging into mixing and mastering to really make them sound good. For me the hardest part is always finding ways to make songs longer without compromising some dynamic element of change that keeps the song interesting. In video games, that is less of a problem because often music is more of a repeating motif than a narrative of its own.

Silo is a really interesting project in our studio space that I’ve been trying to get on board with us despite some resistance. They’ve created a really cool concept where they have been collecting sound pollution in this big yellow bin with a recycle symbol on it. The bin is essential just a giant eye-catching microphone. The goal of the project is to recycle excess sound and whilst they have this really cool artefact they haven’t really been able to fulfil this idea of the sound being recycled. 

I was inspired during our last crit session/presentation by their project and have been talking to them about letting me take on some of the audio that they’ve collected in their bin but they’ve been too busy sorting through it all. They said they’d give me some specific sounds after they’d sorted it but didn’t want to just give me a bunch of raw audio. 

I think this would be a fantastic opportunity to really flesh out and complete their project. I could take these unwanted sounds that they’ve collected from the environment and recycle them by using them to create songs that would be used in other peoples projects. In this way, sonic waste would become a valuable product.

Branding and marketing are really key parts of any business endeavour, they are what makes you look good, or maybe bad, depending on the quality of your branding. In our case, branding has made us look pretty awful early on in the semester, although that was known and expected.

We began our journey as “AudioXcript” which has been universally heralded as a shit name. We knew this, it was a placeholder name and a joke. After an afternoon brainstorming session we decided upon “The Kitchen”. A kitchen is a place of industry and is usually associated with hard work and the production of something that evokes emotion. It’s also a catchy name. 

I created this graphic in photoshop after several iterations and some help from my close friend, Patrick Tuohy. It served as a hero image for The Kitchen for several weeks whilst we were producing and fleshing out our library. I’m always a sucker for a minimalist design and didn’t think we should incorporate anything more complex into what is largely a sonic based project. HOWEVER, due to Bruno’s hatred of the colour; salmon, and Oscar’s love for jolly Italian caricatures. We ended up moving on to a more complex logo. 

We all worked together to create “Papa” our new and currently standing logo. Inspired by a commonly recurring motif that can be found around many a pizza place across the globe. He has braids, upon Bruno’s insistence and a visual representation of an audio wave due to a worry that our logo would lack clarity. All in all I think it’s a better logo than the previous one although it’s not my preferred direction in terms of design. 

After my last blog I thought I’d talk about the importance of sound within media. 

Sound is a truely essential part of most media. In video games and in film, audio provides not only essential feedback to understanding and fleshing out scenes, it also contains language. Whilst it’s possible to create a film or game that has no sound, the work-arounds for this are often very clunky and can leave the end product being lifeless. 

Think of any film or show that you’ve seen recently and imagine it without music. So much emotional energy is conveyed through music that without it you would be left wondering what part of the emotional arc of the story you were in. There would also be a surreal ‘off-ness’ about it because it is always present in that type of media.

Music in videogames is also extremely important, it builds atmosphere and emotion necessary to the relative to the gameplay. It can also be used to build motifs that let players know what is happening, an event like a boss battle or a safe space like a check point may have unique pieces of music that are shared across all encounters of this type.

For a more in depth talk on this topic I’d recommend this video:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f6ju5UGN9XM

A track that my team-mate; Oscar and I produced together for Peruvian Apple

COLLABORATION

Working with such a large number of people has caused some issues thus far. Audio is an incredibly important part of most visual media but the groups we’re working with don’t have any desire to take the initiative in talking to us about what they want. This has resulted in us having to constantly track down different groups in studio to find out what they want from us, not an easy task given different timetables and work habits. Contacting people online is often also a slow task. There isn’t a great deal we can do about this either than just persevering and taking the initiative on our library while we wait for people to liase. 

Our library is growing pretty large now and on the note of collaboration, Oscar, Bruno and myself have been working on more tracks as a group rather than individuals. Bruno and Oscar have worked on some melodic hip hop beats together and Oscar and I have been working on some pieces for one of my other papers. I’m making a music themed dating simulator which you can check out here https://joachim.weebly.com/a-minor.html.

I’ve teamed up with Oscar and Bruno this semester to work on a group audio project. Our core concept is very simple, we want to provide audio to other groups in the creative tech studio space. The goal is to function like a professional sound design studio; taking on clients and working closely with them to reach high quality outcomes. We are inspired by professional studios like ‘Park Road Post Production’, which works closely with ‘Weta’. Obviously we don’t have access to facilities or resources like Peter Jackson does but if Hans Zimmer believes that all you need to make a blockbuster soundtrack is a pair of headphones, we should have no trouble at all.

Our concept is also based in a small way on one of my first year projects, where I acted as an independent sound designer working in the studio. However this time we are a trio working with other groups rather than an individual working with a few other individuals. The collaborative element is significantly more complex and we are also building something of a brand around ourselves.

This track and ‘Candocelt1’ were both initially created for 3 Way Glass but have since been rendered obsolete

Our first step in this project is to build up a Library of demos that we can use during the first couple of weeks to help pitch ideas to our clients. In the early stages of everyone’s project, their ideas will be fairly liquid. We can’t count on anything that we make early on being relevant to their final products so working on many short pieces in different styles and genres allows us to fulfil our clients’ current desires and anticipate their direction in the future. Several of the pieces I made in the first couple of weeks of this project are totally irrelevant now due to a massive shift in direction from the group “3 Way Glass”

These guys started with a nordic themed platformer/rpg concept that never took off the ground and have completely pivoted into the horror genre with an underground cave exploring game. Whilst some of the ideas and art-style have been retained, my music is no longer appropriate so it will probably be left on the cutting room floor.

An alternative to leaving it in the bin is to recycle it for another project, Peruvian Apple. This project has a distinct medieval theme and thus could probably use something similar to what I created for 3 Way Glass.

ABSTRACT: A video game artefact created by Dodd, M., Laguda, M., & Pearson, J. as a response to the inquiry of “How can two unrelated game genres be integrated into one system?” This is informed by Permaculture principles, which cross-pollinate closely with game design, specifically that of elemental relationships and how they interact with one another. Developed using multi-media platforms (i.e. Logic, Photoshop, Sai, & Unity), the digital software blends music rhythm games with Japanese visual novels to create a unique creative play experience. The target audience comprises largely of teenagers to young adults, who market indicates are the largest consumers of the two play-styles. Experientially, the primary aim of the artefact seeks to address a need for ‘fun’ by fulfilling an industry niche; also done through playfully embarrassing the player. The aforementioned proposal does so by utilising emotive game elements, in which the MDA trifecta plays heavily into: instrument user input (Mechanics), rhythmic feedback (Dynamics) and art style (Aesthetics), harmoniously sync to achieve this.

The project that I’m working on for this paper is (currently) called “A Minor Music Academy”. The concept is in a sentence: a musical instrument dating simulator. It’s a satirical genre mashup, incorporating ideas from Japanese dating sims like “Huniepop” and “Hatoful Boyfriend” with gameplay from rhythm games like “Tap Tap Revenge” and “Guitar Hero”. How well a player does on a date with an instrument is determined by how well they play said instrument during the rhythm segment of the game. 

very good art by Michaela Dodd 

Sexual innuendo and suggestion is going to be core to the game, as it’s a main part of the concept’s absurdist comedy. The most obvious implication is that the player is pleasuring the instrument. I want the player to feel equal parts aroused, confused, uncomfortable and enthused when playing the game.

This is the soundtrack for “T-Minus”, a multiplayer game that I worked on for my studio project this semester. I’m responsible for all the audio in “T-Minus”, although it’s considerably more sparse than I would have liked as a result of several unfortunate circumstances that occurred earlier in the semester.

The main problem we had during this project was that the concept for our project changed every couple of weeks. It wasn’t until mid-semester break that we settled on “T-Minus” and stuck with it. This came about as a result of poor planning, ambition, lack of experience and a few bad choices. I think the problem could have been solved by simply spending more time in the ideas phase. As a general rule the team has a habit of settling on an idea and then immediately beginning work. I would have preferred to spend the first two weeks or so working over different concepts and running through potential issues with technical ability, scope and resources. Consequently, “T-Minus”, whilst still a functional game, isn’t anywhere near as fleshed out as we would like.

Dynamic music was something I was really interested in implementing, as I missed out on the chance to use it last semester. I spent a great deal of time early on in the project learning to use Fmod Studio, a middleware program that allows the user to modulate and affect sounds and music within a video game, without having to delve into the game engine itself (in our case, that was Unreal Engine 4). Using Fmod I created my first vertical composition, which I was incredibly pleased with but it never made into the final game because the concept changed to not require dynamic music.

Underneath I’ve linked two of the tracks from abandoned concepts that I deemed good enough for the internet, others will exist only on my hard-drive.

https://soundcloud.com/maha-jumpy/ethereus