"Code Lyoko... but there's no music."
Why am I writing this?
Clearly, what I did isn't a big production or anything. But still, it's something I've spent a lot of time on and something that's close to my heart. I think the beauty of anything creative is the whole process that leads to the end result. And I wanted to document why and how I made this video.
So there you go. Yeah, it's not a particularly crazy project, but I put a lot of time into it and had a lot of fun doing it.
The idea behind the video.
My audio fixation.
I've always been captivated by audio, by the different noises I can hear in my day-to-day life, or in the games I play, that sort of thing. It's something I've always had. Sometimes I make a noise and I think: *"Oh, that could be recycled to make [this sound effect]".
Not long ago, I was tapping two sponges held in a cardboard wrapper between my fingers and I thought: "If I recorded that, it would make a really good sound effect for someone walking through the grass in boots.
My partner has a video of me, all pleased with myself, I'm blowing into an empty glass bottle, explaining to her as if I'd just discovered electricity: "Listen! With a bit of reverb, it would be perfect to make the sound of a ship in the distance!" Yeah. It's bordering on mental illness at that point, but... that's me. As far as I'm concerned, she loves me in spite of, and even for that, so I've found the right person.
I remember, when I was a teenager, not only did I experiment with this by creating audio tracks for specific atmospheres or whatever, but I would download sounds and have fun creating my own sound design for the game "Counter-Strike: Source", whose sounds I never liked. That way, I could have sounds I liked, even if I had to replace all the sounds manually with sounds I found in other games or elsewhere.
I really don't know where it came from, but it's been there since I was a little girl, really. My first video game was *"THIEF: The Dark Project" and I played it when I was 3 years old (yes, I was far too young). Not only is my first game an absolute nugget, but if you've played it, you know that sound is extremely important in this game. Maybe that's what completely rewired my brain or something. I don't know.
But anyway, here it is what it is. I've always had a thing for sound! But I've never done anything with it... until now.
JDG's vidéo.
Joueur du Grenier is a french YouTuber inspired by the Angry Video Game nerd. The following video is in French but has English subtitles available.
I re-watched JDG's video a little while ago. In it, he parodies a scene from Code Lyoko with the classic idea of: *"If you take away the cool music, it sucks."
In a livestream he made talking about the making of that video, he goes on to explain that the person who did the editing in question had sent him the complete sequence, but that it was too long for the video. And I thought to myself: "Actually... This could be a good exercise. " Just take that sequence, remove the audio track and do it all over again.
There's a variety of environments, shots that connect to each other which gives opportunities to play with perspective and how it affects sound, etc. It's ideal.
It's been so long since I've had fun with audio, and I've missed it for so long, so this seemed like a good way to get back into it.
Software (REAPER, is amazing.)
Before I started, I had to figure out what I was going to use for this project. The whole thing was a good opportunity for me to learn how to use a new sound/music software (DAW). I started this project on Ardour because I'm a big Open-Source and Linux enthusiast, but... I found Ardour absolutely unbearable to use.
When I was doing this as a kid, I used Mixcraft from Acoustica and all these years later, my reflexes were still there. I would have used it, but alas, I'm stuck on MacOS and he's stuck on Windows. So I needed an alternative. Garageband, although surprisingly powerful, didn't meet my expectations. Of course, there's Logic, but it's a MacOS exclusive and my production quality or even my ambitions certainly don't match the budget required to get Logic (229€).
Mixcraft was super intuitive to use. But Ardour... was anything but. I don't doubt the software's capabilities, and I know people love it, but I very quickly found myself wrestling with the software to do even the most basic things. That kind of friction can discourage me very quickly, and I have a long habit of not finishing what I start, so I didn't want this project to suffer the same fate. So: back to square one.
After some digging around, I learned that Reaper supports Linux very well, which is a requirement for me, because although I'm currently on macOS, I intend to return to Linux one day and I don't want to lose that.
So I downloaded Reaper as a trial, which I'm now going to buy! Not only is it not very expensive for what's on offer, but I find it very intuitive and doing this project was really simple for me. I'm beginning to understand why so many people swear by it.
I fell in love with Reaper while making this project, for one very simple reason: the software didn't get in my way, and everything that seemed intuitive, such as dragging the mouse over the end of an audio clip to make it loop, was there in the first place.
The Sounds
For the audio in itself, all of the sounds are from Valve games (Half-Life 2 in particular) as well as the free library that the company Sonniss created based on its paid packs that are specially curated for the “Game Developper Conferences”. There are over a hundred gigabytes of sound, completely royalty-free and of very high quality, it's a real goldmine.
I wanted to try and balance realism with a cartoonish feel. So, something that's simple and not too complex. That's why I use the same footsteps (from Portal 2) pretty much all the time, to match the cartoon feel.
My favorite part are the outdoor shots. I loved playing with distances, the fact that in the wide shot you can hear the water under the bridge, that sort of thing. Sound brings the image to life, and I realized something extremely basic, but actually making it made it really striking to me: what's most important to dub and to capture with the audio, is what can't be seen see.
For the outdoor area, for example, I wondered: *What time is it? It's dark, but at the same time, they're schoolchildren, so it can't be too late either. Is the factory far away, or close to town? things like that. With this exercise, I started grasping the responsibility I have over the image, because I hold the power to radically change what the image reflects.
Anecdotes behind some of the sounds.
- Jeremy's seat. Believe it or not, the part that gave me the most trouble (apart from synchronizing the footsteps to the image, which was also a real pain only because it took so long), was Jeremy's seat moving on its rail! I couldn't find anything in my entire audio library that would fit. I have no qualms about taking a sound and modifying it, but this was particularly complicated.
I don't know whether the result is very average, or whether it's just that I had so much trouble with this part that I ended up being dissatisfied by wear and tear. I can't remember how I made that sound. It's the only time I've referred to the original soundtrack for inspiration.
Jérémy's scooter So, Jeremy's scooter... Do you have any idea how hard it is to find the sound of a scooter? I didn't have any in my library, so I searched online and couldn't find anything. I don't have one, nor a microphone good enough to record it. So I took the sound of a skateboard rolling, like for Odd, but I modified it so that it sounds higher pitched. And I think it sounds good enough, actually. I'm sure you didn't even notice (I hope).
Ropes in the factory + a cry for Odd? The ropes in the factory too. It was complicated because I didn't have a suitable rope sound there either. I ended up mixing several sounds to get this result, and here again, I'm only somewhat convinced. I really like the metallic sound though, again, “what you can't see”. I imagined that these ropes were an industrial relic that were attached to top-mounted rails, hence the metallic snap. Metallic snap, which serves as a bit of a smokescreen for the fact that my rope sounds aren't that great, I admit.
Oh, and I hesitated for a long time to add a scream to Odd, who clearly opens his mouth while jumping, but screaming in my apartment to get that sound wasn't really something I wanted to do. My partner and neighbors would probably have thought I was crazy, and it would probably have sounded super weird, and even scary to listen to in the final mix, so whatever.
I did, however, add a little jumping sound to Odd in the beginning, when they enter the sewer, because why not. I didn't record it myself, I took it from the ["Zombie Panic: Source ”] files (https://store.steampowered.com/app/17500/Zombie_Panic_Source/), I modified the tone to have something that sounds like Odd and his voice. I hesitated to re-record it myself, but well... lazy, I admit. It would have been much simpler and would have taken a lot less effort, too.
- The elevator buzzer. Otherwise, there's the elevator buzzer. I really wanted that industrial elevator feel, but I didn't have anything and couldn't find anything online. So I improvised it with a button noise from Half-Life 2 that I modified by cutting it up, extending it, slowing it down and changing its pitch to get it. And it works just fine.
Happy with the result.
I'm quite happy with the result. There are things that bother me here and there, but after a while you have to know when to stop and move on. Otherwise, you can tweak and polish a project for eternity.
I'm not giving myself any particular credit, I didn't even think of uploading it in the first place, but then I thought, “After all, why not?”, so here goes. I'm not pretending to be a “sound designer” or anything, it's just a little exercise for fun.
Yes, I think some things could have been made better, but I reached a point with this project that satisfied me and so I consider it finished. At times when I thought that what I had done was trivial or even lame, I try to remember that at the beginning, there was nothing but silence. And I'm still thinking about that, I'm happy with it.
I'd like to experiment like that again, in the future. I've always had quite a strong bond with my sense of hearing, to the point where I'd rather be blind than deaf, and doing this would awaken something in me that I'd buried years ago. It's never too late to learn new things.
Hmm...
The link to this blog is “lyoko-audio” because it made me think of “Yoko Ono”. I thought it was funny. But it's not.