Giving an earful to animation viewers

It’s a bird, it’s a plane, it’s a really great swooshing sound that makes the flight of a muscular man in tights seem possible. In animated features, the sounds are just as crucial as the visuals, and the desire to make them fresh keeps sound engineers and foley artists on constant alert for something new -- Monty Python pretty much outed the coconut-shell hoof beats years ago.

Nominated for four Oscars, including best sound editing and best sound mixing for his work on “The Incredibles,” sound designer Randy Thom, who previously won an Oscar for “The Right Stuff,” shares a few secrets of his craft.

THE VELOCIPODS: The flying saucers controlled by the evil character Syndrome chase speedy little Dash through jungles, deserts and even over the ocean. “I thought about jet airplanes, but those sounds get used so often. Same for rockets. Besides, these velocipods sometimes hover. Rockets never hover. Eventually I used Formula One race cars. They sound ‘high tech,’ which seemed appropriate. Their engines can rev while standing still [like hovering]. But we had to disguise the sounds so the audience didn’t immediately recognize them and think: ‘I’m looking at flying saucers and hearing cars.’ So sometimes the drive-bys [fly-bys] are played backward.”

THE INCREDOBILE: “The engine revs are made from recordings of jet turbines modified to sound even more high tech. It may be the sound effect I’m most proud of in the movie.”

VIOLET’S FORCE FIELD: “One of the main components is a recording of cosmic rays and radio frequency signals from high-voltage power lines hitting a wire on a mountaintop halfway between Santa Rosa and Mendocino. Very often sounds with exotic pedigrees are not very useful, but this one was an exception.”

BULLETS ON VIOLET’S FORCE FIELD: “I worked on it off and on for several months and nothing seemed to click until I tried bouncing a huge exercise ball. It had a wonderful ping to it.”

ELASTIGIRL: “Creating her stretchy sounds was especially tricky in the scene where she’s flirting with Mr. Incredible. She flips over the top of his head and then back through his legs. We discovered early on that gross stretching sounds took all the romance out of the moment. Getting desperate to find some kind of special sound that would fit the mood, we came upon silk sheets. Our foley performers ran their fingers across silk sheets to produce an ultrasmooth whoosh kind of sound.”

SYNDROME’S EVIL GIANT ROBOT: “Long before I was working on ‘The Incredibles,’ I had recorded a real robot on a much smaller scale doing pretty much that same thing at the UC Berkeley robotics lab. This poor student had designed and built a robot for his class project; a day or two before his robot had to perform for his professor, I happened to show up wanting to record anything robotic. When I walked into the room the robot was having some kind of electronic feedback problem and shaking like mad. I turned on my recorder.”