The battle scene in Twilight Wings ep.7 gave me the perfect excuse to try my hand at some anime-style sound design. Beyond showcasing the result, I want to go over the considerations that went into the redesign.
Anchoring between cuts:
The action-packed scene features drastic angle changes between cuts, but maintains legibility by providing focal points (right) to guide each transitions. Note the cut numbers on the image, as they will be referred to throughout this article.
I decided to use these pivots to anchor the audio transitions - keeping their associated sounds relatively steady in levels between the brief cuts, but adding panning and EQ to capitalize on the dramatic movements and accentuate the scene’s intensity.
Stadium walla was used to tie up the whole package. It was used for “pre-life” (during scene fade-in) and “post-life” (scene fade-out), as well as provide context (stadium setting). Automation on this component (nothing fancy; just levels, width, panning, EQ) was used to nudge the audience in and out of the action.
The Anime Shimmer:
This can be heard between 0:05 to 0:10 of the re-design. The work was largely based off the findings from Mr. Marshall McGee’s tutorial. In summary, the basic premise behind creating anime sounds by processing a signal with the follow effect chain sequence:
[Reverb -> Frequency shifter -> Tremolo]
I personally worked with NI Raum, Kilohearts Frequency, and The Great Escape in the redesign video. Naturally, the effect will heavily depend on the original signal, but the following general observations were found to generate similar results across different source sounds.
As stated in the Mr. McGee’s tutorial, a frequency shifted up to 2kHz over 250ms is a good starting point for the typical shimmer. Personally, the effect was too sharp/ prominent for the fire beam, so I tamed the effect by lengthening the timing of the shift to ~600ms. This resulted in a textured shimmer, which I combined with panning and ~21dB linear increase in levels to convey motion in the trailing tail of the flamethrower attack in Cut 5 (0:05).
Pairing the effect with a simultaneous downward pitch shift also significantly reduces the sharpness of the sound, and also gave it a bit more body. The rise in frequency shift can still be heard in the resultant product. This effect was used to create the second part of the flamethrower beam as it enters Cut 6 in (0:06-0:07); it involved an upward frequency shift of 2kHz and a downward pitch shift of -23 semitones, both over a ~30ms window.
Reversing the effect:
In testing the individual contributions of the effects, I found that removing the frequency shift from the chain produces a nice stationary “aura” that reminds me of force fields. I decided to build off this effect for the Reflect scene at cut 6. On top of the barrier-like aura, I added Valhalla Space Modulator between the reverb and trem, automating the depth, rate, and wetness to follow the attack’s swirling movement. Pitch shifting was then used to emphasize the absorption (decrease pitch) and reflection (increase pitch) effect. A final jump of 20Hz over 200ms in the trem speed was used at the tail end of Cut 6 to send the beam flying back.
A note on Charizard’s animation:
Charizard’s roar was created using its’ original cry as a foundation, then processing the signal with pitch shifter, frequency shifter, and LFOs to minimize tonality and add meatiness. I also threw in some VO elements to maintain cohesiveness with the Flamethrower-exhale effect from earlier in the scene.
In pairing the unaltered cry with the visuals, I suspect the animation was key’d based on the original cry. Such attention to detail – The whole scene was fantastically animated, but I have so much respect for the animators in including details like this!