Well, actually, that's not true. There are many things I hate. Y'know, injustice, having to pay the bills, sexism... I hate many things. But when it comes to sound design, there is one thing I hate.
Actually that isn't true either. There are quite a few things that can happen when you do audio design for games that can seriously piss me off. Many of these issues will be brought up in this blog at one time or another. You know, at the end of the day I still absolutely love my work, but there are things that will make you grind your teeth.
Today I will talk about one of those things.
You know when you've been out on the field recording sound effects all day? You've been gathering footstep sounds, wind howling, various amounts of water noises... the works. Hooray, right? Yeah! Time to go home and edit these sons o' bitchnazzes! Or maybe I'll do it tomorrow because man, am I tired after all those hours of recording. I'll just put them on the HD real quick and leave them there. I'll remember what I did tomorrow.
*8 or so hours later*
"Wait, what? What's that?! It sounds like an alien being dragged backwards through a blowdryer!"
...
Well, that isn't the part I hate. That's actually part of the norm (at least for me) and something I rather enjoy (again, at least for me). I sort of like not knowing what the hell I just recorded because that makes it easier to write a nice naming convention. In a year or so, future Fredrik won't be interested in what past Fredrik recorded so much as what those recordings actually sound like. The keywords need to be consistent, they need to work according to my own complex (and often strange) abstraction layer so that they accurately tell me what the sound sounds like rather than what it actually is.
What I hate is when I get sounds from other places and their naming convention is just not even remotely close to what I want. I basically have to go through the entire library, renaming each and every entry and making sure everything makes sense to me. Honestly, this is why I prefer to record my own sounds, categorizing them the way I want them. Even recording together with someone else can be a pain if I'm not the one to edit the audio because it'll simply never end up the way I want them to.
Of course, the easy way around this is to work with someone who speaks the same language as you. Or, you know, actually try to adapt to other people's workflow.
Actually, come to think of it, I don't actually hate this. I sort of see it as a fun challenge that needs to be overcome.
Aw, shucks. I just invalidated the entire premise for this post, didn't I. Um...
Have a fun picture!
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