ALIEN LIFE is our latest sound effects collection, full of massive organic and slimy alien sounds. What sets ALIEN LIFE apart from the rest of alien and creature-oriented sound libraries? After brainstorming about what the most naturally “alien”-sounding things on Earth were, we realized the answer was right in front of us. Animals!

Our team went out and captured a whole menagerie of animal and prop recordings, from pigs and birds to whales and honey badgers, capturing some great Construction Kit material to layer and design your own alien content, or go to our Designed pack for the high-quality, ready-to-use creations by our highly-skilled team.

We’ve sat down with one of our sound designers, Jannik Hähn, to discuss the creation of this epic collection. In this blog, we’ll feature the behind-the-scenes of his ALIEN LIFE recording efforts, while the next blog breaks down the details of the Design process.

DRAWING FROM INSPIRATION

Alien sound design was Jannik’s initial inspiration, drawing him into the field. Attracted by the visceral drools and primeval growls from movies like Alien, he knew he had to learn the trade for himself and got very experienced with the over time. For this reason, he’s had his hands on many other recent creature-oriented BOOM Library productions, such as CREATURES HUMANOID.

“When I was younger,” Jannik shares, “I was really fascinated by alien movies – that creatures aren’t just designed visually in an interesting way, but they’re brought to life by the sound design.

“The first film I was really drawn to was Alien. Even though the alien isn’t visible that often and it doesn’t make that much sound, the sounds it did make made it feel truly real. For this library specifically, I was also inspired by the sounds in The Arrival, The Tomorrow War, A Quiet Place, Prey, and Annihilation.”

DEFINING THE SOUND

For any sound, it’s important to start from the beginning. Though the Designed files truly define this collection, they have a rich and exotic result in large part because of their source sound palette: that of animals and prop recordings.

“We decided not to include human sounds because there is already complimentary material along those lines in our MONSTERS & BEASTS and CREATURES HUMANOID,” Jannik said. “We needed something that could fill a more abstract and alien-sounding space, and we knew that the unique timbre and otherworldly quality of the sounds animals make combined with creative prop content would be perfect for an alien-themed library.”

Hence, the tagline “Whatever it is, it isn’t human” fits on so many levels.

Armed with their trusty Sanken CO100Ks and MS stereo microphones, Jannik and the team headed out to capture the perfect animal sounds to serve as a starting point for alien sound design.

THE CONSTRUCTION KIT

The ALIEN LIFE Construction Kit was carefully curated to include a wide variety of animal sounds, ranging from the familiar to the exotic. We recorded hundreds of new sounds, as well as some from past exploits. Along with various props, we’ve also included sounds from common animals like pigs, birds, and horses, as well as more unique sounds from creatures such as whales, badgers, and donkeys.

“Honey badgers, for instance, as they just sound like aliens; you don’t even have to do anything,” Jannik says, relating what a sonic goldmine badgers are for aliens. “A real animal to make that kind of sound… it’s just crazy. Check out the ‘Ruckle High Alarm’ sound, it just sounds like a small extraterrestrial creature. I think you could use that as an attack sound even without any processing.”

All the animal and prop sounds that our team collected were then whittled down to what was useful for designing the alien sounds.

“We asked ourselves: What is the most important source material for such creatures and discussed those multiple times. This constant team feedback and dialog is absolutely necessary to ensure that the library is not only suited for one specific designer, workflow, or creature-style.”

It’s this handpicked selection which is what you’ll find in the Construction Kit.

RECORDING THE ANIMALS

One of the places Jannik went to was an animal rescue along the German coast of the North Sea. “They have a lot of different animals that would not survive on their own and need special care,” Jannik said.

When we go out to record animals, the Sanken CO100K is always our go-to microphone. It is important to use a microphone that captures ultra-high frequencies, way above human hearing limits, in order to keep a brilliant and detailed sounding result even when you stretch and edit them for further sound design. The Sanken covers almost the entire usable frequency range when you record at 192kHz.

“Within the sample rate, it just gives you a lot more headroom when it comes to pitch shifting, for example,” Jannik explains. “And the stereo mic is there to ensure that you capture a real stereo image if you need that.”

SEALS

One of the standout experiences for Jannik was training the seals.

“There was a trainer with me,” Jannik recalls, “who had a bucket of sardines. These were trained seals, and when they’d see her, they’d all start lining up like little submarines at the corner of the pool and just float there. They don’t know what’s going on, so they start clapping into the water to get your attention—they’re basically demanding food. The trainer told me that in the wild, harbor seals would clap into the water to warn other seals of danger, but in captivity, they clap just to get your attention.”

The trainer helped him get close and personal with the seals to capture grunts, snorts, growls, and all kinds of seal sounds, many perfect for alien transformations.

“I think snorting is basically something they do to get slime and water out of their nostrils—I just got bombarded with it, there was slime all over my legs and shoes.”

DONKEYS

“I also used a lot of donkeys,” Jannik shared. “I love this eerie shriek that a donkey does. You just pitch it down and it sounds really intense.”

The donkeys at the rescue weren’t your usual donkeys. “They’re called Baroque Donkeys.  They’re completely white, with extremely nice blue eyes. They bred them during the Baroque Age to stand in front of castles and stuff where everything else was white and everything had to look clean and bright.

“I expected the donkeys to be really hard to record, but after they got used to me, I found some ways to work really well with them,” Jannik continued. “It’s easy to record them if you have a bigger group, because they’re very social animals, and most of the time they make sounds to communicate with other donkeys. I played back some recorded donkey sounds through my phone to trigger reactions or donkey communications on demand.”

But there was only one problem. “It doesn’t work if you’re standing in front of one, because he understands that you’re not a donkey, and then he’s just confused. So you have to stand where one isn’t facing you; you start to play some sounds, and they think it’s another donkey talking to them, so they join in.”

“After the trip, I was talking about donkeys so much that my girlfriend bought me a small [toy] donkey.”

GET ALIEN LIFE

Our collection has much more than just seals and donkeys, these were just Jannik’s own standout experiences.

The ALIEN LIFE Construction Kit showcases our unique high-quality audio and design and gives you the ability to create distinct vocalizations and bioacoustics for all sentient entities in your universe. Use these animal sounds and prop effects to create your own sounds for extraterrestrial voicings and movements, or buy the bundle and take full advantage of both the Construction Kit and Designed pack.

Interested about reading Jannik’s experience with the Designed pack? Click here.