The aim for this project was to create the entire soundtrack to The Knight & The Llama animation which will include the combination of original musical composition and sound design elements. I have met the aim of creating the entire soundtrack, however there were issues within the difference of deadlines between the Audio Production and Animation courses, which unfortunately did not fulfill my creative ideas for the soundtrack to the maximum.
As I worked by myself, I had a lot of roles to fulfill. These were the following: original musical composition, sound design, sound recording, sound editing and Foley design, alongside all of this is also the final mixing stages. However, the estimated duration of the animation was two and a half minutes, which only a required a soundtrack of that limit. This was a realistic goal to fulfill, because as I am doing so many roles, I would not want to create an entire short motion picture on my own.
The advantage of working on your own puts yourself in a situation where all your independent ideas come out and have more freedom to the soundtrack. However, having critics also helped to improve my skills in composition and since I am not usually in the role of a composer, this was a good idea. I had to also go through the animation students (Lora Smith and Tom Merrison, who were the creators of The Knight & The Llama) regarding my creative ideas because at the end of the day, they are the directors and it is their storyline. I felt like this was a positive way of learning because in the professional industry, communication between the sound department and directors is vital. Such as the motion-picture industry, the animation department have the same working relationship with the composer and sound designer. I have found that the difference between the motion-picture and the animation industry is that, there are constant changes that are being done on-screen, hence the constant contacting to keep with updates between the animation students and I was essential. (This can be reflected from my Audio Project 1, whilst working on the short-film Stuffed). If I were to perfect my performance on this occassion, creating more spotting sessions would have been beneficial regarding communications between visuals and audio.
When regarding time-keeping, there were several issues with the spatial of my deadline and the animation’s deadline with two weeks apart from one another. This has prevented me to present my full creative intentions regarding the soundtrack, especially when considering the sound design. Some objects are missing from the animation where audibly and including visually, this would not be right to place a sound effect which does not affect the animation at that time, because there would be no visuals to prove it (given that it has no purpose within the storyline, as of yet). This affects my progress creatively because I have no way, apart from spotting sessions, of proving this to the viewers whilst previewing the current animation. The reason for this was not down to poor communication at all because we were constantly discussing about the deadlines all the time between one another, however it was down to the animators’ time-schedules. I have had to currently work on what I was given towards my deadline. I had to be aware of a few technicalities for the submitted animation:
- The ‘jolty’ walking cycle in the beginning of the animation makes it harder for me to sync the footsteps, however the way I have resolved this is where the music compliments the visuals by using the famous Stalling’s Mickey-Mousing effect.
- Some objects are missing, hence some of the sound design will be vague – e.g. when the warrior sets off a series of traps; the armor on the warrior is not visible, but I have included armor ‘clinking’ in the sound design.
- Texture of environment and objects is hard to determine in some sequences, because the lighting stages have not been completed, which affects the sound design when regarding the correct materials, e.g. signs fall from traps.
With comparing and reflecting my work from Audio Project One, Stuffed (short-film) and The Knight & The Llama animation, I feel that I have developed not only the ability to compose music, but also by improving and problem solving my sound design. As I am still working on the final draft of the animation, my skills have developed where I can work on the sound design to the best of my abilities through any stages of the animation.
My expectations of the roles that I took were very ambigious as the sound design and music are usually two separate elements, which both require attention to detail. I created a time-schedule which I felt suited the way I worked, however I feel it also made an incredible impact . As I usually execute the role of the sound effects designer, I felt that everything, including Foley design needed extra time. On the other hand, composition is not my strongest skill in audio, hence more time could have been given for that element.
The relationship between the animation students and I were exceptional, because travelling from another area was an issue for myself to meet up every week. However, with the opportunity of Social Media, such as Facebook being granted to you, it was a great alternative in communication. We needed to also have a way of distributing large files to one another, hence Dropbox was a great option to take as its features allows us to do this.
If I were to do this project again, I would want to improve on several aspects, but the major one for this particular animation was time-scheduling. I need to recognise my strengths and weakness within my roles, hence dedicate the first short-term to my strength, e.g. sound design and my weaknesses such as musical composition for the second long-term where I can also train myself up during this time for those particular skills. This method of doing sound design before music could create a creative impact, where the music would be working around the sound design.
Another aspect that I would have liked to have done is recording the composition in a studio rather than it being dominated by MIDI. This again was all down to time-management.