Practice. Makes. Perfect… Not entirely true, but, we all know there is some merit in there.
Discord servers are the wild west, but there are some absolute GEMS out there. Some of the communities I am part of are an incredible place to gain knowledge, feedback and work opportunities.
What is a Sound Design Challenge?
One of my favourite things that a handful of servers do are sound design challenges. The formats different from server to server, but tend to follow this overall structure :
- A meetup at a certain time (every week, every month etc) where a clip and/or a theme is revealed.
- Everyone goes away and works on redesigning the audio of the clip for a certain amount of time, sometimes a week or a month – but my favourite are the 1 hour challenges.
- Everyone meets back up, watches through and discuss what they did, what they were happy with, what they would do different if approaching it again.
Why I find the time to take part
I love to hear how everyone’s approach differs, it is a great learning experience for all sound designers from beginners to professionals. It is incredible how everyone has a different take on a theme and use such a wide array of techniques in ways that wouldn’t have come to mind.
The reason that I prefer the 1 hour challenges is that it forces you to really make an effort to limit your scope. With only 1 hour you just don’t have the time to dig into the details, and instead are forced to use broad strokes to best convey your ideas for the clip. It doesn’t mean that you rush, just that you learn to prioritise what’s important. This is incredibly useful to practice and is something that I use on a daily basis when working on projects. Game projects feature hundreds, if not thousands of sound assets and learning to prioritise aspects of these assets is crucial to hit deadlines.
Another aspect that some of these sound design challenges feature are limitations. This can include only using “these 5 samples”, synths only or using white noise only. The results aren’t always perfect, but it again is a great way to work with a limited workflow and helps to hone your creativity. Lots of these limitations hammer home what all sound designers have at one time being guilty of… equipment/tools are nice, but they are in no way what makes a sound designer, it is their creativity that sets them apart.
On top of these reasons, a huuuuge reason why I encourage people to take part in these challenges is for the community aspect. I have made a load of friends from these sessions, friends that I am able to ping a message to and within 5 minutes have an answer to whatever problem I was up against, whether it’s “How did you make that glitch sfx?” or some niche implementation challenge.
My favourite challenges
I run a “Sound Design Jam and Game Audio Meetup” every other Thursday together with Work With Indies over on their discord server (join in here) and try to make time in my schedule each week to take part in one challenge. Some of my favourites are :
- Game Dev London – Hosted by Benedict Sanderson
- Stillalive Game Labs – Hosted by Chris Polus
- Sound Design – Hosted by Presley Hynes
