The Freesound Blog

David Smithson from Hive writes to tell me about the usage of freesound sounds in Umbrella Adventure

Umbrella Adventure is an entirely hand-drawn exploration adventure game, which takes place in a huge forest full of platforming challenges, enemies and puzzles. The main character, Gopher, wakes up to find his collection of cakes stolen in the night, and it’s up to you to arm yourself with an umbrella and head out into the world to bring them all back, by using the umbrella to overcome the obstacles in your way, meeting new friends, and opening new doorways and paths through the forest.

One of the game’s biggest focal points is immersion – creating the feeling that the world you’re exploring is solid, consistent and real, and this, from our side, involves making sure the entire world feels right, moves right, and sounds right. For a game like this to work, we needed a huge range of different sounds which could be combined to create a rich, realistic soundscape for players to explore through. In the three or four years since the development of the game began, we’ve used a ton of material from Freesound contributors, mostly ambient, nature and weather effects, although there are some bizarre sounds in there too; it’s pretty neat to think that, for example, the sound of someone scratching their beard has contributed to our work like that. A lot of care was taken to make sure everything in the game, from the player character to moving enemies and scenery, sounds the way it should, so players can really get inside the game and believe what they’re hearing, and in this respect Freesound has been absolutely essential to us. Visiting and being part of Freesound is something really integral to the ‘indie spirit’ of game development for us; the community there is really dedicated to promoting the creative output of all its members, and it’s great to see so many people united by their common love of finding and making great sounds. It’s something we’re all really thankful is still there, and very proud to be working with.

Guy Davis, creator of the indie movie?Zorg and Andy?writes to tell us about his usage of sounds from Freesound. Not only that, but he offers us a nice reduction price for people who want to buy the dvd! Read on for details!

“While in post-production on our film, “Zorg and Andy,” I knew I wanted to try not to skimp on audio finishing (we’d skimped on so many other things, it seemed only natural to try to do something right).

Unfortunately, we were completely out of money (tragically, we still are) and so we had to find some creative (and free!) ways to try to do the necessary audio work. ?We obviously couldn’t afford any of the commercial sound effects libraries to supplement our Apple Loops collection, but the problem disappeared after I stumbled across Freesound.

I used Freesound samples in a myriad of ways: ?everything from ambience and effects, to transitional pieces and Foley (and if I never have to lay in another pair of footsteps by hand, it will be too soon).

I was absolutely amazed at not only the breadth of the samples available on the site, but also by the ease of searching. ?For instance, in one particular scene I needed to find the sound of malevolent chanting (our movie is a goofy comedy concerning a number of cults on a college campus who are all fighting for possession of a mysterious, ancient idol)–on Freesound, no problem! One quick search and I found a ready-to-wear evil incantation.

For me, one of the most satisfying things about sound effects work is creating the illusion of reality by combining seemingly disparate elements, from using the sounds of an Uzi and a gas stove being lit to help sell a camera flash, to using the sounds of insects, birds flapping their wings, a dragon’s hiss (!) and a bean belt shaker to create a roomful of ravenous, flesh-eating beetles. I was able to find virtually everything I needed here.

Again, I can’t begin to thank you enough, Bram, for creating Freesound, and I’d also like to thank all of your members for contributing to this wonderful resource.

And if any of your members are fans of cheesy, b-movies, “Zorg” is available on DVD and digital download through Film Baby. And for all of your help, we’d like to offer the cast and crew discount of 25% off DVD’s and 20% off downloads. ?At checkout, just use the discount code: freesound”