Wednesday, September 11, 2013

Castle of Illusion: Starring Mickey Mouse

Latest project has hit the (digital) shelves!  Castle of Illusion: Starring Mickey Mouse.



It was a lot of fun to work on. For a good chunk of my career the first line of the audio style guide was 'don't make it cartoony', but for once the style was very much 'make it as cartoony as possible!' which was an enjoyable challenge. I love gritty realism as much as every other sound designer but there was a private little burst of glee when it came to making cute mushrooms sounds and deflating flowers. It also involved a lot of thinking outside of the box! What would a dolphin made of jelly sound like? Or a bouncing Letter A?

For a nice change, too, we had enough time to do a lot of original recording as opposed to relying on library sounds. In many ways though, I think it might often even be a time saver - all that time you normally spend trawling the library for the closest appropriate sound, and then trying to get enough variations or massaging it to fit better, whereas when you're recording it yourself it's so much easier to match what you need and have twenty variations of it!

I shall also fondly remember this as the project on which we ruthlessly abused the shepard tone.

It was a fantastic team and the project has a lot of good memories. I've worked in teams both good and bad, but when the team gels and communication flows and everyone is on the same page it all goes so much more smoothly. Sadly, this was Sega Studio Australia's last project, and I already miss everyone terribly. Hopefully we'll all cross paths again in the future, perhaps at other studios, or perhaps the indie scene! Some are already having great success in that arena.

In the meantime, I would recommend everyone who enjoyed the original Castle of Illusion check it out! It's already out on Steam, PSN and XBLive.


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