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34 Post • May 2014 www.postmagazine.com seriously be hindered to not have in my toolbox and GRM Tools Freeze plug-in is one I use all the time," says Curra. Though co-creator Roiland does the majority of the vocal work on the series, Curra occasionally gets to do creature vocal- izations. In the "Ricksy Business" episode, Curra performed the voices for little green aliens called Travlorcians (derogatorily referred to as Glip Glops) who were invited to Rick's house party. Piñon dedicated sev- eral tracks in the mix just for the Travlorcians' vocals because they were used so often in the episode. Curra explains, "Justin was sick at the time and we were all under pressure, so I did the voice work for the 30 or so Glip Glops. I think my direction from Justin was, 'They should sound like turkeys maybe.' After some pitching and layering of the vocal takes I did, and keeping the turkeys in mind, bingo, we had Glip Glops. They worked great." Piñon is the sole re-recording mixer on Rick and Morty. He credits his familiarity with Pro Tools, and the versatility of the ICON console, for his efficiency in mixing a series that's so busy. "To be able to go through the amount of layers of sound design, vocal walla, dialogue and ambience processing that hap- pens in the show, having Pro Tools and the ICON allows me to focus on what's happen- ing on the screen and not on the technology. I can quickly touch a few buttons and get access to the plug-ins I need, whether they're reverb plug-ins, or pitch plug-ins, or compres- sion plug-ins. It's a seamless process for me. It allows me to be creative." Piñon's favorite plug-ins include the Waves Renaissance Bundle, FutzBox by McDSP, and the Neyrinck Broadcast Bundle. Another benefit to the mix, Piñon feels, is the craftsmanship of the sound design and music score. It allows him to create a cine- matic mix where every element of sound can have its moment. "Composer Ryan Elder and Hunter (Curra) allow for space in the score and the sound design so when we really need to hear the dialogue, and there's a lot of action going on, I am able to really make everything punch through," says Piñon. "It feels big and it feels cinematic, which is unique for a show like this." Typically, animated comedy series are dialogue driven. With Rick and Morty, there is more oppor tunity to be cinematic. Piñon says that when they finished mixing "Close Rick-Counters of the Rick Kind," they sat back and just watched the episode. "Every little nuance, sound cue, dialogue, and music cue came through cleanly. That was one of the more difficult episodes to mix, but everyone paid so much attention to what they were creating, for the sound design and the score, they allowed space for all the dialogue to happen," he says. Rick and Morty is mixed in 5.1, in Studio Angelita at Mar- garita Mix Hollywood. Television series are sounding more like films these days, notes Curra, and animated series like Rick and Morty have to sound more like film as well. Even though it's ani- mated, the audience still expects to hear realistic sounds, like backgrounds, Foley and hard effects. Then add to that the diegetic effects, music, and of course the dialogue. Everything in animation has to be built from the ground up. "It's all about layering and all those aspects are brought into play," says Curra. Piñon adds that, with live-action, you get a production track, but with animation the creative chal- lenge is making it all. "And making it all sound real," says Piñon. "All the Foley and all the hard effects of grabbing things, touching things, sit- ting down, everything, all of that, every aspect of that we use to make it feel real." HOW TO TRAIN YOUR DRAGON 2 Randy Thom is the supervising sound edi- tor/sound designer/supervising sound mixer on How to Train Your Dragon 2. Thom works on the film at Skywalker Sound, located on the Skywalker Ranch, a 4,000-acre working ranch in Marin County, CA. Skywalker Ranch is also home to Lucasfilm (www.skysound. com). Skywalker Sound boasts 14 sound design rooms alone. They offer world-class audio post services for the film, television, and interactive industries. They also make their own wine on the Skywalker Ranch. How many post facilities can say that? Thom, who was the supervising sound editor/sound designer/super vising sound mixer on the first How to Train Your Dragon, says there are many more dragons in this new film. And there are many new dragon species that require different kinds of sounds. The challenge in creating all those dragon vocalizations was to make them sound con- vincingly like real creatures, as opposed to sounding like a person standing in front of a microphone pretending to be an animal. "These dragons display quite a range of emotion. We recorded as many kinds of real animals, in the real world, as we could, and used those as the starting point for the dragon vocals," explains Thom. Thom says they recorded every type of animal imaginable, but the most used animals for the dragon vocals were elephants, horses, dogs, and occasionally a bird that makes a big, semi-dragon like sound. They tried to capture as wide of a range of feeling as they could. They recorded whimpering sounds for when the dragons are hurt or sad. They use fero- cious lions and tigers to help sell the idea that the dragons are aggressive. Inevitably, though, they did end up recording their own vocalizations when the animals weren't expressing the right emotion. Thom says, "I, or Al Nelson, who's another sound designer working on the project, will get in front of a microphone ourselves and make whatever sound is called for. The trick becomes integrating that human sound into other animal sounds so it's not obvious to the audience that suddenly they're hearing a human. We have to sound as animalistic as we can, and for Al and me, that's not much of a problem because we're animals to begin with." The goal for Thom was to use the animals' Nickelodeon's Rabbids Invasion gets its sound from Miroslav Pilon Studio in France. Audio for Animation