Airwiggles x A Sound Effect Sound Design Contest Winners Asbjoern Andersen


Last month, 153 avid sound designers across the world participated in the Airwiggles x A Sound Effect Sound Design Contest: a competition where the goal was to add some amazing sound design to a VFX clip created by Dayton Busse. There were 5 award categories up for grabs: the winners of which would be given a whole bunch of free sound effects libraries!

The winners and runners up of the contest were announced last week on a livestream on Airwiggles: a social platform for audio designers. Let’s take a look at the winning entries:


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Here are the prizes:

These are the sound effects libraries that the winners got to choose from:

  • Destruction & Impact Sounds Broken Play Track 2266 sounds included, 273 mins total $149.99

    Nothing slaps a smile on a face like the sweet sound of destruction and mayhem. Designing sound for such complex events as a collapsing building or an earthquake requires a diverse and comprehensive palette of chaos. To create such havoc, one must be equipped with the ultimate destruction sound library.

    We stopped at nothing to put together this library of utter mayhem. BROKEN boasts over 9 GB of HD quality content spread across 1940 construction kit sounds and 326 designed sounds. From car crashes, explosions, crumbling buildings, earthquakes, ripping earth and metal, to debris, BROKEN features all elements of destruction.

    Recorded in the field and on the Paramount Pictures Foley stage, this library equips sound designers for film, games, and web with the tools for creating a ruckus.

    Get wrecked. Get BROKEN.

  • Mechanical Sound Effects Gearbox Play Track 3551 sounds included, 279 mins total $149.99

    We’ve ventured to obscure boutiques, prop houses and vintage shops to capture mechanical contraptions from around the world. Ranging from bizarre creations, to steampunk gadgetry, gizmos and machines, GEARBOX clocks in at over 10 GB of high definition, precision mastered sounds spanning across 2987 construction kit sounds and 584 designed sounds.

    GEARBOX equips Sound Designers with a literal toolbox of mechanical gadgetry. Ranging from tiny to huge, GEARBOX‘s machines and gizmos provide coverage for interacts, mechanism, machine or device in your scene or game.

    INTRODUCING BUILDING BLOCKS

    In addition to CONSTRUCTION KIT and DESIGNED SOUND content, GEARBOX features BUILDING BLOCKS. This category of sound consists of designed phrases and oneshots utilized for our designed machinery, empowering Sound Designers with maximum flexibility when trying to get that particular phrase from an existing DESIGNED SOUND. GEARBOX features over 468 BUILDING BLOCKS ranging from levers, hits, grinds, snaps, and more.



    GEARBOX - Rock The Speakerbox Professional SFX


  • Cold Weapon Sound Effects Hero Play Track 2846 sounds included, 238 mins total $149.99

    A warrior prepares for battle. A knight readies for combat. A sound designer prepares for post. Rock The Speakerbox is proud to present HERO, a library focused on the warrior, the victor.

    Recorded on the field and on the Paramount Pictures Foley stage, and designed by award winning sound designers, HERO contains over 7 GB of HD quality content spread across 2572 construction kit sounds and 274 designed sounds. Sword fights, stabbing, guillotines, impaling, battle cries, shields, drawbridges, armor and Foley begin to detail the vast collection of sounds featured within.

    Be a warrior. Be the HERO.

  • Foley Sound Effects Melee Play Track 1884 sounds included, 122 mins total $149.99

    Bring your fight scenes to life with the ultimate sound design toolkit for hand to hand combat. Rock The Speakerbox presents MELEE, a library specializing in jaw breaking action, and raw, unbridled violence.

    Recorded on stage and designed by award winning sound designers, MELEE contains 4 GB of HD quality content spread across 1596 construction kit sounds and 288 designed sounds. From punches, kicks, blocks, body falls, grabs, slaps, bone breaks, blood splatters, MELEE is the ultimate sound design toolkit for hand to hand combat.

    Get rocked.

  • Magic & Fantasy Sound Effects Sorcery Play Track 2196 sounds included, 337 mins total $149.99

    Rock The Speakerbox presents Sorcery, the ultimate sound design toolkit for magic and enchantment.

    Harness the forces of light with white magic. Ignite the night with the unbridled power of fire and flame.Summon the darkest of evil with black magic and necromancy. Release the fury of a million volts by mastering the electron. Lay waste to your foes with the sheer might of water and acid. Conjure the frigid and unleash the frost with the power of ice.

    Recorded on stage and in the field, and designed by award winning sound designers, SORCERY contains 11.7 GB of HD quality content spread across 1992 construction kit sounds and 204 designed sounds. With spells, deflects, casts, blocks, beams and more, SORCERY provides sound designers and media content creators unrivaled wizardry at their fingertips.

    The extraordinary awaits within.

Award 1: The Creativity Award

 

Awarded to a redesign with a particularly innovative and “outside-the-box” take on the audio

 



AWxASFX Sound Design Contest: Creativity Award Winner (Damian Pace)


WINNER: Damian Pace

Runner ups: Petter Karlsten, Katharina Bär, KVBA

Sound designer Damian Pace took the first award with an incredibly dense soundscape full of details. For added context: contest participants were given over 1gb of sound effects to use in order to design sounds for this clip, including some demos of various A Sound Effect sound libraries, sound effects provided by Airwiggles founders Lewis Thompson and Greg Lester, and some free samples provided by the Airwiggles community. There were hundreds of wacky sound effects provided and most sound designers only used a small portion of them: but Damian set themselves a challenge to use every sound effect exactly once.

“I decided to use every sound provided (all 187 of them)! This forced me to use sounds I wouldn’t normally have picked for this sort of video, which I think resulted in a nice big cinematic sound, while giving the individual grapes character and helping bring them to life.” – Damian Pace

This self-imposed limitation must have been very difficult to pull off without the clip sounding like an incredible mess of eclectic sounds: however, we think Damian absolutely aced the challenge and managed to create something clean and coherent with lots of interesting, subtle textures that you only notice upon listening to the clip multiple times. We think this was a fantastic submission and is a perfect example of how limitation breeds creativity. Congratulations to Damian!

Award 2: The Production Award:

 

Awarded to a redesign that uses creative processing techniques to create amazing new sounds with the source material provided

 



AWxASFX Sound Design Contest: Production Award Winner (Sam Merryweather)


WINNER: Sam Merryweather

Runner ups: Ben Rohletter, Mackubin Owens, Jakub Rehor

Audio Designer Sam Merryweather blew us away with his entry. Sam elevated the clip to the next level with some incredible cinematic production: transforming the sound effects provided in weird and wonderful ways to create completely unique tones and textures. In order to expand the amount of source material available to him, Sam generated tonnes of new sound effects by running the source material through Granulator II inside Ableton, which gave him a whole bank of fun new sounds to play with.

“Most of these created textures were used as audio [in the session], but some were imported into Phase Plant samplers and further manipulated. One example use case was to create a rattling ball style effect from a low version of the grain-resampled rain, which is a key layer in the grape detaching section.” – Sam Merryweather

Finally, Sam ended the clip with some awesome musical cinematic sound effects which formed an epic sounding synth cadence, perfectly rounding off the video clip. We think Sam managed to use creative production techniques to create a bank of interesting source material that really helped him stand out of the crowd. Congratulations to Sam!

Award 3: The Recordist Award:

 

Awarded to a redesign that effectively uses self-recorded or synthesised sounds to enhance the audio

 



AWxASFX Sound Design Contest: Recordist Award Winner (Pablo Velasco)


WINNER: Pablo Velasco
Runner ups: Julian Ferreira da Silva, Davide Laurito, Mark Berg

Whilst we provided all entrants with 1gb+ of sound effects they can use in their redesigns, we also allowed people to record and create their own sound effects and synth patches in order to enhance the audio. Pablo Velasco took this to the next level: with almost every single sound you hear being something they recorded or synthesized themselves. Pablo embarked on a field recording trip to the mountains, and took some creative recordings of water splashing and fruits being squished at home.

“I went to a mountain with my H1n to record the sounds of the foliage and rustling leaves” – Pablo Velasco

They then supplemented this with some deep, cinematic synth patches that they designed with TAL-U-No-LX which helped give the clip some direction. Whilst we were very impressed at the quantity of Pablo’s recording efforts: we also think that the quality of these self-made sounds was fantastic and fitted the clip perfectly: and the breakdown video Pablo included at the end was the cherry on top. Congratulations Pablo!

Award 4: The Community Award:

 

Awarded to a user who educates and inspires other contestants by sharing tips, giving feedback, or creating a breakdown video of their own entry to help others

 



AWxASFX Sound Design Contest: Community Award Winner (Andrea Carsenzuola)


WINNER: Andrea Carsenzuola

Runner ups: Scott VR, Heli Linnus, Ted Hogeman

Airwiggles is all about the tight-knit audio community! We really wanted our contest participants to have fun, share knowledge, give feedback, and learn from each other – rather than to keep their cards close to their chest in order to win. We had so many Airwiggles users actively participating in the community and helping each other which was awesome to see: but Andrea Carsenzuola really went all out!

“The whole idea of this design was to make it seem bigger than what it actually is, so I tried to get very cinematic and almost over the top (by making big whooshes, deep impacts, and playing around with the stereo field)” – Andrea Carsenzuola

Firstly, Andrea livestreamed their entire contest entry on Twitch for other participants to tune into and learn from. They then also created a breakdown video afterwards showing off their session and how they created certain sounds: complete with a text-to-speech robot assistant narrating for us! Andrea put in a tonne of effort knowledge-sharing for the sound design community and for that reason we have awarded them with the Community Award! Congratulations!

Award 5: The Airwiggles Award:

 

Awarded to a redesign which is the top pick by the Airwiggles team

 



AWxASFX Sound Design Contest: Airwiggles Award Winner (Jade Dickey)


WINNER: Jade Dickey

Runner ups: Cecilia Garciá, Gibson Gillet-Behrens, Kieran Blackstone

The Airwiggles Award simply went to our personal favourite clip: and that was designed by audio engineer Jade Dickey! Jade’s focus was on making the grapes sound fresh: one of the ways they did this was by processing a provided sample of some crackling pumpkin seeds to sound like tiny water droplets.

“I really wanted to focus on making the grapes sound “fresh” via highlighting the sound of the water beads as the grapes are twisting and emphasizing the wave sounds when all the grapes are colliding” – Jade Dickey

We felt this entry nailed the story-telling aspect of the clip. It’s an advert for some form of grape drink, and Jade’s entry sounded smooth, fresh, juicy, tasty: and ultimately, it left us wanting to eat grapes! In our opinion, if this advert was to actually be televised, this is the audio that would be chosen to help sell the grape-based drink. All 153 entries to the contest sounded fantastic, and it was very hard going through them all and picking the winners: however, Jade’s entry stood out to us immediately, and deservedly went on to win. Congratulations to Jade Dickey!

That wraps up the Airwiggles x A Sound Effect Sound Design Contest. Thank you again to all 153 participants: we can’t believe the amount of people who entered! If you haven’t already, make sure to sign up to Airwiggles.com to stay up to date with any future contests and events made for the audio community.

Congratulations again to all of our winners!
– Lewis, Greg, and Asbjoern

Not on Airwiggles yet? Be sure to join the community here

 

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A Sound Effect gives you easy access to an absolutely huge sound effects catalog from a myriad of independent sound creators, all covered by one license agreement - a few highlights:

  • Door Sound Effects Noisy Doors Play Track 44 sounds included $10

    This library contains recordings of eleven different types of doors specifically chosen for their interesting sound. I performed all actions with a lot of detail covering “open/close”, “knocks”, “bangs and thuds”, “handle grab and rattle” and when possible also “crackles and squeaks” (all recorded at various intensities)

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  • Cinematic & Trailer Sound Effects Abandoned Oil Tank Play Track 327 sounds included $40

    On a recording trip to the smaller Danish port town Struer, I came across an abandoned empty oil tank. Inside I found two giant wires attached to the floor and the ceiling of the tank, almost like a huge 2 stringed double bass. I’m telling you the reverb in there was longer than the Eiffel Tower on a cloudless day !

    On the outside this was just an empty abandoned building, but it turned out it was not empty at all because it was full of sound and a few dead birds. I’m glad I was curious enough to go inside for a closer investigation and not just pass by.

    After several hours of concentrated recording, it was nice to get my ears back out in dry air. I’m happy there are no open sends to Valhalla in real life but experiencing the eternal resonance on the low frequencies from the wires was absolutely amazing.

    Abandoned Oil Tank was recorded with a LOM basic Ucho stereo pair, a Zoom H6 and the LOM Geofon. All files are in 96 kHz/24 bit and contain the original recordings.

    The result is a unique sound effect library including balloon pop impulse responses from a truly unique location that very recently became even more unique since word says that the oil tank is no more and has abandoned this world.

    327 individual sounds – all tagged with Universal Category System (UCS) metadata.

    www.katrineamsler.com

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  • Magic & Fantasy Sound Effects Magic and Spell Sounds Play Track 682 sounds included, 29 mins total $19

    Magic and Spell Sounds is a custom designed sound library covering many types of magic and spells. From shining in the light to bringing darkness.

    Elements: electricity, energy, fireballs, ice, vines, rock, wind and water. Covering actions such as: blasts, casting, conjuring, impacts, healing and more.

    682 total sounds (422 magic and spell sounds, 260 bonus sounds from Pro Sound Collection).

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  • Birdsong from the countryside of the Swedish rural region of Värmland.

  • The physical version of Small Rantonen Kantele is one of the oldest, if not the oldest, still playable 5-string kanteles in the world, as it was made in 1770. The kantele was made famous by kantele player Antti Rantonen, who owned it and played it during his career.

    NOTE: FULL Kontakt 6.7.0 or higher required (NOT Kontakt Player)

    Kantele, also called kannel, is a traditional Finnish and Karelian plucked string instrument. Similar instruments include the Estonian kannel, Latvian kokles, Lithuanian kanklės, and Russian gusli.

    Main idea for the virtual kantele was to create an instrument you can play live, almost like a real kantele. We used pedals, velocity layers, and special keyswitches to create a playing experience closer to the real instrument. Strumming is a crucial part of playing the small kantele, so we kept that in the middle of the development from start to finish.

    Samples were recorded using different parts of the kantele, with resonance and without resonance, to give more options for the sound of the instrument. During the sampling the strings were tuned using a diatonic scale (CDEFG). With the virtual instrument it is possible to tune every string independently, so you can achieve the traditional D-tuning and many other tunings.

    We captured long, damped, and dead notes, and harmonics. In addition we recorded percussion with the strings and the body of the instrument. Many other delicious samples are also present, including the sounds of hand damping the strings!

    Below you can view the walkthrough video for the instrument.

  • The physical version of Large Rantonen Kantele is an old, large 30-string concert kantele made in 1902. The kantele was made famous by kantele player Antti Rantonen, who owned it and played it during his career.

    NOTE: FULL Kontakt 6.7.0 or higher required (NOT Kontakt Player)

    Kantele, also called kannel, is a traditional Finnish and Karelian plucked string instrument. Similar instruments include the Estonian kannel, Latvian kokles, Lithuanian kanklės, and Russian gusli.

    Main idea for the virtual kantele was to create an instrument you can play live, almost like a real kantele. As both hands are on the strings when playing a physical kantele, we used pedals, velocity layers, and special keyswitches to create a playing experience closer to the real instrument.

    We recorded long notes, damped notes, harmonics, and mallet hits. For the virtual instrument, we expanded these notes to cover the missing sharps and flats, and even more lower and higher notes. We also added a virtual damping board, two play modes, and a large number of options to help you to create your own sound and playing style.

    Below you can view the walkthrough video for the instrument.

  • Door Sound Effects Noisy Doors Play Track 44 sounds included $10

    This library contains recordings of eleven different types of doors specifically chosen for their interesting sound. I performed all actions with a lot of detail covering “open/close”, “knocks”, “bangs and thuds”, “handle grab and rattle” and when possible also “crackles and squeaks” (all recorded at various intensities)

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  • Human Sound Effects Zody Play Track 1243+ sounds included, 151 mins total $55

    With abounding character and a penchant for speaking their mind, these little folk always have a lot to say. Wonder and amazement naturally follows.

    Having the honor to be able to observe these tikes in their natural habitats, it became clear how babies share a great deal across their mannerisms as the grow. A longitudinal family of vocalizations and sounds that span the first year of life and maturity, the heart of this library, centers on those personalities and mannerisms changing and taking shape over that period of time. The little ones have been recorded at infancy, 3 months, 6 months, 9 months, and 1 year old. Each of these developmental milestones mark a significant step forward for all babies and at these stages their personalities and expressiveness grow remarkably. It is the constantly evolving language of exploration and examination; always learning. Each vocalization in this library, even within the same stage of development, is unique. From giggles to shouts, questioning to cries, babbles, cooing, and inventive phrases all the way around.

    Additionally, strollers, toys, diaper bags, bottles, pumps, swings, and more have been captured as compliments to represent all of those ubiquitous items in a baby’s world. The strollers were profiled on different surfaces and from different mechanical perspectives. The toys were recorded both in-play and as Foley. Bottles and diapers were used in their normal function and fashion, while other tools and devices of the dedicated and savvy parent were selected for their sound and utility.

    Joyfulness is easy to hear in this library.


   

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