breakdowns

Creature Sound design breakdown

Quick behind-the-scenes look at my creative process for recording, processing, and layering sounds to create creature vocals.

The key to creature sound design is keeping everything grounded in reality, even when the creature itself is mythical. My processing is kept minimal so the sound never strays too far from realism.

Chain Breakdown: making textured layers

Breakdown of my fx chain. I used tape as the raw sound source. I ran it through a custom FX chain, distortion and phase manipulation to transform it. The experiment was to record a household item and manipulate it to get interesting textures out of it.

mAKING IMPACTS

Experimenting with Whoosh and SpaceBlender to shape unique impacts from a variety of source materials. By combining these tools with additional plugins for transient shaping and layering, I was able to push the sounds further making them punchier, tighter

Chain Breakdown: Arcane Electric Sounds

Breakdown of my fx chain. I used paper as the raw sound source tearing, crumpling, and snapping it to capture sharp, textured transients. I then ran it through a custom FX chain, layering modulation, distortion, and pitch processing to transform it into something more electric and otherworldly. The goal was to sculpt a sound that evokes arcane-style lightning gritty, magical, and powerful.

Bloater: The last of us ii

A quick behind-the-scenes look at how I redesigned the Bloater from The Last of Us Part II.
I started by recording myself performing a variety of grunts, growls, and breaths to capture the raw, guttural quality of the creature. Then I layered those with other creature sounds and organic textures to build something that felt massive, decayed, and terrifying. Every detail was shaped to match the Bloater’s weight and presence on screen.