I am doing most of the sound for a short horror movie and it features a monster that looks like a centepede but atrociously gigantic.

I have tried a lot things like messing with the sound of other insects and such but never came close to something I would use on the final cut of the movie.

Do you guys have any ideas?


Right off the top of my head [& I'm not a foley artist, so you'd have to work out the details]


  1. sharp points to feet - high transients
  2. lots of legs - 'skittering'
  3. rhythmic walk - pattern that could become 'signature'...
  4. & don't forget ...big, so lots of things dropped an octave, added subs
  5. 'skin' movement noises, not synced to feet, but to body

ideas for each element...

  1. terrain differentiation - hammers struck on concrete, dry ground, wet mud etc to suit terrain. Pitch shift & layer, but keep transients sharp. This could be your main 'sync to visible legs' sound, & the most work.
  2. not necessarily synced to each actual footstep, possibly higher 1k - 4k predominant - insectile 'chittering' noises, dry, chitinous, repetitive, cyclic. Ball-bearings or marbles in a tumble-dryer, pitch shifted; dried peas or rice rolled in a tin with clay 'rumble strips', loop a section & apply a sine wave pitch shift for variation.
  3. percussive yet pitched synth, giving a rise & fall cyclic 'running legs' feel. Think 'drum' rather than 'note' but make it 'the signature' that could be echoed to incidental music.
  4. compulsory bass thumps hitting the subs at key moments. Can be just sine waves if layered deep enough. Even pitch down an old 808 kick with bend.
  5. the old faithfuls - twist half a tight, crisp white cabbage; torture a balloon with wet hands.
  • so useful! will those in mind. – Fil_deS Sep 9 '16 at 19:20

I can concur with the above post. Your problem is your approach try not to think 'insect sounds'. You've got to think outside the box. You need to look at a the scene and ask: what frequencies do I need to create the sound? It's big, so you need low frequency effects to begin with. If it's got hundreds of legs trying to sync them will probably make it sound animated. Without seeing the scene it's hard to give you direct advice. But it's about frequency. Good use of reverb to add scale too. Pitch shift is your best friend with sound design so record at the highest sample rate you can. Try doing some vocalisations with your mouth and experiment with pitch and animal noises if you have a library of them.

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