Give sound to those inner demons beckon
The crypt doors creak open and a clawed hand emerges from the darkness. A gruesome creature steps out, flesh rotting, tattered Santa hat hanging off his mangled head, emitting unearthly screeches as it spots fresh prey.
It’s your job to design the bone-chilling sounds to match this horrifying scene. The world of creature sound design is full of disturbing vocalizations, spine-tingling movement sounds, and petrifying breathing and mouth noises. Whether designing for film, games, or haunted houses, the right mix of fantastical audio can make audiences scream in terror. And we have just released a massive new Creature Sound Effects update of 500 sounds that will make your skin crawl.
So lock your doors, grab your headphones, and prepare to venture far beyond the safety of normal human sounds!
NEW CREATURE SOUNDS
This massive update covers a broad spectrum of evil monsters. Including from fantasy and horror realms with bone-rattling voices, frightening motions, and eerie accessories. You’ll find everything from the bellows of lumbering Giant Monsters and ear-piercing scrapes of Giant Alien Cyborgs to the cacophonous shrieks of Ghosts and Demons and chittering chuckles of Gremlins. There are also dramatic Fly By whooshes from Hellspawn, blood-curdling screams of Banshees, and gurgling zombie growls. To top it off, we’ve included disturbing source props like unidentifiable screeches and the fluttering of tongues. For a full list of new sounds, click here.
CREATING CREATURE SOUNDS
Our sound designers first had to prepare themselves mentally for making creature sounds. This meant preparing for belching, growling, farting, and all kinds of chopping, slicing, chewing, smashing, and dicing of vegetables and fruits. Creating gruesome and haunting sounds is no doubt one of the funnest aspects of sound design.
We normally do one of the above and then process it for a long time to distort and mangle the sounds. After being modified by creative plug-ins and modules, the outcome is frequently something fit for even the most repulsive and terrifying video game and movie creatures. Of course, once you know carrots and lettuce are behind half of Hollywood sounds, it’s hard to take them seriously.
CREATURE SOUND DESIGN TECHNIQUES
Bringing horrifying beasts and aliens to life requires more than just stock roar and growl creature sound effects. Skilled sound designers use a myriad of innovative audio tactics to make their imaginary creatures truly leap off the screen and haunt their audience’s imagination. Methods like:
- Layering and blending vocals
Mix vocal tracks together, like blending animal noises, human utterances, synthetic growls, and distortions to create a unique hybrid creature voice. Don’t limit yourself to our stock sounds, but mix them in with other noises and use them as a starting point. Another great technique is to use a pitch shift plug-in (like BOOM Library’s ENRAGE, which does way more than pitch shift) to liberally shift a voice waaay up or down.
- Recording and manipulating bodily sounds
Chewing, rumbling tummies, heavy breathing, along with environmental sounds like swishes, scrapes, and thunder are often used as a basis for creature movements and ambiences. Record, pitch, process, and combine with other elements for added realism.
- Creating sound palettes of similar sounds for each creature
Each creature should have their own set of unique sounds to be consistent and realistic. This includes a designated frequency range and texture, distortion and processing styles. Again, a pitch shifter is your friend. Though we provide fully ready-to-use sounds, there’s nothing to prevent you from taking them a step further for your sound design.
- Matching the sounds with the on-screen perspective
Connect the key creature actions to the sounds. Match the footfalls with the footsteps, tail swipes with swooshes, and so on. When actions are randomly applied, it can create an unnatural disjunction between sight and action.
- Exaggerating qualities like loudness and lengthening roars
Certain qualities can be exaggerated, like loudness, length, and depth to make creature vocals and body sounds much more dramatic and imposing than ordinary real-world counterparts.
So when using our sounds, or crafting your own, keep some of these techniques in mind. They’ll greatly enhance the realism and effectiveness of your on-screen creatures.
SMARTSOUND CLOUD
Whether you’re working on indie horror shorts or big-budget fantasy game cinematics, these customizable creature sounds provide an affordable way to bring virtually any grotesque character to life and give audiences chills. Just don’t listen alone with the lights off!
So bring your foul beasts out of the darkness with Smartsound Cloud’s latest flexible and easy-to-use sound effects and app. The creatures are waiting to unleash bloodcurdling chaos onto your audience… Sign up now now if you dare!
