So I completed the rest of the Haruhi theme for the time being. The bottom screen was fairly simple since I decided to use the animated H that I tried earlier and leave the rest of it rather sparse.
The folders were also fairly quick, though whether or not I am going to keep the design or completely remake them is still up in the air. Originally I wanted to go for mimicking one of the various armbands that Haruhi wears, but after trying it a couple times I feel like the bottom screen could use more colors that oppose red rather than blend into it.
Unfortunately, even though I want to change the colors, at the moment I don't have any really appealing ideas for folder icons at the moment, and so it's something I'm going to just mull over while doing other bits. If possible, I'd like to do an orange-ish yellow color...but you never know if something else might look better.
I also took the effort to try and normalize the volume of the sound effects. Normally it would be pretty simple with just in-game sound effects, but since this theme uses actual voice acting, straight normalizing is somewhat...distasteful. I didn't want to spend a huge amount of effort though, so I'm going to just mention the entire process that I could have gone through.
First would be to decide on the volume of the bgm. Since my theme utilizes voice clips, I am trying to keep in mind that the music will be rather overpowering when the voices are played, thus the volume should be lowered enough to feel like background music in comparison to the actual voice clips.
Then increase the quieter sounds within the voice clips through dynamic range compression and then readjust the overall "volume" with something like normalize. This is only really needed since the music I have is rather loud (and I could actually probably stand to turn it down a little). After all of the voice clips are at roughly the same level, I'd need to test and consider whether or not the voice clips are feeling drowned out in comparison to both the bgm and the other sound effects.
Since the other sound effects are standard sorts of sound effects, they will naturally seem louder than the voice clips, thus, instead of normalizing all of the sound effects to the same level as the voice clips, they should be toned down enough so that the voices feel pronounced.
If I were to give an order of "volume priority", it would be: voice clips > sound effects > bgm.
The rest of the theme was just picking/testing different colors and deciding on the ones I liked best. So, for the most part, the Haruhi theme is done. All that is feasibly left that I would like changed is tuning the audio levels (which I didn't do yet) and finalizing a design for the folder icons...and also possibly a top/bottom bar if I think it looks better with one.
The folders were also fairly quick, though whether or not I am going to keep the design or completely remake them is still up in the air. Originally I wanted to go for mimicking one of the various armbands that Haruhi wears, but after trying it a couple times I feel like the bottom screen could use more colors that oppose red rather than blend into it.
Unfortunately, even though I want to change the colors, at the moment I don't have any really appealing ideas for folder icons at the moment, and so it's something I'm going to just mull over while doing other bits. If possible, I'd like to do an orange-ish yellow color...but you never know if something else might look better.
I also took the effort to try and normalize the volume of the sound effects. Normally it would be pretty simple with just in-game sound effects, but since this theme uses actual voice acting, straight normalizing is somewhat...distasteful. I didn't want to spend a huge amount of effort though, so I'm going to just mention the entire process that I could have gone through.
First would be to decide on the volume of the bgm. Since my theme utilizes voice clips, I am trying to keep in mind that the music will be rather overpowering when the voices are played, thus the volume should be lowered enough to feel like background music in comparison to the actual voice clips.
Then increase the quieter sounds within the voice clips through dynamic range compression and then readjust the overall "volume" with something like normalize. This is only really needed since the music I have is rather loud (and I could actually probably stand to turn it down a little). After all of the voice clips are at roughly the same level, I'd need to test and consider whether or not the voice clips are feeling drowned out in comparison to both the bgm and the other sound effects.
Since the other sound effects are standard sorts of sound effects, they will naturally seem louder than the voice clips, thus, instead of normalizing all of the sound effects to the same level as the voice clips, they should be toned down enough so that the voices feel pronounced.
If I were to give an order of "volume priority", it would be: voice clips > sound effects > bgm.
The rest of the theme was just picking/testing different colors and deciding on the ones I liked best. So, for the most part, the Haruhi theme is done. All that is feasibly left that I would like changed is tuning the audio levels (which I didn't do yet) and finalizing a design for the folder icons...and also possibly a top/bottom bar if I think it looks better with one.
