For this workshop, the goal was to explore sound, it’s effects and how I can use it to aid my work. I chose this workshop because I got feedback on the sound design in my last piece of work, which I didn’t expect; Sound design has never been something I take much into consideration while creating my pieces, and I always made it the last thing I focus on as I never felt like I needed to be particularly good at it as an animator. However, as I’ve learned through this workshop, sound design can work together with visuals to strengthen a piece and being it up to it’s full potential.

The first task I had was simple; to draw a picture representing the sounds I could hear around me. At first, I was a little confused on how to approach this task, as we weren’t given many directions; I decided on drawing myself at the centre, and positioning the sounds based on how far away they were and what direction they were coming from. I couldn’t identify a couple sounds, which was interesting to me; I had never really considered how many sounds at once work together to create everyday ambience. From planes outside to distant speaking in the hallway, a lot of silent sounds work together in everyday situations to break silence, and incorporating these little sounds into my work could be a small amount of attention to detail that make it feel more realistic and believable. I had thought of ambience as just a silent buzzing as to not make the piece feel too silent before, but through this workshop I learned to think of it as a network of small sounds layered to give us information about where we are, and I’ll take this knowledge into my work to strengthen it.

The next thing we had to do was to create three random sounds, which we would then use to create a character or a scenario in the next session. I chose the sound of a zipper going up and down, the sound of a pencil case being shaken and the sound of a pencil case being scratched as my sounds, and layered they sounded like this;

I perceived this sound as two possible things; more literally a record being scratched by a DJ, and in a more abstract sense some kind of a voice or laugh from a non human creature. I found the latter Idea more interesting, and knew I’d probably go through with creating an animation for it, so I completed a few sketches of it (as well as some rough ones for the record scratching);

I settled on having the animation be of some sort of a cute ghost creature laughing; the high pitch reminded me of my cat’s meowing, and so I went with a ghost cat. Since the laugh didn’t sound particularly spooky, I didn’t want him to look too scary or malicious, just a little menacing at first. Over the weekend, I created this animation;

For the background I decided to play with the mixed media style I’ve been practicing. I made some ambient sound for this animation by adding things you’d typically hear in a spooky house setting; church bells, crow sounds and distant ghostly murmuring. I feel I was successful in creating a piece based on a somewhat abstract sound, and applying my new knowledge to create ambience for it.

For the 2nd session, we learned to use recording kits. I don’t really have any physical outcomes from this session as of now, but it was useful and fun; I learned that a lot of odd sounds live in the world amongst us, and searching for them can be a useful practice in getting sounds for my film. Sounds can also be appropriated and used for things outside of their origin, which I’ll keep in mind.