Sound design

Sound design for a quirky animation. Exploring Michel Chion's audio-visual storytelling techniques to bring a robot protagonist to life.

Created using field recordings, audio samples, and synthesis.

My roles in this project:


Some thoughts regarding characterisation in sound:

Our protagonist in my extract is the robot. I wanted to make him likeable, creating a relationship between him and the audience. For the sound design, I used quick, punchy sounds to give him a childlike and cute personality, like what Disney and Pixar did with Wall- E (2008). I used a technique Chion called ‘rendering’, by using printer sounds instead of robot sounds for his movement, as these were smaller machines so sounded more playful, therefore making my robot seem more likeable. For the antagonist (the small, bug-like creature that fires its rocket at 2:12), I used harsh sounds, including horrible, ‘clicky’ footsteps to make it seem unlikeable. Its small movements became louder in the moments leading up to the explosion to draw attention to it.