Ninomae Ina'nis『EVERMORE』 (Sound Design Commentary)
- 5 days ago
- 4 min read
Preface: In the interest of upholding prior agreements, I will not be discussing anything related to my experience working with clients or any other professionals involved in any of the projects featured on this blog. This is purely about detailing my personal creative decisions while working on the project.
KSD here! back again with another post!
I'm happy to see that quite a few people enjoyed the last one, so I've got a slighter longer one for you this time. I've added a link to the project page, where you can find the video itself if you'd like to follow along manually. The timecodes are also clickable if you'd prefer to be directed to the relevant scenes automatically. So with that out of the way... Today we'll be revisiting the Sound Design of the animations for Ninomae Ina'nis『EVERMORE』!
CREDITS:
Sound Editing
Sound Mixing
Sound Direction
Project Info & Video Link:
3:13: (Music Box)
Knowing this would serve as a gentle intro to the show and provide some text for the viewer to read, I didn't want to overly distract from the visuals. However, I thought I could get away with something subtle for Ina's spinning motion. The visuals brought to mind a music box figurine, so both the music and ticking sounds were chosen to fit that theme. I used some miscellaneous gears sounds for the main ticking, mixed in with the backward rotation of a bike chain to give it a little more texture.
3:33: (Perceived Warmth)
When first seeing the landscape in this scene, the thing that jumped out most was the sheer warmth of it. There's wind affecting Ina and the environment, but I tried keeping it subtle at first, so that we had something to work up to. As we get closer to Ina, there's a few wispy sounds in there, but I focused primarily on lower pitched winds. Temperature perception is often associated with pitch, in the same way that we might call bass instruments "warm" or small chimes and cymbals "cold". This reasoning also extends to Sound Design in a lot of situations. The intention was to show that although the wind is relatively strong, it's more like a pleasant breeze on a beautiful sunny day, rather than a harsh frigid wind.
6:16: (Two Little Blobs)
I definitely spent a disproportionate amount of time making sure these two sounded just right. Their inclusion is small (literally) but they had to stand alone in a completely cold open without music, so I wanted them to feel as natural as possible, focusing a lot on the scale of both the big guy's munching and the smaller guy's squeaking as they creep along the leaf. And of course giving them distinct sounds based on their size for when Ina runs through and disturbs them.
10:49: (A Sense Of Mystery And Curiosity)
Choosing tracks for animation mostly comes down to two elements: tone and sync. You start with tone as a jumping off point, then search for tracks that either fit the emotional beats of the animation naturally, or that can be subtly cut up to match. I picked out a couple choices for music here, but this track specifically hit the right balance of mystery and curiosity that we were going for, it was also malleable enough to cut up, so that those almost hypnotic sounding keys come in near the reveal of the sparkle. The reveal of the door also masks a bigger cut, which not only introduces some more instruments, but also allowed me to perfectly align the ending of the track with the abrupt cut to black.
18:14: (A Personal Favorite)
The music here was near perfect in tone and sync. The only problem was that the original track begins with the piano, which left a pretty noticeable gap at the beginning that I wasn't comfortable with. So I went looking for parts that I could use as a soft intro of sorts. In the end, I found those beautiful strings you hear at the start, from a part of the track that wasn't even featured in the animation. I think they work perfectly as a bridge to fill the silence and also add to the peaceful and serene atmosphere of the town. I'm really happy with how this one came together, especially the various magical sounds during the transformation, all the whooshes, warbles and sparkles feel like they capture the chaos but also accurately represent the motion on screen.
26:27: (Defiling The Music)
Translating the gradual change in environment here through music was really fun! Taking this upbeat care-free track and slowly morphing it into an uncomfortable, off key mess isn't something I usually get the chance to do when working with music, so it was fun to mess around with. Also i'd like to mention the ending at the mansion. Ina's running and spinning sounds are a mix of a couple of siren whistles and a Formula One racing car, which I thought was kinda funny.
33:27: (Comedic Timing & Trusting Your Instincts)
There are 4 cuts made to this track to enhance the comedic timing of the scene, this was helped by the fact that the track already had brief pauses between these segments, allowing me to artificially extend or reduce them to line up properly with each action. I think it was worth the effort, as it really does come across as tailor made. On a separate note, when Ina hits the statue out of frustration, I used a few metal elements for resonance. Obviously most stone doesn't resonate in that way, but the beauty of Sound Design is the freedom to inject your own style and subjective taste into a scene. In my eyes it was funnier for it to resonate loudly and I believe that helped the scene more than if I had adhered to strict realism.
49:52: (Glass Wand)
I knew from the start that the wand had to have a kind of continuous flow with every movement it made, so I quickly settled on the sound of a resonating wine glass. It has that beautiful ethereal nature to it that fits well with a magical object. It also pitch shifts very cleanly, allowing for a lot of control and variation in both movement and speed with very few samples.
That's all for today! I'll be back again soon with more, so I hope you look forward to it!
Until then!
KSD
