Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/115625
A U D I O F O R [ Cont.from 37 ] before he started work on it. Moshi Monsters is free-to-play, with a members-only section that is accessible on a monthly subscription basis. The main focus for the audio team are the "missions" that are released on a monthly basis to the paying members. The "missions" are short point-and-click adventure-styled games, delivered in an episodic manner, where one year of monthly "missions" constitutes a season, much like a TV series. They are currently beginning Season 3. Players spend a lot of time clicking and exploring environments, finding and collecting hidden items and solving age-appropriate puzzles. "In terms of audio, it's about rewarding the children for everything they do," says Hendriks. "The sound design is very musical. We try to give the sound a bit of a whimsical feel. Some of the missions are spooky, but it's never really serious or dark content because of the children and their age." Music tracks for the mini-games are written at Mind Candy by Hendriks and his audio team. They use Ableton Live to create the music and the sound design. The monthly missions are preceded by trailers, and the music for the trailers are done out-of-house. The trailer sound design and mix is completed at Mind Candy in Pro Tools. Hendriks uses a combination of commercial effects libraries and sound effects that he and his team have recorded over the years. For the monster vocalizations, Hendriks says, "It's just silliness really. We'd write down a sentence in English that we're trying to convey, to guide the actors as to what we're trying to get across. It was more about getting the voice actors to express a certain emotion, or a certain feeling." For the less important characters, the sound designers at Mind Candy perform the monster vocals. Moshi Monsters was built with Adobe Flash. Over the years, the game grew in popularity, especially in the UK, and so it was expanded very quickly. Hendriks notes that the code base of the Flash game was modified in a way that limited the audio capabilities. For the missions, O Z T H E G R E AT [ Cont.from 9 ] He's open to all different techniques." Post: What was Imageworks' pipeline for this film? STOKDYK: "It's been mostly centered around Maya for a long, long time. It goes back to the Stuart Little days. Imageworks made a decision to be focused on character performance work, and felt they could build things into Maya. Over the past 10 to 15 years, all of these tools have evolved to be very character friendly." Post: What about visual effects? STOKDYK: "A lot of the effects are done in Houdini, but our primary lighting and rendering package is a combination of Katana, for assembling everything together, and Arnold for rendering. Recently, we standardized on Nuke for compositing. Imageworks has a great relationship with The Foundry. It's been fantastic to solidify a pipeline with a couple of key software pieces. Maya is well established and really super reliable. Katana is extremely flexible and powerful for doing everything our lighters need to do. And Nuke has become a compositing standard, and it's so great to have artists come G A M E S that are all Flash-based, he isn't able to have more than three audio channels playing at any given time. "We had one loop playing for background ambience, we had one channel for voice and then one channel left for any sound effects. We had to jump through lots of hoops to just make it all work." (This isn't necessarily a Flash limitation, just a limitation in the way Moshi Monsters was built. It's currently being improved by the developers.) Hendriks is also working on new games being developed at Mind Candy. Those games use Unity, instead of Flash, and he finds that Unity provides many more audio capabilities. "For the games that we are now creating in Unity, we have tools that are more like what you would see in a console game. We can do dynamic mixing; we can do standard things like randomizing certain sounds or controlling sounds with game parameters. It offers a much more dynamic approach to game audio, and that's obviously what it's all about. So, for us it's quite liberating to finally be able to do things like that." Another challenge with Flash, Hendriks finds, is that since it's browser technology, he can't enhance the audio features by using middleware like Firelight Technologies' FMOD or Wwise by Audiokinetic. "Browser games, and browsers themselves, can't run native plugins. Middleware like Wwise would basically require you to run a native plug-in. So, the world of browser audio is quite restricted, though it is being improved." To handle the size restrictions for the browser game, instead of having all the audio load at once, Hendriks has the game audio load as it's needed. "That is easier said than done, especially with Flash. If you do a lot of dynamic loading in the background, it can impact performance. So, it's usually a bit of interplay between what you want to do and what you can do. That means a lot of talking to the programmers, making sure that you stay within the specified limit of audio memory that is allocated to you. It comes down to working really closely with the programmers and finding the best solution." A N D Classifieds HELP WANTED ADVERTISING SALES REP. Ad Sales Rep needed for advertising sales in Post Magazine and Computer Graphics World. The purpose of the position is to generate classified advertising sales for the publications CGW & Post Magazine in the areas of Rapid Prototyping (3D printing), Camera, Displays/monitors/projectors, Workstations (mobile, desktop), GPUs/CPUs, Input devices (mice, scanners, etc), Motion-capture, Storage, Service provider, Education/training, 2D modeling, 3D modeling, 3D animation, Compositing, Rendering, Lighting, Editing, CAD/CAM/CAE/CAA, AI/VR (including headmounted displays), Game engines, Middleware, Texturing, Simulation, Plug-ins, Web content tools, Music Libraries, Stock Footage, Large File Transfer companies , Studios. Full-time position. Operates from office when not traveling. Skills/Qualifications: Customer Service, Meeting Sales Goals, Closing Skills,Prospecting Skills, Negotiation, SelfConfidence, Product Knowledge, Presentation Skills, Client Relationships, Motivation for Sales. Send cover letter and resume to: ksafaryan@copcomm.com. CSR - CUSTOMER SERVICE REP. Our local office in Glendale, CA is seeking a Customer Service Representative to be the first point of contact with our print customers. Our customer service representatives are passionate, customer-focused professionals with outstanding people skills and the desire to help us grow our business through hard work and innovative thinking! As a customer service professional, your responsibilities will include: • Responding to service requests. • Investigating and resolving customer questions and concerns efficiently and compassionately. • Preparing and distributing reports (utilizing various proprietary systems) on a regular and timely basis. • Assisting with various administrative duties, such as filing, data entry, and ensuring SOP compliance. • Participating in inside sales activities. P O W E R F U L from other facilities who are already familiar with it. Arnold is an incredibly-powerful renderer for getting a nice global illumination look and being able to work really well with our image-based lighting pipeline." POST: There are so many effects in this film. Are there any that stand out to you? STOKDYK: "I have two favorites. One is the bubble boy, because it was so intricate to shoot, and I think it turned out really beautiful with these bubbles floating through this exotic land. "I would say my favorite is at the end, where these baboon creatures attack Glinda's army. We shot bits and pieces on-set as a guide, but ended up re-sculpting it for story points. We revealed, through lighting and composition, more and more to the audience… when I looked at it, it worked so well with sound and music. It's a great combination of character animation and effects, because it's got this magical fog that is woven into the character animation. And the lighting is so specific to what Sam's needs were for the scene." Successful team members also possess the following qualifications: • A High School Diploma or equivalent. Preferably a College Graduate. • At least 2 years of experience in a customer service or call-center environment. • Excellent written and verbal communication skills. • Strong data entry/typing skills. • The ability to multi-task and prioritize multiple assignments. Send cover letter and resume to: ksafaryan@copcomm.com. For Advertising Rates & Schedules: POST Magazine, 620 West Elk Ave., Glendale, CA 91204; Western Region 818-291-1153, Fax: 818-547-4607; Eastern Region 781-255-0625 Fax: 781-255-0431 www.postmagazine.com Post0313_045-Jump.indd 45 Post • March 2013 45 3/1/13 2:08 PM