We Sound Directors Now
"Ahahaha... The pancakes are flying..."
Overview
Domo domo, Author-kun here. This week, I spent most of my time making the sounds of "Conspiracy Girls" work. And oh boy, this was quite the ardous process! I scriped along this week, hopefully it will be better next week.
I'm a Writer, Not a Musician Though...?
A really special thing about visual novels is "visual" part of the story. The story comes to life with the stage directions, and very importantly, the music. If I were to say "mom with a shotgun shooting goats to protect her child", a single tune comes to my mind.
It was a really tough thing to do though, because like the art, I can't really produce music by myself, so for the main background music, I went scouring the net for royalty free music. It is probably easier to work with artists who have a library of work than going in on a single song that you want, because if the style is to your liking, you are more likely than not to use othe pieces from the collection. This way I save a lot of vis on the whole process too instead of buying music piece by piece. Will there be a time where I order custom made music? Maybe, but when you can barely rub two coins together to buy eggs, this isn't much of an option aha.
Following the same strategy, I tried it for sound effects. Turns out there are a lot less people doing good sound effects than full song, so this was a bit harder, so I went back to soundeffectsplus.com, which I used for the original "Conspiracy Girls". One of the most important thing I discovered is the "tracklist", which allowed me to look through the entire catalogue of sounds to zero in on what I wanted instead of sampling each effect and being screwed over by slow internet.
Special Effects, Starto!
I am also in the midst of doing up the special effects for my VN. Ideally, I would like to do it myself to save costs, but there really is very little int he way of tutorials. I know what a speed line is, but if I want anime-like effects, I have no idea what they are called. Tones? Half-tones? Gradients? This deserves more research into it. In any case, I still have to plan out how I want the special effects done. So I'm slowly refining episode 1, which I hope to be the bedrock of how things are done in the future.
A lot of time was spent this week on thinking. I always think that I am not using time efficiently, but time still needs to be set out for the thinking process. What kind of music I want, what kind of special effects I want, I need to write it all down and catalogue it. Would it be easier if someone was able to organize all this information? Certainly... If I had a Ganyu-like person who could do this, I would be able to fly much faster instead of getting anxious and collasping with a stack of scrolls on the side.
Sweating the Art
It's been two weeks since I ordered the art, I hope that everything is alright. I'll put in a call to the artist soon, hope he didn't get too fustrated or something with my non-communication; but I have faith that it will be done to perfection in one hit. So I don't really mind.
I do think it reflects badly on me if I don't talk at all, but at the same time I'm afraid that I'll disturb their work if I talk too much. Hmm... decisions decisions. In any case, I'll put in a call tomorrow.
Last Scene
A lot of planning was done this week while waiting on the art. Sound direction has taken a small, but significant step. Don't skimp on the planning process, you will need it!
Written 220417
