Composing for the Films I Used to Want to Draw

Drawing was my greatest passion growing up!  Till it wasn't.  

​I wanted to go to Sheridan College and make comic books like my hero Todd McFarlane or work for Disney, but that didn't happen.  Toward the end of high school I learned that drawing was a joy I simply couldn't treat like work.  To put it plainly, I loved drawing for myself, but not for others.  I also couldn't fathom doing it day in, day out anymore.  Because I couldn't see myself happy in a career with it, my passion was snuffed out.  I didn't draw again for a decade, but here are some old favourites:

When I was roughly 11-years old

When I was roughly 16-years old

When I was roughly 18-years old (one of my last dedicated drawings)

​It was around the age of 18 that I started messing around with music making.  At first it was a private hobby as well, but years later I actually wanted to treat it like work, producing and recording for my own clients.  I think this was largely fuelled by 'the recording studio experience' which I pretty much fell in love with once I got my own first taste.  While drawing was wildly inventive and rewarding, I needed a different kind of broader stimulation in order to enjoy my craft long-term, especially in a professional work environment.

When I make music, the smallest sound can end up driving the entire song.  While that sound is filling the air for the first time, I get to go anywhere I want with it; write a chorus, strum a guitar, sing a vocal, bang something, or dance like a fool in my studio - all of that counts as work!  Every instrument (real or virtual) puts me in a different mindset and often requires a different physicality.  I get to find or create sounds I've never heard before as well as consider mic placement and room acoustics.  There are cables to run, knobs to twist, buttons to push, faders to slide, and switches to flip!  I can take my eyes off the screen and still be working.  Add on to that when other artists take the adventure with me, as if our pencils are on the page together sketching away, and you might understand why it better suits my busy mind and physicality.

Anyways, while attending Sheridan College for my Bachelor of Game Design degree, I shared an elective class (Intro to Short Story) with a ton of animation students.  It was there that I befriended some great talent who would eventually need composers for future projects.  One day my name came up in one of their meetings and we arranged to meet while I pitched my candidacy to a group that already had access to free composers through a Sheridan / UofT collaboration.  That's right, I had to sell my paid, never-composed-for-a-film-before services to a group who had access to a plethora of free, film-based composer students from the University of Toronto.  Yikes.  Well, I must have smelled good that day because I convinced them to take a chance on me and the rest is history.  Because of half the group becoming repeat clients and their generous referrals, I eventually totalled 10 awesome animation short film projects!

Stepping into the bull character of "Kobe Spa"

Doing scores and sound design for these animation films proved to be a very foreign, but very welcomed challenged for me.  When I sat down to begin the very first film, I remember thinking, "I have no idea how I'm going to do this".  Having said that, I also knew it didn't matter because I spent so much of my life understanding visual arts, and so much of my life understanding audio, that bringing them together was just a matter of will.  I wanted to make this marriage happen, badly.  Using the intended vision of my client, it took some trial and error but I eventually got that first small scene of the film feeling great.  That scene then inspired another scene, and another, until I was finally able to say, "Wow!  This is a film score!"

Each film was very different, so I got to create some very different things and learned a ton of stuff along the way.  Plus, I got to record some fun dialogue.  One thing I've learned over the years is that working with others in my studio tends to produce a lot of vulnerability and a lot of laughter; both of which I think are essential for yielding great results!

I guess you could say that for me, drawing is like soldering the computer of a spaceship (which is cool), and making music is like flying the spaceship itself.  Both are highly detail-oriented (and technical), but I want to fly the spaceship.  This is of course 100% subjective.  I'm sure visual artists out there feel their passion is actually the spaceship and audio is the soldering, which is great!  Own it!  This is probably why I get inspired by the look of a recording studio because it can kind of resemble the cockpit of a spaceship!  I get to sit at the helm and discover soundscapes that resonate through the body like a turbine.

Do I secretly just want to be an Astronaut?

Thesis film characters from the graduating class of 2019. I helped to give some of these characters a voice!

What a pleasure it was to work with these kind and gifted people.  I absolutely loved being introduced to their films, the stories in them and the stories behind them.  I loved immersing myself in their crazy and loveable worlds and characters, thinking of the audible possibilities.  According to them, finally having sound brought their films to life.  To me, finally having visuals brought my music and sound design to life in such an exciting way.  Fusing together two worlds I loved felt like the long-lost visual artist in me was being listened to again.  That part of me sees and deeply appreciates the immense thought and work that goes into each stroke of every animated frame.

There is so much understanding and intention being displayed in even the smallest movements.  Every time I make a soundscape that highlights those things the way my client (the expert) intends, it warms the part of me that used to want to draw such things.  One day I'll take my time again and draw something amazing, but I'm happy with my audio profession.  These films brought about results in me that I would have never otherwise produced without these collaborations.  In fact, I was so proud of these films that I had to release them as a soundtrack which is OUT NOW on all platforms!!!

The beautiful album cover was created by Chayadol Lomtong, a.k.a. "Dol" - creator of "The Golden Ice Cream" short film!  It's a unique and colourful collage of some of the characters and themes in the films.  It was a combination of his naturally inspired concepts and my poorly-explained vision.  In fact, Dol had no idea what I was talking about when I first tried to explain it!  But, when I better explained what I meant by things like "Golden ice cream sun... rainbow water... headphone boat... and musical note fish", he got it right away and went beyond my expectations!

A genuine 'thank you' to all you animators who let me take part in your films!  You're already successful at what you do, so keep doing it.  I loved it and would absolutely do it all again!

To everyone else out there, give these artists a follow after clicking here to watch their memorable films!

Follow me on Spotify for all my film and game soundtracks!