Sound Design for Medieval Fantasy Animation

Client: Self-Directed · Partner: Axel Kinnear · Sound Design & Music: Penrose Audio — Davies Aguirre

Project Context

Axel Kinnear — illustrator and animator — brought us in to build the complete sonic world for his self-directed medieval fantasy animation: a hand-crafted short populated by knights, dragons, and the chaotic, charming texture of a living fantasy world. Davies Aguirre handled both sound design and original music composition.

Conceptual Approach

Axel's brief pointed us toward the Rugrats theme as a tonal reference — that specific quality of naive, childlike curiosity rendered in odd percussion and slightly-off harmonic choices. He wanted something with a little more intensity and edge for a medieval setting, but without losing the playfulness. It's a genuinely interesting tension to hold: the world needs to feel dangerous enough to be interesting and light enough to stay fun.

We landed on the idea of a world where gravity and whimsy exist in the same frame — a marketplace that smells like mud and roasting meat but is also populated by slightly ridiculous characters, and a dragon that is genuinely terrifying for about four seconds before the whole thing tips back into adventure.

The Work

Building the World — Ambient Layering

The environmental sound design is built in three distinct planes of depth. The foreground carries the tactile details: wooden cart wheels on cobblestone, the rhythmic ring of a blacksmith's hammer, boot leather on packed earth. The mid-range holds the social texture — marketplace chatter, overlapping voices, the occasional livestock complaint. The background fades into distant battle sounds and the low rustle of wind through leaves, establishing scale without cluttering the mix.

Action and Combat Sound

Clashing swords were designed with layered metallic transients — a hard steel-on-steel core topped with a brighter, ringing overtone — giving each collision presence without sounding purely brutal. Crumbling walls used a combination of recorded stone debris and granular synthesis, stretching and scattering the texture to match the visual spread of destruction. Whoosh and pan effects were treated with dynamic automation, accelerating and decelerating in sync with the animation's timing curves.

The Dragon — Creature Voice Design

The dragon finale called for something that could land as genuinely impressive while fitting the animation's tonal register. The creature voice was built by layering recordings of tigers, elephants, and alligators — each contributing a different frequency range and textural quality — then fused with a deep, guttural synthesizer tone tuned to around 60 Hz. The result occupies the full frequency range from sub-bass to harsh upper mids, creating the physical sensation of scale while retaining a recognizable animal quality.

Music — Emotional Weight with a Light Touch

The score draws from the orchestral DNA of Game of Thrones — specifically the harmonic language of pieces like The Winds of Winter and Mhysa — for its emotional architecture. That foundation is then cut with lighter, more playful gestures: staccato woodwinds, off-kilter percussion, brief melodic fragments that refuse to resolve too cleanly. The score never lets the piece forget that it's also funny.

Results

The finished piece holds its tonal balance well: the world feels inhabited, the action has consequence, and the dragon finale lands with the impact that justifies the build-up. The score and sound design work together rather than in separate tracks, with musical elements bleeding into environmental texture at key moments to blur the line between diegetic and non-diegetic sound.

A world worth visiting sounds like it existed before you arrived.