Tuesday, December 3, 2013

How To Make A Story App - Step 7

Add sound effects to your story app.

This was one of the funnest parts of the creation process. I was amazed at how much sound can "sell" an animation or idea - it's pure magic. Looking at your little animations work is great but they are silent by themselves - adding the right sound brings them alive.

Tips: I used freesound.org for a bunch of the sounds I used. The sounds are free to use as long as you give credit to the artists in your project. I only used "public domain" sounds and "creative commons" licenced sounds. The agreements can be easily viewed and read on their site.



I also created some sounds using tinyvox on my iPad and then altered them in Audacity. I couldn't find a good digging sound for Gary but I knew what I wanted - so I scratched my pant leg  - I know - weird right? but it made a pretty good sound. Then I doubled it up in Audacity, changed the pitch, and cleaned up the front and back end and it was perfect!

Kwik allows you to use both mp3 and wav files which you can create in Audacity. My total learning time in Audacity was about one hour from fooling around with the program and watching youtube videos produced by 8 year olds. One of the most important things you can do with your sound files is to chop off the dead space at the front and end of the clips. You don't want the users of your app to hear hiss or crackle before the actual sound is about to play.

Stay tuned as I'll keep sharing my progress on "Gary's Place" which I plan to submit to Apple, Google, Amazon, etc. in a few weeks. I'll continue to blog about this process even sharing my sales stats when it hits the various app stores! If you're wondering where the first steps are I started this project back in September 2013 - check these links:

Step 1
Step 2
Step 3
Step 4
Step 5
Step 5.5
Step 6
Step 7
Steps 8 & 9


7 comments:

  1. So happy for you...looking forward to seeing more and learning of your process...

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  2. Awesome, Will...so glad you are sharing this process, so helpful!

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    1. It's been a really fun journey and fun to share - I just can't wait for it to be LIVE!

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  3. Hi Will,

    Thanks for sharing this process! The interesting thing is that you are doing the same thing as me at the exact same time, so it's great to see someone else's progress and how your going about it.

    I have been using Interactbuilder and finding they it has far to many problems, and the final pages are running incredibly slow on IOS devices. They are planning to fix this, but I am thinking of going your way, and using Kwik instead at this stage!

    I have posted a few pics of the start of my app at http://www.clintsutton.blogspot.com/ I will try and post some more of my progress.

    I also downloaded a great app that I thought you mite want to try out for making your own music/jingles for your story. I have already spend far too many hours playing around with tunes for my book! It's called GarageBand, for iOs.

    Look forward to seeing more progress on your app!

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  4. I'm learning so much so fast. Thank you for giving us all a leg up, Gary.

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