Staying Creative & Preventing Burnout
The Burden
This industry is highly competitive, especially at an entry-level. It requires you to be creative on a daily basis under time pressure and often for long hours which can be very taxing.
Overwork and burnout can cause long-term damage and is the reason a lot of people flee the creative industries at an early age.
With that being said the good news is that you can learn to control the proverbial tap that gets the creative juices flowing and use good work practices to prevent burnout.
How To Be Creative
Here are some techniques that help me whenever I’m in a creative rut or simply don’t know where to start when designing a sound.
Create A Process
Knowing where to start is often the hardest part when approaching the design of a new sound. Creating a simple process that you can follow can be a massive help. I want to highlight that this process needs to work for you so it’s important to try out different things and choose what is best for you.
My personal process can be once again compared to cooking. It starts off with looking at different dishes for references, then finding and preparing the ingredients, assembling them and lastly, making changes based on the taste.
I’ve listed the four-step process below:
Find References
The first step for me is to look at the visuals that I need to design sounds for and find audio references that fit with those visuals. I then make note of these as they will help me with the next step.Create A Sound Palette (Sonic Building Blocks)
Now that I have a direction I create a sound palette similar to a painter choosing all of their colours and brushes. I do this by scanning through my sound library and importing all the sounds I think could be useful. Additionally, I go out and record source material if I can and create some plugin chains to process the sounds with. The goal of this is to simply get a bunch of material that I can easily make use of in the next step.Assemble The Sound
Now I assemble the sound by layering different sounds from my palette, processing them some more and creating multiple versions.Listen And Iterate
After this, I change and iterate the final sound based on what works and what doesn’t.
Here is a more in-depth video putting the process above into practice while designing a sound:
https://youtu.be/LGDkkf_4fYU?t=20
I recommend watching this great video from Marshall McGee describing his creative process for designing sounds from scratch: https://youtu.be/aucpH8LYvnE
Set Creative Constraints
Creative constraints are more important than you might think. The idea behind it is to limit the choices you have to make, fewer options make it easier to choose a direction and get started.
Watch this great Ted-Ed video from Brandon Rodriguez on why creative constraints are the foundation of creativity: https://youtu.be/v5FL9VTBZzQ
Some constraints that I personally found useful for sound design are:
Use only one type of source material to create the entire sound (glass, keys, lighter, your own voice, etc.)
Use a limited set of plugins (phaser, chorus, distortion)
Give yourself a limited amount of time to complete the design (30 minutes, 2 hours, etc.)
Set yourself a maximum amount of layers that the sound can have
Only use synthesis (no recorded source material except for resampling)
Creative constraints in action (Making the BFG-9000 sound from DOOM Eternal with only a pair of keys): https://youtu.be/v3SvRpmZcSE
Look For Inspiration
Creativity is often a bit like a snowball rolling down a mountain. It needs an initial push and starts off slow and small but grows in size and speed over time.
In the context of game audio that snowball is our idea and creativity, it can start by looking at work that inspires us to hopefully spark an idea. You gain momentum as you continue working on it until it becomes a fully-fledged sound.
I’ve made it my mission to archive some of the best and most inspiring work from our amazing game audio community. It can be found via the link below or in the “Inspiration” tab of the website:
https://www.gameaudiolearning.com/inspiration
Here is an article with a bunch of tips great from pro sound designers on finding inspiration: https://blog.prosoundeffects.com/find-inspiration-for-your-next-sound-design-project
Embrace Experimentation (Happy Accidents)
Experimentation is hands down the most underrated way to learn and discover new techniques while simultaneously building your sound library and most importantly having fun!
It’s really important to remember that there are no rules in sound design! Whatever sounds good is good. Hopefully, this video will demonstrate that:
https://youtu.be/eOKIMbJQO1Y
Here are some things to try out:
Record an object on your desk and try to make as many different sounds with it as you can
Process the sound with a plugin and modulate every parameter on it, listen to what each one sounds like
Stack multiple instances of the same plugins on top of each other
Put random sounds you’ve recorded into a convolution reverb and process other sounds with it
Use a vocoder to morph sounds together with different sources and characters that you find in your library or record yourself
You should definitely watch this video from Mick Gordon breaking down the process of making the Doom 2016 soundtrack. He shares some incredible techniques which everyone can benefit from:
https://youtu.be/U4FNBMZsqrY
What Is Burnout And How To Avoid It?
When we're pushed over the limit by ourselves or others for prolonged periods of time by working in high-pressure and stressful environments it can be hard to maintain a balance between work and life we eventually hit a wall. That wall is called burnout and it can have serious long-term effects.
Below are some fantastic articles on how to avoid burnout and preserve our creativity.
Preventing Burnout - Rev. Dr Bradley D Meyer:
https://designingsound.org/2017/08/28/preventing-burnout/
Wonderful tips from composer Chance Thomas on how to foster creativity and protect yourself from burning out: https://www.asoundeffect.com/prevent-creativity-burnout/
Lastly a great Twitter thread from Niamh and the game audio community on tips for dealing with burnout: https://twitter.com/rhymeswithleave/status/1449832001930997766
