If I had to pick out the best interview that I came across so far about Spore, I think it’s this one with audio engineer Cyril Girons.  Why?  It’s not because I’m interested in the audio for Spore (I do find it interesting, just not ‘into’ it), but because of this picture:

Now come on, who can resist being around a cute little leopard such as the one above?  Well, actually I probably wouldn’t go near it myself 😛

But back to the original topic, today’s SporeDay covers an audio interview with Cyril Saint Girons, one of the audio engineers for the game.  I picked out a couple of my favorite questions.

Was Simlish the inspiration for the creature language in Spore? How was the creature language in Spore created?

I think simlish was definitely an influence for the voices of all of the sentient beings in Spore. However, the creatures from creature game are mostly created from animal recordings which were actually done on location at various zoos and animal sanctuaries.

Are there any plans to allow players to create their own voice recordings in the procedural voice editor?

There are no current plans to create a procedural voice editor.

Are there any audio-related prototypes you’d be willing to share with the Spore community?

Most of the prototypes were created for an in house tool which may make it hard to share. (i.e. I need to check if we can release it.) However, this tool was based off of the open source project Pd, which I highly recommend checking out if you are interested in procedural music.

Do you have audio “bloopers” that you want to share? Or anecdotes from the audio production?

From Michael Cormier: Just before Kent took this picture, we recorded an incredibly, mistrustful leopard. When I got a chance to record this bobcat purring, I was a little tentative about getting too close until the trainer said, “c’mon, how many times are you gonna get hugged by a bobcat?”

Click here to hear the leopard audio clip recorded at the zoo.

Read the whole interview, RAWR