Brian Frank | Portfolio

I am currently enagaged in a Contract Audio Artist position @ BioWare Austin. Details to follow upon our realase of this game.

Under the wing of our new owner Activision, we began developing some very exciting gameplay prototypes that presumably may be integrated into DJ Hero 2 due for release in Q4 2010. At this time I cannot disclose specific details about this title, but I can highlight my contributions relevant to what is already public knowledge about the franchise and game development in general.

• Pre-production research & documentation of games innovative to the genre.
• Authored a game design document detailing prototypes for electronic music gameplay.
• Designed functional gameplay prototypes in Max/MSP/Jitter for peer review.
• Sound Design of crowd & background ambiences for the DJ venues in 5.1 surround sound, audio implementation using in-house audio tools & scripting language.
• Designed & implemented a dynamic crowd 'mood mixer' in the game engine, featuring multi-point volume curves to create seamless transitions between crowd moods based on player performance.
• I was selected by my department to document & provide an analysis of the audio pipeline in our new game engine, covering everything from new tools to the flow of scripting logic relevant to audio implementation, mixing, & DSP effects.
• Leveraged existing debug functions in the game engine to create a revolutionary new tool for our department, a Max/MSP patch featuring a GUI control surface to manipulate mixer channels & DSP effects in real-time on an Xbox 360 or Playstation 3 console. The tool enables us to mix natively on a target platform including functionality to map generic MIDI controllers to console mixer & DSP parameters.
• Programmed an equal-power crossfader in the game engine's scripting language.

Role: Sound Design, Audio Gameplay Design, Audio Implementation & Scripting

Scratch: The Ultimate DJ is 7 Studio's groundbreaking music game that has generated plenty of buzz throughout the industry since it was first announced in October of 2008. Over the course of this project we consulted with legendary hip-hop producers Quincy Jones III and Mix Master Mike to bring the most authentic turntablism gaming experience to the Xbox 360 and Playstation 3. The custom DJ game controller designed by Numark combines a touch sensitive turntable with MPC style drum pads. Our engineers took full advantage of this hardware and implemented a real-time record scratching algorithm that sounds incredibly realistic. As a Sound Designer, this project was an unbelievable opportunity for musical creativity! We designed over 40 battle records, each a set of 5 thematically related sounds, to be used on the turntable during a song performance. The most interesting aspect of creating these sound effects and music samples was making appropriate selections of tone and timbre that are musically satisfying to scratch on a turntable. I also produced the background crowd sounds for each venue and designed a system of seamless crowd mood transitions based on the players performance. This is an improvement over other music games that employ a system of hard-switching crowd loops, using one-shot sound effects to disguise the transitions. In direct competition with the upcoming release of DJ Hero, 7 Studios was acquired by Activision in what has been described as one of the top 5 industry controversies of 2009. I believe the acquisition is a testament to the creative talent and innovation of our staff at 7 Studios and I am very proud to have contributed to this great success story of an independent game development studio!

Role: Sound Design, Audio Implementation & Scripting

Website: Scratch: The Ultimate DJ

Gameplay Promo Video:

Scratch Deck Controller Video:

Space Camp is the next mini-game adventure designed in our Fun Park game engine. As our department was well into first few milestones of Scratch: The Ultimate DJ, I took on many responsibilities of an Audio Lead to complete Space Camp during the concurrent development of these titles. Beyond my previous role of Sound Designer & Audio Implementation Specialist, I also represented our department in daily production meetings, generated asset lists, directed production of an additional contract Sound Designer, basically managing a large portion of the audio pipeline. I'm very proud of everything we accomplished by publishing this game on schedule & in record time!

Role: Sound Design, Audio Implementation & Scripting, Generate & Manage Asset Lists, Manage Asset Production of Contract Sound Designer

Video:

Six Flags Fun Park is tons of fun! I had a great time working on this game with industry veterans Daniel Birczynski and Bo Bennike. We created an amazing sonic environment for the park and a wide variety of entertaining sounds for the mini-games. Each of the 5 themed areas of the park required a unique sonic aesthetic, making for the perfect exercise in sound design. We covered a range of styles appropriate for sci-fi, haunted, urban, pirate themed, and classic carnival environments; each with unique background ambiences mixed in Dolby Pro Logic II surround sound. Audio implementation was accomplished using a combination of FMOD Designer and Lua scripting. We achieved some very realistic and natural sound effects by using variables from our game logic and the Havok physics engine to modulate sound event parameters. The end result is audio that reacts to the game environment: collision sounds that cross-fade from soft to hard based the strength of impacts, rolling sounds with volume and pitch affected by an object's velocity, engine sounds directly linked to the thrust mechanics of a vehicle, trigger & cross-fading different sound effects based on the type of materials involved in a collision (metal hitting wood, water, or pavement for example) and so much more. I'm very pleased to see that Audio is consistently receiving the highest scores in many reviews!

Role: Sound Design, Audio Implementation & Scripting

Website: Six Flags Fun Park website

Video: The Game Show - Episode 4: Six Flags Fun Park
The views and opinions expressed in this video are strictly those of the author.

Favorite review quote:  "The sounds are amusing and dramatic, save for the aforementioned Xeno Xtraction torture scene."  -Haha! It's true there is a bit of dark humor in this game but nothing too scary, it's rated E.

I served as Technical Artist @ the IC² Digital Media Collaboratory for the NER0 project built in the Torque Game Engine. NER0 is the first Real Time Strategy game to feature a truly adaptive system of artificial intelligence that actually learns from its environment. Players can train their robots with a system of rewards and punishments for a variety of behaviors as they explore their surroundings. As each robot individually learns new information, they are subjected to an accelerated form of natural selection in which only the strongest variants survive. From there you can pit your uniquely evolved combat force against your friends in an online multi-player battle!

Link: www.nerogame.org

From 2005-2006 I was contracted by the University of Texas Distance Education Center to produce a series of educational cartoons that would introduce K-12 students to their school curriculum in a fun and engaging way. I did my best to improve each episode by creating music and sound effects beyond the scope of my initial contract as an Animator. The audio additions were well received and my contract was extended to produce music and sound effects for 26 episodes! I had a lot of fun with this project. Click on the link below to see samples of my work.

Link: AskMe Gallery: Sound Design Selections

jPatchwork is a graphical user interface I am programming in Java which allows the user to visually create Csound instruments by creating a flowchart, similar in use to a modular synthesizer. jPatchwork is an open source development project with the primary goal of creating a cross-platform version of the original Patchwork for Windows created by my former electronic music professor Dr. Russell Pinkston at the University of Texas Electronic Music Studios.

Link: jPatchwork at SourceForge.net

What is Machinima you ask? Well that's the very question we answer in this groundbreaking Machinima film. The audience is guided through the process of creating a work of art in this new medium of virtual film production, taking place entirely within the Unreal Tournament 2004 game engine. "Inside the Machinima" is the brainchild of Jonathan Perry who sought the help of his two best friends to co-produce this hilarious and informative short. Not only was "Inside the Machinima" featured in the 2005 Machinima Film Festival, but it is the first of it's kind to use OC3's Impersonator to generate lip sync animation, and features the voice talent and likeness of none other than... ME! I had a lot of fun contributing to this project which was well received by the Machinima community, and it even landed my buddy Jon a job as Cinematic Designer at Bioware for their upcoming Xbox 360 title, Mass Effect. Way to go guys!! Encore!

Link: Machinimated Studios