[Overwatch 2] Weekly Recall: Let's Break It Down!

[Mr.JohnnySins]

Hi, everyone! We’re back with our regular-ish weekly programming and this time around, we’re making some serious noise. No, we don’t mean spamming your most annoying voice line until the entire lobby mutes you. Today is all about sound design!

Overwatch Senior Sound Designer Nicholas Yochum has been making waves with his video deep dives about creating the zaps, snaps, and pops that bring Heroes like Juno and Wuyang to life. Not only did he agree to let the Comms Team pick his brain and ask how he whips up sounds using stuff from a hardware store, but he’s also letting you get the first look at how Domina’s luxurious sound kit came to be. We’ll throw it over to Nicholas.

Journey Through Sound

Sound is everywhere. It’s ethereal. Sometimes it can be hard to capture and even harder to understand. When I started making videos about the sound design process behind Heroes like Wuyang and Juno, one of my goals was to make things a little more visible, a little more real, both for the Overwatch community and those interested in the craft.

But it was also to honor a saying I haven’t been able to get out of my head: hold the door open for the next person.

My passion for production started in music school and led me to the electronic music scene. Later, I worked for sound pack design companies and then landed on the Overwatch team. There were times when I struggled to get my foot in the door and didn’t know who to talk to or where to go next. It felt like there was a big wall between me and the big dogs of the industry. Releasing these videos and inviting people to see the creative process is a way for me to show the craft of sound design to the next generation and break down those barriers.

Even if you don’t have an audio career in your sights, learning how the sounds you hear every day in Overwatch came to be might give you renewed appreciation for them. That’s another reason why I wanted to take the community behind the scenes. Overwatch can be a hectic and chaotic game with dozens of sounds playing at the same time, both in proximity and far away. It’s easy to miss the details and the nuance of what we’ve created…so I wanted to show that!

 

Sursa