Sound Collaboration

I always done sound for my animations myself, but after the 'Eden Ident' sound which, I thought, was very weak I decided next time round I’d ask my good friend Richard Gallagher, who studies sound design in London if he's interested.I had a massive creative spurt at the end of the holidays creating about three short and very basic animations; I gave one to Ric to add sound to. It was 'Watching Television', the final one is embedded below.

I thought the sounds were nice, wasn't over keen on the voice of the man, seemed a bit out of character...but I didn't actually brief him on the piece. I just gave it to him saying "do something with it”.
It was nice to let go of a piece of work and give another creative mind some input into the work and put their own stamp on it.

As the test animation was a success, I was happy to ask him if he wanted to work on the train animation. He asked me to sent over what I had so far, so he could get an idea what he was going to be getting involved with. He liked what he saw and said he'd be more than happy doing the sound.


On Monday 24th November Ric was down in Manchester (sorry, up in Manchester) and by that day I had the final Train animation, titled 'Nowhere Fast' finished. We both watched it and talked about what I wanted out of the sound. The day before I'd had a think about that I wanted so I wasn't wooly when it came to explaining to Ric. We made a list of stuff I wanted, which can be seen on my hand in disc.
Although there wasn’t much communication on the progress of the sound, from the meeting we had to the final mix, the outcome is fantastic, and I think the whole experience has helped my ability communicate my vision for animations.