Sound brings animation to life. It is crucial to at least include background music with a finished work.
After capturing frames and compiling, the next step in the workflow is to take the finished animation, and bring it into a video editing application where sound effects and music can be applied. Any video editing application will work here; for my workshop I use iMovie. It has a built-in advantage in that it has a large sound library, including incidental music and sound effects.Sound effects can come from many sources. The BBC has an online site that houses 16,000 different sounds. Freesound.org is another resource – it does require registration to download clips (but that is free). Archive.org requires a lot of sifting through (make use of the options on the left to help sort), but there are surprises to be had, particularly for creative commons licensed or free music. For instance, here is the ever-popular Wilhelm Scream.
Background music can be tricky to deal with. Copyrighted music will be flagged by YouTube. There are still sources for music to be found. Moby has released a whole catalog of music available free for filmmakers. Incompetech has a large collection of music. For many (if not all) of the pieces there is a free license version (registration required).
Garageband is a simple music production application that comes with Macs. For non-musicians, it is a way to construct music using the included audio loops – but for musicians, it supports music keyboards as well. It takes little time to learn, and means that an animator can have music for their work that they own the rights to – no concern of copyright infringement. There are a host of other applications for producing music – both sample based and not.
There may be a need to edit or adjust the audio before it is brought into a video editor. The go-to tool for this is Audacity. It is a basic audio editor that is not difficult to use, and is free. Another free audio editor that is easy to use is OcenAudio. Altadobe.com has links to several other free or cheap media applications that are available.
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