09/29/2022
Think about what you want from your sound design. How much do you want it? Most of us are jumping up and shouting something like “more than anything!” But how many of us are doing something about it?
Amazing sound design doesn’t happen overnight, for anyone. It’s a daunting quest, and it will feel overwhelming, but skill doesn’t come without planning + action. And it all equals precisely zero without consistency.
Here’s part one of what I’m doing to improve in sound design for games.
A well maintained and ever expanding personal library of sounds is invaluable. It builds your skills, shows you where you can improve, and develops your style.
Record every day: I used to be pretty good at this. Then I expanded my skills and gear for more complex recording and recording every day became too much effort to set everything up “right”. I’m solving this by keeping a handheld recorder on hand 24/7. I can capture a sound as I find it and not fuss with the technical side so much.
I still need to develop my skills running more complex recording sessions, so I’ll block out time for one organized session every week.
One challenge I’ve had is running out of props to record. I’ll tackle this by setting aside five minutes each day to find props and write them down. I’ll sort out the details of how to obtain them later as I go.
The sounds don’t do any good if they aren’t in my library. I set aside 5-15 minutes each day to master and export sounds.
The sounds do me no good if I can’t find them! I use the Universal Category System for file naming, and using the UCS Renaming Tool for Reaper makes naming and adding metadata exponentially easier! Again, I set aside a few minutes daily to maintain my library and correct errors.
Of course there are days where I fall short. It’s OK! Consistency is the key and you can’t be consistent if you get discouraged. Just pick it back up the next day. This all happens little by little, you won’t notice it until you look back.
