- Does this sound familiar to you?
That's Mr. Krabs walking in "SpongeBob."
- Can't you just pretend to listen for once in your life?
- And notice how quickly he's moving.
- It's like, it's almost like a dance, you know.
- That's typical of cartoon characters,
whose exaggerated movements and behavior
call for equally exaggerated sound.
(squelching)
For Foley artists like Monique or Sanaa,
this is one of the fun challenges
of creating sound for animation.
And unlike live-action movies,
it starts...
(whooshing)
...with nothing.
- For live-action you have production sound
like what they recorded.
So you could kind of like, be like,
"oh, this is what it sounds like."
But in animation, it's all up to you.
It's like your world to create whatever you want.
- Take Gir in "Invader Zim,"
a little robot who's shaped like this.
(metallic cheering)
- (Sanaa) He looks hollow.
So for his body, I use this.
And then for his legs, they look like little cable legs.
(clicking)
And these are his little feet.
And I always had the kettle next to it
so the metal kind of resonate
and you could kind of hear his body.
(metallic clicking)
- Appa, the giant, mythical beast
in "Avatar: The Last Airbender,"
needed a bigger, rounder sound.
(Appa grunting)
- (Sanaa) Because he's so big,
I had to try different things for him.
First, I tried like a couple cushions to do like massive...
(thumping)
We tried big tree trunks and hit them.
We couldn't really get how big and fluffy he is as well.
What I did, I got a plunger,
I got some paper napkins, filled it up
so it kind of took the hollowness out of it,
and got multiple pieces of duct tape.
When I played it, it sounded good.
And I tried one that was empty.
You could hear the difference.
The duct tape muted the sound,
taking away any harshness.
So Appa sounds not only big,
but also fluffy and round
like the cuddly creature he appears as onscreen.
(muffled thumping)
- [Katara] Seem to know everything.
- [Sokka] Haha very funny.
- Even if the characters are based
on actual real life animals,
the sounds still get wackier in animation.
Like the sea creatures of "SpongeBob."
- [Monique] Krabs has a couple things happening.
Think about the crab as a shell.
So steps...
(rapid tapping)
like the sound of the crab movement...
(tapping on shell)
- [Narrator] Doesn't exactly sound like a real crab,
does it?
(crabs scuffling)
That's because real crabs don't move like this.
(rapid musical tapping)
This mile-a-minute pace isn't unique to "SpongeBob."
Characters in animation (Gir cheers)
generally move faster (metallic tapping)
and more percussively (rappid tapping)
than they do in live action.
(rapid tapping)
Keeping up for Foley artists can get exhausting.
(laughs)
- That was good.
- To emphasize the force
behind all these swift jerky movements,
accent sounds take on special importance,
especially for fight scenes.
Like the fast punches Monique did for this scene
from the Kung Fu Panda TV show.
- [Po] Heavenly club blossom.
(flapping)
- Or this popping sound.
(comical pop)
(thumping)
- Anytime we have a chance to add sound to a scene,
we do, like when they're fighting.
Anytime, when you see those little white lines
that go (swish) like that,
(slicing)
I'll add (swish) a whoosh to it.
I like using bamboo sticks.
You could use antennas
or anything that does this kind of sound.
(swishing)
- Sanaa would also accent
the characters' fight moves with what's called a "shing."
(blades clashing)
- I use like a shovel.
So there's like (metallic ring) a deeper kind of shing.
(shinging)
Also you gotta be careful how to hold the shovel.
Like you could mute it. (muted shing)
You could make it more ringy. (loud shing)
I've used a machete and a shovel.
(shing)
And then I've used this thing,
it's not sharp at all,
with this. (shing)
(clear shing)
Ooh la la. That was beautiful.
- These, as with most Foley sounds,
are often combined with sound effects
added digitally by sound designers.
- [Sanaa] So they could get mine manipulated or have theirs.
Foley and effects together.
Just really fill it up and make it sound great.
(dog barks) (birds chirp)
(zip) (cymbals crash)
- This combination of Foley and digital effects
is key, especially because there isn't any production sound
to begin with.
It's up to the Foley artist to fill this empty playground
with sounds,
each created individually and often layered together.
On "SpongeBob," for example,
the Foley artists would do something called a water path.
(bubbling)
- We would take a big Tupperware tub
and fill it up until it was about this much from the top.
And we would do a movement.
Instead of cloth we would move water.
(water splashing)
So we did all of the props dry
because if we made any of the props sound wet
it would be redundant with the water.
- [Narrator] But Foley artists aren't afraid to get wet
or go over the top, especially when creating sounds
for slapstick humor and animated comedy.
Sanaa used an extra wet shammy to amplify the mud splats
in "Rugrats."
(xylophone scale)
(splat)
and capture the spirit of the messy babies.
(splat)
She also used a shammy for the kids' eating sounds,
which again had to be exaggerated
to match the exaggerated visuals.
- So whenever we had Rugrats eating,
again animation make it bigger than life,
you know, over the top.
(repeated squelching)
So for that slurping,
(slurps)
- Gee they must be really hungry.
- (Sanaa) I'm gonna do an element of shammy,
and I'm gonna do a bowl, like drinking out of a bowl.
(slurps noisily)
(swallows noisily)
(slurps)
- Gee they must be really hungry.
- [Narrator] All kinds of mouth sounds
tend to get heightened in animation,
like Appa with his gooey tongue lick.
- We wanna get something nice and juicy and wet.
(squelching)
- [Narrator] And this scene in "Teen Titans."
- Wider, I need to get both my hands in there.
(squishing)
(gagging)
That's one. Wider.
(pained gagging) (louder squishing)
There we go.
- Okay. She's sticking her hand in his mouth.
We're gonna layer the sound of me using my mouth.
(lips smacking)
And then we're gonna layer it with something else
that sounds cavernous and open, which is this glove.
(glove flapping)
You know, it sounds like it's got like some depth to it.
It's not like shallow.
(glove flapping)
- Now. Let's see.
(pained gagging) (scuffling)
Hmm.
- [Narrator] So the mouth sounds get wetter.
(squelching)
The movements get faster.
(rapid tapping)
(swish)
(shing)
And even something as mundane as footsteps
gets played up for dramatic effect.
(muffled thumping)
Nearly every sound gets heightened in animation,
which means the creative possibilities for Foley artists
(metallic clicking)
are pretty much endless.
(shing)