Corey Jepson

When I originally decided on this idea, my inspiration came from a combination of 2 things. My idea for the visuals took heavy inspiration from similar projects in the Marvel Universe, within fictional written media. My other inspiration, this time for my audio, actually just came from where I was with my grades. I had seen that I had done the best in the unit that covered Audio. During year 1, our Unit 6 task was to create a Borderlands-inspired Mech. This coincided with our Unit 5 task: Investigating Audio Production. In this Unit, we had to create 2 final music pieces to be used with our designed mechs as well as the research and production cycle going into this work. I did in fact achieve my original, primary goal of creating this project with an audio focus. Compared to my original pitch, there were some changes made almost immediately. I had set myself too large a quantity of tasks, which would in fact draw my project away from being an audio focused project. Based on what was discussed as the way to go forward through different forms of feedback, I feel as if I met my original intentions. Now that this project is complete, I can definitely come out of it saying that I have a much greater understanding of how to research, create, design and implement audio. I've had an interest for Audio since my success in Unit 5, but I never took it any further than just using basic online tools, such as Bandlab's online mix editor. Now, I am confident in my ability to source Foley sounds and I can say that I understanding a lot more technical aspects and terminology. Another improvement is my increased confidence in my general understanding of music pieces. My research I conducted for this project around individual pieces of music and breaking them down into their individual instruments and techniques used is a skill that I've now learnt how to do because of this project. 

 

When conducting my research, I decided what I needed to research based on the areas I myself was unsure of and felt like I needed assistance on through research into the topic. As an example, I wasn't sure as to what types of instruments appeared within Japanese music. So, in order to update my knowledge, I did some internet searches and listened to some examples of Japanese music. This gave me the information needed so that I could breakdown my choices in music examples later on. I feel like the research I conducted covered the bases I needed covered, to the level of detail that was necessary. Primary research influenced my production because my audience survey responses led me to make alterations to my planned production for this project. An example of this is when I asked the question, "With the games music, would you rather hear it all the time or hear it getting louder and quieter depending on where you are in game?". The responses to this question would decide whether I would look into applying attenuation to my music and sounds within Unreal Engine. On an implicit level, this question was also a way of figuring out whether I include separate tracks for my environments or just one track for the whole game. By people asking for hearing music getting louder and quieter depending on where you are, I can then take that and apply multiple tracks to my scene, still including an attenuance level to the sounds. My secondary research held a big influence on my production as well. Me researching and discovering both visual and audio assets helped me figure out how to later design my project, particularly my visual research. I looked at a variety of different 3D assets that I could use in my project for my visual research. This led to the full inclusion of the models I researched. This implemented model into my scene allowed me to create something new because of it; a music piece and 2 sound effects that tied into the included environments. 

 

From this project I've learnt all of the practical skill of creating effective audio pieces and recording suitable Foley recordings. I plan on doing a games development course with a specialism in Audio when I go to University. Because of this project, I now have a full unit detailing my ability as a sound designer. I also have all the experience and knowledge available that will help me when I need to use practical elements in later projects. The resources available to me were all used the best they could, considering the purpose. The Zoom recorder is a great example of when I made good use of the resources available to me. I had only recorded Foley once before, and that was using a built in microphone on my computer headset. I didn't have any other higher quality microphones for this purpose at the time. A Zoom recorder was very useful to me as now I could record higher quality sounds in a very portable sense, which was also a new positive point. My newly found musical practical skills was the knowledge I needed to help me with creating my Audio-focused final project. When I discovered through audio research that there were different kinds of Japanese instruments used in the creation of Japanese music pieces, I wanted to use this practically in some way. The method of doing this would be too research for VST's that utilized the sounds of these instruments so that I may create something for my own music that I had seen within my research. My most valued development would be understanding the workings of Cakewalk by Bandlab. Cakewalk is the audio creation and mixing tool that I used and still plan to use going into the future. By understanding how to use the audio tool itself, I can do multiple things with audio efficiently once its imported to Cakewalk. 

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Ongoing reflection has kept my goals reasonable and my ambitions within reach. For example, the ongoing reflection through my formative feedback sessions meant that I knew when to cut future ideas or plans based on the time I had to do so and the effect it would have on creating my audio, my primary focus. In regards to time management, I think I struggled with that the most in this project and I definitely feel like I managed my tasks for my project poorly. I spent more time researching into visual assets than audio assets, despite visual not being a focus of mine. Despite this, I did rectify it by putting more research quality and level of detail into the audio examples. Reflection helped me in understanding that the current rate I was working at wouldn't be enough to get me to the finish with everything complete. I used the call recordings almost like a form of research. I took notes on what was said and acted upon it so that I could achieve my goals in this project.

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The strengths of this final product to me I think is the sourced Foley recording. Although I wanted my audio focus to have more of a lean into music, I think that I actually did better in Foley, in the sense that the sounds I recorded and sourced for this project were all very accurate to the place they were used. The area for improvement for this final product I think is the presentation. I feel like with more time I could've solved the issue with dynamic footstep audio, maybe even found a work around for my Utopian environment. I'm happy with what I captured, as it shows off all the aspects I was creating and wanted to demonstrate. I think that a better form of presentation would be one interrupted video of a playthrough, demonstrating all the sound effects in use, with all the different music files playing, all while my footstep audio changes dependent on location. This multiple video system I have on display now makes the end product look a bit more untidy than it could be. In my pitch, I said that my game would be rated a PEGI 16 because of the "combat and blood featured", so therefore aimed at older teens. I think my final product is still matching of that originally intended audience. While the reasoning isn't the same, my game features ideas and concepts that are popular with similar rated games. An example to give is For Honor. For Honor is a 'Player VS Player' type game featuring fighters from multiple different ways of life. The game description alone reads "Enter the chaos of war as a bold Knight, a brutal Viking, or a deadly Samurai" (FOR HONOR™ on Steam, 2022). My product never actually got play-tested, for both time reasons and creative reasons, so I never received an audience response. My game was intended to be an auditory experience. I feel like this was best expressed through a video, where I knew where to be so my work is heard at its best. 

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Comparing to where I was at the start of the unit, I've learnt a lot since then. In the beginning, I didn't feel confident in my use of Unreal Engine, but I did feel I had a strength in my ability to "create music and produce sounds". Since then, I've learnt a lot about Unreal Engine, including efficiently doing tasks like blueprinting, importing, collision, sound cues, landscaping as well as other smaller skills that aren't defined to a topic. My strength in creating music and producing sounds has only gone up. I now know not only how to create and produce, but also how to mix, source, identify and analyze sounds. I also learnt how to use them in a more professional workstation. Moving forwards, I'd like to keep learning different skills about Cakewalk and aim to create longer and more ambitious sounds within it. I'd also like to learn how to play an instrument, so that I can use a physical music source in my production.