Mec Kong Fu 火气– 中国武侠特效

Every Chinese people has his/her own mind of what the Chinese martial sound shall be. To creating a special library for the sound The art of martial, was a plan from 2014 when I was invited to the Moonlight Blade OL – an AAA 3D game project from Tencent. Before that, I have designed and created a lot of martial games for different companies. But most of the sound materials are totally “Western mind”. In Chinese martial, the power is more lighter and flexible. That inner power keeps the water, air, fire, wind、smoke and even ice continuously moving and be released in a very flash moment.

In this library, I had multi steps in the workflow:
1) Collect sort of sound groups like fire, water, cloth, various wind, sand falls and else.
2) 1st round of toast: Put them into Symbolic Sound Kyma with Haken fingerboard, Reaktor, LeapMotion and other tools.
3) And then the 2nd round of toast to the pre-designed materials, with GRM TOOLS, Soundtoys and other plugins in Pro Tools.
4) Full production: based on about 20GB pre-designed materials, and then start imagine what the martial actions shall be.
5) Mastering all the takes by re-recording from analog outboard like Waves BCL and SSL Fusion, take by take.

This library contains:
– 2.1GB，312 WAV tracks, more than 600 sounds
– 96kHz 24bit recording, creating and mastering
– Carefully dynamic and loudness control, which is good for both movies and games.

There are sort of groups and folders in the library:
Air
It’s quite similar with another sound group Smoke. But bigger dynamic on the velocity of movement. It’s lighter and flexible than fire. Even the punch of air is like soft but you can easily feel the massive power. I recorded lot of air sound by compressed air on various textures like sands ,grids, cloth, water and else.
Air_Pre-deisnged
They are air spray on various textures, but with mixed doppler and spin effects. I guess you might need those dry materials for creating something for your own.
Chimes
It’s basically designed for healing effects. So I recorded sort of Chinese traditional bells and ice.
Fire
Fire means more power and opening energy. They are fat and even rude.
Ice
Ice is more dramatical type in Chinese martial. For example it moves like a ice dragon or snake. In this group, they are designed rapid movement with freezing or breaking.
Punch
These sounds are not common dry punches. They are full of color and rendered space. For example the attack time is not such hard and straight. But you still can feel the velocity and power. Certainly, some of them are very hard and fat attack.
Roar
This folder basically is fire roaring and mixed with different materials. For example you can use them as buffering or a short soundscape.
Scrape
Sword scrape sounds mixed with different materials. Also you can use these sounds for flashing FX. You can easily feel the softness and sharpness of Chinese sword.
Smoke
Smoke is similar with the Air group. But designed slower movement and darker.
Water
It shall be named “liquid”. But I think “water” might be easier to understand. In magic Kungfu, liquid can be “conducted” by following the inner powered actions. It’s quite hard to make it sounding “nature”. Finally Kyma system with Haken fingerboard helped a lot.
? Whoosh
They are quite short and dry materials of whoosh that you can easily enhance your creation and production. Or you can use it with another textures as you like. The difference here is, those whoosh sounds are better for the power of flexible actions.

In the library, lot of samples are named with Combo: means they are combo actions and mixed textures.