PastaThursdays' Comment, Critique and Improvement Thread

[Delet932b4sk]

Hello everyone! I'm PastaThursdays, formerly TrainKay, and I've been looking for critique on my work for a while, how I can improve it from an objective standpoint. I'm a writing who's been writing pretty much his whole life, done audio for nearly a year, and recently I've done a big rush of commissions, requests and a few other things. Most of them haven't been uploaded, but for now, I'm looking for comments on these specific items, as well as what anyone who's familiar with my work already would say are my biggest strengths and weaknesses. All important things to consider. If you have thoughts on my work's pacing, composition, my style or lack thereof, anything really, I'd love to hear it. Everything can help act as a way for me to get better.

K/DA Evelynn's Backstage Snack (Audio, fatal digestion, F/Listener): https://aryion.com/g4/view/491875
Petey's Princess Paunch (Story, fatal digestion, multiple prey, female Petey Piranha): https://aryion.com/g4/view/491652
Family Thanksgiving (Story, stuffing, incestuous belly-fucking): https://aryion.com/g4/view/492348
Star Guardian Sideswipe (Story, Macro/Micro, involves an alpha bitch Ahri taking over the world): https://aryion.com/g4/view/493252

I'll probably share older work in time, but for now, these are the most recent things I've done, and I'd love to hear thoughts on them. But again, if you're already familiar with my work, I'd also love to hear your thoughts on it overall, where I'm strongest or weakest! Thanks everyone!

[hoshokuhime]

Hi PastaThursday, I've only gone through your audio stuff before so it will be the only thing I can comment on, but I did feel like I could give some kind of feedback!

I've listened to all of your audio posts up to now I think, and you've already improved in a lot of areas that I think you have a good handle on. One thing I seem to notice in all of your internal audios is that the voice of the predator only has a low pass filter over it (that I can tell). While this does great for making it sound like you're being spoken to through a layer of flesh, I feel like it doesn't do the best job at communicating that you are inside the source of that voice. You might find more success with some echoing, or other effects.

I think your works would also benefit from some more external sound effects. You're doing really good at the internal sounds and making the listener feel like they're sloshing around, but the image in my head while listening to these is that the pred is sitting there completely still while just speaking every now and then. This is just my opinion of course, but if you experimented with things like stomach patting or walking around, etc, I'd find them more immersive.

You also seem at your best when you have more dialogue to work with. K/DA Evelynn is a decent quality step up from Junko Detects a Meal, and understandably so since DR does not always have as many appropriate lines to work with. Not your fault here and I don't even have the best advice on how to get around it, but I can at least tell you that when I run into issues like this I will usually go through samples of noises I already have, like these https://puu.sh/C3ru2/fabc2138a0.png and try to edit them to sound like they belong to the character. If that doesn't work, it's worth trying to find other characters who have the same voice actor and try to draw sounds from them.

I think otherwise you have a good ratio of dialogue usage, you don't make characters speak way too much or too little. So I think adding in just a little more diverse audio in between will go a long way for you.

[Delet932b4sk]

Hi PastaThursday, I've only gone through your audio stuff before so it will be the only thing I can comment on, but I did feel like I could give some kind of feedback!

I've listened to all of your audio posts up to now I think, and you've already improved in a lot of areas that I think you have a good handle on. One thing I seem to notice in all of your internal audios is that the voice of the predator only has a low pass filter over it (that I can tell). While this does great for making it sound like you're being spoken to through a layer of flesh, I feel like it doesn't do the best job at communicating that you are inside the source of that voice. You might find more success with some echoing, or other effects.

I think your works would also benefit from some more external sound effects. You're doing really good at the internal sounds and making the listener feel like they're sloshing around, but the image in my head while listening to these is that the pred is sitting there completely still while just speaking every now and then. This is just my opinion of course, but if you experimented with things like stomach patting or walking around, etc, I'd find them more immersive.

You also seem at your best when you have more dialogue to work with. K/DA Evelynn is a decent quality step up from Junko Detects a Meal, and understandably so since DR does not always have as many appropriate lines to work with. Not your fault here and I don't even have the best advice on how to get around it, but I can at least tell you that when I run into issues like this I will usually go through samples of noises I already have, like these https://puu.sh/C3ru2/fabc2138a0.png and try to edit them to sound like they belong to the character. If that doesn't work, it's worth trying to find other characters who have the same voice actor and try to draw sounds from them.

I think otherwise you have a good ratio of dialogue usage, you don't make characters speak way too much or too little. So I think adding in just a little more diverse audio in between will go a long way for you.

Thanks! I did a fair bit of foley work with the Danganronpa audios to give the illusion of movement and action, but those were a bit weighed down by the fact that I had two characters speaking to each other, usually in a fairly clumsy way in my trying to make it seem like actual statement/response. And you're right, I do only use a low pass filter and amping the voice down to adjust for how quiet it should be, as well as a reverb effect. I've tried echo before, but there's a few problems I have with it, namely that space, unless you were inside someone huge, would be too limited to echo, the way I see it.

Second, with a muffle/quieting effect, echo added on tends to create so much distortion that it's hard to tell what's being said. I think with K/DA Evelynn, I went too light with the reverb--on the other three, it was more pronounced. I think I could stand to make it even more pronounced in the future. The thing is, all LoL champions (at least new ones) have this same sort of reverb on them to help give their voice lines a slight echo and more fullness/body. I was worried going too hard on it would make the belly sound like an auditorium, but the low pass filter killed most of the native echo, so I should've gone harder on it. I didn't quite realize how jank it sounded initially. I also did no foley/ambient sound work for hers, which in hindsight made the audio seem too static. It benefited a lot from being silent listener POV (only one person speaking makes it sound much more natural), but suffered in other areas due to some laziness on my part.

As far as correcting sounds for the pred, Evelynn thankfully came with most of her own. The belches were, well, me, but pitch-corrected to be more in-line with her speaking voice. I'm kind of a perfectionist so I admit anything that sounds a little off (which some of those did) doesn't sit well with me. But there's only so many burps out there, ya know! Pitch correction is arguably the toughest part with those, since I have to listen to "clean" audio then jigger the burp so it doesn't sound off.

Sourcing lines from elsewhere is pretty smart, especially with more prolific actresses. I hadn't thought of it because I tend to think of them playing each specific character as a self-contained thing. Laura Bailey as Lust would sound the same as old Akali, but would be delivered differently, if that makes sense. Probably just me being too much of a purist. Thanks for your feedback, it's given me something to think about.