I received an email from Nick at Colossal Creations in regards to the project that they are doing. CC have ‘designed and produced’ a jungle environment that explores a temple in reference to the work of H.P Lovecraft’s Cthulu mythos. The email shows details what the company are looking for in regards to the sound design and composition for the music to work with the video provided. Colossal Creations are expecting a high level of work to a professional standard to showcase the environment; which is shown at a ‘very significant part of the game’s narrative’; the work has to be ‘meaningful’, which will be used to create a ‘lasting impact on [their] players’. Further conversations have been had over a Skype call with Nick at CC discussing what ‘meaningful’ meant to him and where he saw the composition go. For Nick, the music is all about being able to immerse yourself into that environment and to have a long standing ‘nostalgia’ factor. References were made to examples such as Nate‘s Theme from the Uncharted series (Composed by Greg Edmonson) and also the music throughout the Tomb Raider series, specifically on the PS4 (Composed by Jason Graves). Nick enjoyed the use of ‘traditional’ instruments, such as orchestral instruments, as that sound was typical within video games that he has grown up playing. However, he also wanted to add a ‘modern’ aspect into the mix, which is where I suggested the use of electronic elements to add more depth and layers within a composition. We have seen these techniques being used within games such as the Call of Duty: Modern Warfare series (Composed by Stephen Barton). I showed Nick a video on YouTube by composer and producer ‘Varien’ a.k.a Nick Pittsinger, where he gives a tutorial on how electronic elements can be integrated within an orchestral setting. This is something that Nick is fully on board with, however wants to give me some creative space, so demo ideas will be bounced back and forth until we have found the sound that CC are looking for.
The email also covers the other elements of sound design that CC want to be heard within the finished product. These include atmospheric sounds as well as spot effects. Within this blog, there will be screenshots of different parts of the environment which will have more detail on my plans for these. In the Skype calls with Nick, he has been fairly relaxed as he has heard previous work and knows we both have the same outcome for the effects.
Sections of the video have been sent over to me, so I am able to get a feeling of how fast the camera is moving throughout the enviroment and also to begin planning of the sound that needs to be recorded over the next month.
To read the full email – Click below.
To Ben Ward,
We are contacting you in regards to the sound design project that we have discussed previously. I know we have already spoken briefly about what the aims of the project are and also what our expectation of the final product will be. What follows is a more in depth breakdown of the task, to give you a deeper understanding of what it is we are looking for.
We have designed and produced a jungle temple themed environment for an upcoming video game title and it is based on the work of H.P Lovecraft’s Cthulhu mythos. The environment is shown at a very significant part of the games narrative and therefore needs to have a meaningful score to go along with it to create a lasting impact on our players.
The audio required from yourself will be fairly extensive as we need atmospheric sounds, a backing music track and also spot effects for specific elements of the environments such as flowing water and rustling trees. The video we have produced so far is around five minutes long so we are looking for the audio to match that length.
Influences that we would recommend you look at are the Uncharted and Tomb Raider series of games as they both contain similar environments and highly acclaimed soundtracks. We are going for something cinematic and mysterious but do encourage you to experiment and go outside the constraints we have recommended. Based on your past work and the samples you sent to us we are more than confident in your ability to provide us with the stunning audio experience that we are looking for.
In the next couple of days we will send over the first section of video which is around two minutes in length. Feel free to get stuck in and send us back your initial tests as soon as possible so we can evaluate the tone and let you know if you are hitting the mark or not. We prefer to work in a fluid way so sending chunks of audio back and forth as they are produced will work well for us to keep the process streamlined.
We are looking forward to hearing what you come up with and thank you again for working with us on this exciting project.
King Regards,
Nick Ward
Lead Artist
Colossal Creations LTD
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