Characters 19”x 15”

The Makings of the Character Sound Design

One could hardly say that the creations of Horacio Salinas lack in spirit; they are already fascinatingly vivid and tangible personalities on-page. When we set out to create the sound design for this book press animation, then, it was to add another layer of sentience to the world this marvelous artist creates with his collages and photography.

Each character was paired with a number of sounds in order to give them a new plane to exist on; one that matched the light-hearted darkness of the visuals. We wanted the juggling magician to feel like a performer, so we added intimate applause and exclamations. Crazy Witch was set to the character voice of an evil witch, distorted and pitched up slightly. The viscount was imagined as old and decrepit, and so his sound became the voice you make by groaning from the very bottom of your scratchy throat.

With the ‘Elephant Man’ theme as our musical backdrop, we also drew from the babblings of an infant girl, a distorted xylophone, a belting ox cow, cartoon birds, the close-up of a groaning dog, and wheezing, to create some truly unique sounds to fit his animations. The finished piece is an auditory and visual carnival that takes the viewer by the hand and into another dimension of whimsical imagination. As our founder, Nathan, put it: ‘This is the most fun I’ve ever had with audio.’