The Sounds of Where Cards Fall
If a card falls in the woods, Kristi Knupp probably designed the sound.
Game audio can be so immersive that it’s easy to overlook where the sounds in fact come from, let alone consider that a sound designer has spent time designing a unified experience for players.
To achieve this seamlessness in the world of Where Cards Fall, audio director Kristi Knupp carefully crafted much of the audio from scratch, creating a collection of sounds that matched the tactility and organic feel of the game itself.
We had some burning questions for Kristi about her creative process and hope you learn as much as we did from our conversation!
How did your background in music and audio engineering lead you to a career in game audio?
I started playing the piano at age five. In my teenage years, I ventured on to drums, guitar and vocals. I started a few bands throughout that time. After high school, I attended Full Sail University for audio engineering. In 2004 moved out to Los Angeles and worked with world renown composer/DJ — Brian Transeau (BT). My jobs for him were many, including but not limited to, composers assistant, gear set up/tech and tour manager when on the road.
In 2006, I graduated from Berklee College of Music and moved back to Los Angeles shortly thereafter. In 2008 I started my career in the game industry as a Quality Assurance Tester for Vivendi Games. A short four months later I landed my first audio job at Electronic Arts working on Boom Box Bash Party, and since then I’ve worked for a number of AAA game studios worldwide on various types of projects.
What is your sound design process typically look like from pre-production through to production?
Pre-production
During pre-production, I try to ensure the audio pipeline is being considered as early on as possible before custom tools get built out.
Production
Production tasks can range from taking on the role of a project manager, to the more hands-on technical and creative side.
- Creating and maintaining a road map of audio needs across the game
- Creating and maintaining a road map for dialogue/localization needs across the game
- Creating sounds for all categories of the game (Ambience, SFX, UI, etc)
- Hiring and working with composers
- Implementing all sounds, dialogue and music into the audio tool/game engine
- Audio QA on a regular basis to ensure audio is working properly in-game
- Managing other sound designers if budget allows for additional folks on the audio team
- Working with production and creative director as needed to ensure the style of the audio meets everyone’s expectations
How did you create a whole language for WCF? What was the process of recording it with the voice actors like?
I created the language for WCF by reading books and taking pieces of words and mashing them together. So like the beginning of one word and the end of another, for example.
The next step was to figure out how many different length phrases would be most commonly used in the game. I would then mix and match different gibberish phrases to create everything from a short phrase that was meant to symbolize “yes” or “no” to a conversation that consisted of multiple gibberish words strung together.
Working with the voice actors at Warner Brothers was a hoot! We had the actors working to videos of the various animations for timing purposes. I also provided them with a printed copy of 2, 3 and 4-word gibberish phrases to choose from. It was a lot of fun and very exciting to see the characters come to life.
Can you speak a bit about some of the processes of creating foley for the game?
For anyone unfamiliar with the term, foley is the manual reproduction of everyday sound effects.
The process of creating foley for the game was a lot of fun. Since most of the sounds were organic and not synthesized, I decide to record content from scratch. For example –the player is interacting with these stacks of cards for a large portion of the game. These cards can open, close, shake, wind can blow parts of them over, etc. The sounds had to be unique but also sound like they were part of the same set of sound effects. I purchased paper and plastic playing cards of all different shapes and sizes and started recording myself doing different movements with the cards, like shuffling, flipping one or multiple over at a time, cutting the deck, dragging them on different surfaces, etc. until I wound up with a unique pallet of sounds to work from.
From there, I would take snippets of my recording and try to make them work to picture until I got to a sound that felt like it fit each action in the game.
The user interface (UI) was also created this way. Some elements of the UI are paper in origin others originated from recording myself scratching and erasing with pencils and various markers on different surfaces until we got something that had the right character. A good example of this would be when the player asks for a “hint” in-game. An outline of the house of cards appears and then disappears. If you listen you’ll hear a sketch SFX, and an erase SFX.
What were some of the tools you used while working on Where Cards Fall?
- Unity
- FMOD Studio
- Protools, Ableton Live, Waves Plugins, GRM tools Plugins, Sound Toys Plugins, Omnisphere
- Sennheiser MKH 416 Shotgun Mic and UA 6176 Mic Pre/Compressor for recording Foley
What have you been up to since the game and what’s next for you?
Since Where Cards Fall I’ve been working on some music projects of my own I’m hoping to release sometime in 2021. I’m also starting a new project with Electronic Arts soon on a very exciting unannounced title.
It feels like a special privilege to get a glimpse behind the curtain of Kristi’s creative process. Learning more about her role in the game and the detail that went into each sound truly enriches the experience of playing it. Next time you hear the scratchy sound of the UI or the soft fluttering of a card deck, we hope you’ll picture Kristi in the studio, turning ordinary materials into the immersive soundscape of Where Cards Fall!
Kristi has been designing game audio for over 10 years. She has experience working on both AAA and Indie titles like Ori and the Blind Forest, Fractured Lands, Skylanders Spyro’s Adventure, and more. Outside of her audio work, she is an entertainment photographer whose portfolio further illustrates her passion for music and the experience of it.
You can view more of Kristi’s work on her website and follow her on Instagram at @evoke_emotion.
Stay up to date with @wherecardsfall on social media and follow along for more from our Behind The Game series.
