Editor’s Notes:
UNSUNG HEROES is Motionographer®’s new section created to highlight the work of worldwide audio studios. Our goal is to celebrate and uplift these unsung champions, providing them with the recognition and exposure they richly deserve as a vital force in the Motion Design industry.
History and Origins
How did Skillbard start, and what inspired you to specialize in sound design and composition for Motion Design and animation?
Vincent:
Tom and I first met when I was managing a record label in London.
I got into label management after releasing my own music. I loved the world-building aspect of releasing records and got myself involved in telling other band’s stories. One of those bands was headed by a handsome young Tom Carrell. I’m still their (and his) biggest fan.
Later, I’d moved into directing music videos and brand spots, composing a little on the side. I got a job scoring a cartoon pilot by surprising the director with an unobvious musical reference: our sweet Tom’s band. Instead of ripping off Tom’s music, I invited him down to my studio to collaborate.
Tom:
The cartoon never got made but we just clicked. We immediately went into business together and never worked separately again.
There was never one single moment or event that steered us towards animation. We just knew from the start that our skill-set is more suited there than anywhere else. We love to build worlds from the ground up and we get most excited making hyper-expressive, reality-bending audio, often blurring the lines between composition and sound design. Animation was an absolute no-brainier for us. It’s just more fun, dammit!
Vincent & Tom, Tom & Vincent
What criteria do you use when selecting projects, especially pro bono work? What makes a project appealing to you?
We love people, we love stories and we love exploring. We form long-lasting relationships with brands and creators and we’ll always try to hop on a proj with someone we know and trust.
We’ll jump especially readily at a project that offers a juicy opportunity to do something different. We’re natural explorers and try to do something new on every single project.
The Power of Audio in Motion Design and Animation
Horse Interview
What do you believe is the fundamental role of audio—whether music or sound effects—in Motion Design and animation? How does it transform the visual experience?
We’re pretty open-minded about this. Depending on the project, we might say the role of audio is USUALLY to help convey the central message, often by building an emotional connection.
But there’s too many ways to express, entertain and inform to imagine every animated project could have a single formula. And audio is a much too powerful tool to suggest it might only serve one role.
We’ve used stirring music to invite the audience to share the emotions of our central character, we’ve used unexpected sound to subvert on-screen action and we’ve contributed directly to narrative with maths, Morse code and coded images, hidden in our audio.
The comedian turned horror director Jordan Peele has said “the difference between comedy and horror is the music” and we quite agree. Audio transform’s the mood and meaning to the extend that it can even change genres!
One of our favourite parts of what we do is when we send a first sketch of soundtrack to project that a creator has toiled over and nurtured for months, maybe years. By this point they are feeling exhausted by the process but can be completely reinvigorated by our contribution. Many times a director has told us that the addition of our soundtrack has made them feel like they’re working on a whole new film, that their enthusiasm for the project is totally renewed. It’s a real privilege for us to be able to contribute that final element that can change so much.
References and Creative Heroes
Non–Format Studio
What references and heroes have inspired you throughout your career? Do you draw influence from both the musical and visual worlds?
Vincent:
I’m very into graphic design and brand identity and I get a lot out of the work of Non-Format. To me, what they do feels like music; expressive, textured and kinetic. I was a big fan before I ever met them but I’ve also been lucky enough to work with them in a few different capacities and have had some insight into their approach. I don’t know if they have a direct impact on the type of sounds I make but their nuggets of wisdom, guidance and encouragement are the reason I do what I do today. They might have a bigger influence on my creative life than anyone or anything else.
We came to composition from a from a pop/rock/experimental background so we derive a lot of influence from bands and artists.
Vincent’s heroes include Bowie, DEVO, Arca, Zs, Bjork, The Chap, Max Tundra, NIN.
Tom:
Bartok, Astor Piazolla, Cocteau Twins, Bernard Hermann, Wipers, Steely Dan, Bernard Parmegiani, The Cure, Fievel is Glauque
Creative Process
Can you describe your creative process when tackling a new project? How do you collaborate with the MOTION DESIGN AND ANIMATION team to achieve perfect harmony between sound and visuals?
When we’re discussing a new project, we like to avoid talking about music or sound. What we first want to hear about is the story. What’s happening and how should it make us feel?
Once we’ve got into the head of the creator, we’ll start generating ideas about the overall direction. We still try to avoid specifics, instead talking in broad strokes about atmosphere and attitude. We try to make collaborators forget that they’re at their day jobs by asking them about their passions – bands, films, fashions – to get the team genuinely excited. Often, we’ll share a collaborative Spotify playlist to serve as a mood board or stylistic scrapbook.
When we achieve perfect harmony, it’s because we’ve gone to these lengths to understand the director’s intent. But sometimes a brief doesn’t call for perfect harmony, it calls for a little friction, and we are interested in this effect too.
Seeking perfect harmony, Jonathan Glazer might have crammed his classic “Surfer” Guinness ad with crashing, bombastic 60s surf rock, instead of the boiling, moodym distorted synth crescendo of Leftfield’s Phat Planet that perfects the film.
Evolution and Innovative Techniques
How has your approach to sound design and composition evolved as you’ve adopted new technologies and techniques? Is there a tool or technique that has revolutionized your work?
We’ve generally benefited from the democratization of tools and ease of creation that’s been lent by technology. One small but significant example is a little tool called audiomovers. It’s a simple plugin that lets us stream high quality audio between studios, which has allowed us to record musicians across the world over Zoom. Now we have very regular access to world class musicians playing rare and unique instruments. On a recent game project, for example, we recorded Taiko in Japan, Kanjira in India, Sheng in China and Futujara in California. All in the same week.
Standout Projects
Genesis Noir’s Still
Which projects do you consider to be your most significant, and why? Is there one that challenged your abilities or changed your perspective on the work?
In most imaginable ways, our first game project, Genesis Noir, is the most significant we’ve completed.
Scale:
Game projects are always long and challenging and this one was no exception. With no dialogue throughout its ~6-hours of gameplay, Genesis Noir relies heavily on music and sound to tell its story. We had our work cut out for us.
Over four years we made everything you can hear in the game – songs, score, foley, sound design, implementation, the lot. We recorded a full orchestra, a live jazz band and a small choir, as well as a handful of solo instrumentalists.
We also managed the audio direction, largely setting our own briefs inspired by the physical and metaphysical concepts in the story.
‘I did! I did taw a puddy tat!’
Challenge:
The music and the sound had to do some very heavy lifting, too. GN has an extremely ambitious narrative, told with no dialogue whatsoever. This requires careful planning to employ heavy use of explanatory leitmotifs, mapped out across the levels.
We tend to make life difficult for ourselves and, again, GN was no exception. It was important to us that every piece of music felt like a standalone piece, even when gameplay interupts, extends or transitions its progress.
Where usually game music would fade out or simply stop, we put a lot of effort into ensuring that the music functions and flows in a very musical way following unpredictable player actions while maintaining a cohesive jazz/pop type structure. It sounds simple but it was extremely logistically challenging.
Recognition:
We won a tonne of awards for our work on GN, including the prestigious Excellence in Audio prize, the biggest independent games award at GDC. The game itself was nominated for a BAFTA.
The critical reception for the game was amazing and, quite unusually, the soundtrack was mentioned in a large percentage of the reviews. Because of this, we were able to release a luxury double vinyl soundtrack album on US label iam8bit.
Legacy:
Genesis Noir is a cult classic that has contributed to the independent gaming canon and we’re currently working on a sequel: Nirvana Noir.
Narrative and Emotion
What role does storytelling play in your sound design and composition work? How do you convey specific emotions through sound?
Storytelling is king. Everything we do is to feed into the overall message.
It’s difficult to talk about how specific emotions are conveyed through sound. Especially when it forms part of visual media. So much of what we feel is down to the relationship between storytelling elements. Without context, a solo woodblock playing a rigid, consistent clack might feel like nothing at all. But part of a story of loss, seeing a loved one gleefully galloping through a spring meadow, it might evoke the beating of a heart or the ticking of a clock. The image is of joyful one but, with the addition of the once lifeless woodblock clacks, suddenly we feel mournful, remorseful, ephemeral.
Another ‘useful’ shortcut-to-the-soul is cultural context: We often find ourselves exploring established tropes. From Carl Stalling’s library of musical quotations, used in countless cartoon scenes, to atonal, modernist horror scores, to the strange use of duduk in anything vaguely middle eastern in hollywood films… All these examples have precedent and its interesting to think about how these ‘musemes’ are established and evolve. And whether we should exploit them, subvert them or ignore them.
Collaboration with Motion Designers, Animators and Directors
How closely do you collaborate with animators and directors on projects? Do you have a particular approach to ensuring the sound integrates naturally with the animation?
This varies project to project, of course, but we love collaborating super closely with creators—we’ll hop on calls, generate references together, share demos.
There are cases, however, where this isn’t how to get the best end result. There are times where we feel a little distance can actually be a shortcut to better understanding. As it says on our website “everyone gets in a pickle trying to talk about sound” (and we mean everyone, sound designers included). There are moments during discussion where we might feel we’re starting to get bogged down in ideas. Where more talk might only serve to muddy the water and leave us less aware of creators’ intentions. The tough bit is trying to judge where that line is and having the confidence to say “okay, we’ve got it”.
Audience and User Experience
How do you think about the audience experience when designing sound for a project? How do you ensure that the sound complements the visual without taking center stage?
We think about the audience by first being the audience. A client might brief us on our target audience and we take that very seriously but we try not to second guess our own instincts too much.
We do, however, want to challenge the idea that music and sound should nevertake center stage. We like to think audio is like an actor in a film. Sometimes it can lead a scene, sometimes it can take a supportive role. It’s a powerful storytelling tool, why limit your toolset?
A huge part of the magic of 2001: A Space Odyssey is the music. Pieces are so well-known that they totally arrest you. Every piece brings meaning through its context and takes centre stage quite effortlessly, enriching the story Immeasurably.
Future Vision and New Trends
AWOLNATION
What do you believe are the next trends in sound design for motion design AND ANIMATION? How do you prepare to continue innovating in this field?
Brands and agencies seem much more aware of the benefit of sonic branding. We expect to hear more sonic logos and more defined brand personality through audio in advertising, in-app UI sound design, and other areas in the next few years.
One thing we’ve noticed while looking at TikTok is the role music plays. It seems to function like contextual music tropes in early cartoons (e.g., the aforementioned Carl Stalling’s library of musical quotations). Recognizable motifs and melodies are used across all shows to very succinctly signify to the audience the way in which we should be understanding the clip. When we hear the staccato cello of AWOLNATION’s ‘Run,’ while we enjoy a 6-second video of a child feeding a goose, we brace ourselves for a humorous and, ultimately, harmless attack. We wonder if the TikTok generation will carry this through to other, more long-form media.
Social Media:
Instagram: @skiilbard
Web: www.skillbard.com