How To Make A Story App - Step 7

Add sound effects to your story app.

This was one of the funnest parts of the creation process. I was amazed at how much sound can "sell" an animation or idea - it's pure magic. Looking at your little animations work is great but they are silent by themselves - adding the right sound brings them alive.

Tips: I used freesound.org for a bunch of the sounds I used. The sounds are free to use as long as you give credit to the artists in your project. I only used "public domain" sounds and "creative commons" licenced sounds. The agreements can be easily viewed and read on their site.



I also created some sounds using tinyvox on my iPad and then altered them in Audacity. I couldn't find a good digging sound for Gary but I knew what I wanted - so I scratched my pant leg  - I know - weird right? but it made a pretty good sound. Then I doubled it up in Audacity, changed the pitch, and cleaned up the front and back end and it was perfect!

Kwik allows you to use both mp3 and wav files which you can create in Audacity. My total learning time in Audacity was about one hour from fooling around with the program and watching youtube videos produced by 8 year olds. One of the most important things you can do with your sound files is to chop off the dead space at the front and end of the clips. You don't want the users of your app to hear hiss or crackle before the actual sound is about to play.

Stay tuned as I'll keep sharing my progress on "Gary's Place" which I plan to submit to Apple, Google, Amazon, etc. in a few weeks. I'll continue to blog about this process even sharing my sales stats when it hits the various app stores! If you're wondering where the first steps are I started this project back in September 2013 - check these links:

Step 1
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Step 4
Step 5
Step 5.5
Step 6
Step 7
Steps 8 & 9