Jurassic Owl – The brand, the work, the passion

This is the intended rebirth of this blog space.

Jurassic Owl is a small start-up business in the field of game, digital and audio design. These are the fields in which I apply myself. I have been an musician and artist all of my life and I also dabble in other aspects of art such as writing, drawing and painting.
I’m an entrepreneur and a student of the arts. I am currently working my way towards a phd in design at […]

Jurassic Owl – The brand, the work, the passion

This is the intended rebirth of this blog space.

Jurassic Owl is a small start-up business in the field of game, digital and audio design. These are the fields in which I apply myself. I have been an musician and artist all of my life and I also dabble in other aspects of art such as writing, drawing and painting.
I’m an entrepreneur and a student of the arts. I am currently working my way towards a phd in design at […]

Creating the sounds of crystalline entities dying

Ever since the start of this project we were talking about a death sound effect for our enemies. However, as the original design used player attack FX as additions to the soundtrack it wasn’t feasible to have the enemies make any sounds when hit. Because of the recent redesign into a more traditional shooter however, the time was now ripe for some crystal shattering FX.
To imagine how sentient, murderous crystalline invaders hit by a burst of sonic waves and shattering […]

Creating the sounds of crystalline entities dying

Ever since the start of this project we were talking about a death sound effect for our enemies. However, as the original design used player attack FX as additions to the soundtrack it wasn’t feasible to have the enemies make any sounds when hit. Because of the recent redesign into a more traditional shooter however, the time was now ripe for some crystal shattering FX.
To imagine how sentient, murderous crystalline invaders hit by a burst of sonic waves and shattering […]

Reiterate means reinvigorate

After many ups and downs our group finally decided that enoughs enough and opted to redesign the game Dragon’s Song into a more traditional shooter. The reason for this was an issue with player input response being delayed due to sound playback latency. Simply put, it wasn’t possible to make the sound effects from the dragon to play at the same moment as the player hits the fire key, instead there was a hefty delay making syncing playing with the […]

Reiterate means reinvigorate

After many ups and downs our group finally decided that enoughs enough and opted to redesign the game Dragon’s Song into a more traditional shooter. The reason for this was an issue with player input response being delayed due to sound playback latency. Simply put, it wasn’t possible to make the sound effects from the dragon to play at the same moment as the player hits the fire key, instead there was a hefty delay making syncing playing with the […]

Dragon’s Song Power Ups – Let’s Hans Zimmer This Thing

This week saw us running into some really stiff problems that in the end meant we likely cannot do our game the way we wanted it. A very stubborn problem with sound latency that even the teachers can’t seem to solve means we now have to abandon the rhythmical aspects of our gameplay. This means redesign only 3 weeks before final and just a few days before beta playtesting. We feel safe in the knowledge that we’ve done a thorough […]

Dragon’s Song Power Ups – Let’s Hans Zimmer This Thing

This week saw us running into some really stiff problems that in the end meant we likely cannot do our game the way we wanted it. A very stubborn problem with sound latency that even the teachers can’t seem to solve means we now have to abandon the rhythmical aspects of our gameplay. This means redesign only 3 weeks before final and just a few days before beta playtesting. We feel safe in the knowledge that we’ve done a thorough […]

Creating sound FX for Dragon’s Song part 1 – Lasers vs singing

So moving into Beta I’m tasked with creating a lot of different sound FX for our game. The first thing I need to say is that while a laser sound or a gun FX might be just a second long little snippet of noise they are actually often more difficult and time consuming to produce than a soundtrack. As a musician I have years of education, experience and tools to help me perform, but when asked: ”how does a singing […]

Creating sound FX for Dragon’s Song part 1 – Lasers vs singing

So moving into Beta I’m tasked with creating a lot of different sound FX for our game. The first thing I need to say is that while a laser sound or a gun FX might be just a second long little snippet of noise they are actually often more difficult and time consuming to produce than a soundtrack. As a musician I have years of education, experience and tools to help me perform, but when asked: ”how does a singing […]

Creating the Pre Alpha Demo Track for Dragon’s Song

Last week was the Pre-Alpha milestone which carried with it a slew of problems for our team of freshly baked game designers. Creating the beat meter engine that would allow our game’s core mechanic to function has proven to be a herculean task for or programmers and the week also carried with it the deadline for our Game Design document which took some 35 hours of my time to write (More on that subject at a later date).
But even if […]

Designing the basic beat for Dragon’s Song

The first 3 weeks of the game development group assignment is over and my Team 16 has started to get into the groove with a working engine and the most essential art and FX assets in place for our pre Alpha milestone this Thursday.
This has been my first opportunity to take the helm of the Sound & FX department in earnest and actually produce some sounds. The first semester was highly theoretical and conceptual which left little room for me […]