Creating the sound of flab in motion is a challenge we in sound design encounter fairly often, most frequently in animation. We see an obese character move. Flabby body parts flop and undulate, sometimes at normal speed, sometimes in slow motion. If anyone in the history of film has nailed the sound of flab movement I’m not aware of it. Hundreds of methods have been tried by sound effects and foley artists around the world over the decades, including myself, and though some have been partially successful, none have left me in awe.
A current project features a fat character, and I’ve challenged the sound team to come up with the definitive flab-in-motion sound. Obviously, one sound or kind of sound won’t work in all situations, but I think we need a new paradigm for creating the sound of moving fat.
I have a hunch that a solution is somehow related to… bubbles… muffled bubbles contained inside a bladder of some kind which, when manipulated, makes a certain kind of squishy sound that will perfectly evoke the sonic dynamics of fat… utterly believable and at the same time dramatically exaggerated.
Progress reports to come.
Randy