So I'm quite the League of Legends fanatic. For a while after starting to play the game, I would invest upwards of 5 hours a day strictly to playing the game. This was while I was at Washington State University, so this game would take precedence over studying most of the time, and would at times be more important than attending class. Needless to say I've invested more time in this game than anything else beyond sleeping and eating in my lifetime.
Now I don't invest nearly as much time today as I did then in the game, but the passion for both spectating the game during weekend events and listening to the game's music remains strong. As early as the Summer of 2012, I've had the idea of composing music to the champion lore provided on the game's website, but I never felt that the game needed it until the release of their new website layout, equipped with individual champion pages. The only problem with the page? The lore section is nothing more than a wall of text. Few people will immerse themselves in a champion by reading the four paragraphs provided. Why not give a little life to the lore section? Provide an audible narration for the viewer to listen to? Why not have a small team record a narration, animate a 3 minute sequence to go along with the narration, and compose a piece of music to bring it all together? Simply put, other than potentially money, the only reason I could think of was that Riot (the company that makes League of Legends) simply hadn't thought of it.
It seemed like the perfect opportunity to at least try my hand at composing for something that isn't from my own head. At worst, I get more practice composing music, and at best, my idea gets picked up by the company and I've become a direct factor in improving a video game! After some thought, I committed to composing music for Lucian, the champion that at the time had just been teased by releasing his lore. I had nothing to go on other than the images they provided with the teaser and the wall of text that was his lore.
I began with researching music that was composed with similar topics. Stuff like Devil May Cry and Van Helsing were where I turned. I studied how the songs started, built up, and transitioned to new motifs and ideas. From there I went into Cubase, my current program of choice, and began dabbling with various instrument combinations for the introduction. A simple repetitive building introduction is what I went for. In the final product you can hear just that. A percussive church bell-like sound giving suspense to the build, low strings gaining volume and intensity while bowing quick notes. Everything slowly builds, more and more, getting increasingly rapid until all of a sudden it stops, leaving the listener hanging. There's a definite feeling the piece is not finished, and they want to hear more.
It's this feeling I was wanting to generate at the beginning of the piece, to keep the listener interested in the narrative as it's read to them. The music, while composed before either the visuals were put together or the narrative was recorded, is there to supplement the story, keeping the listener present and engaged.
In the end, I dedicated a few days to research before composing, three weeks to composing the music, and one week to get the narrative and visuals together for the concept to be complete. All the visuals I used were from images and videos posted by Riot, as I do not at this time know an animator who could have done the work. Similarly, I both do not have the income to hire a voice actor, nor have the time to have an adequate recording session, so I brought in a friend to record the narrative and did some editing to the voice to make it as close as I could to what I was wanting the voice to sound like.
Based on the feedback I've received the idea behind the concept has made it through to the cinematic. This could potentially be the beginning of a long term commitment depending on how the video is received by both the public and Riot, if they choose to watch it. My confidence is not necessarily high but it's definitely not weak at this point. I suppose only time will tell where this project is going to take me.
Now I don't invest nearly as much time today as I did then in the game, but the passion for both spectating the game during weekend events and listening to the game's music remains strong. As early as the Summer of 2012, I've had the idea of composing music to the champion lore provided on the game's website, but I never felt that the game needed it until the release of their new website layout, equipped with individual champion pages. The only problem with the page? The lore section is nothing more than a wall of text. Few people will immerse themselves in a champion by reading the four paragraphs provided. Why not give a little life to the lore section? Provide an audible narration for the viewer to listen to? Why not have a small team record a narration, animate a 3 minute sequence to go along with the narration, and compose a piece of music to bring it all together? Simply put, other than potentially money, the only reason I could think of was that Riot (the company that makes League of Legends) simply hadn't thought of it.
It seemed like the perfect opportunity to at least try my hand at composing for something that isn't from my own head. At worst, I get more practice composing music, and at best, my idea gets picked up by the company and I've become a direct factor in improving a video game! After some thought, I committed to composing music for Lucian, the champion that at the time had just been teased by releasing his lore. I had nothing to go on other than the images they provided with the teaser and the wall of text that was his lore.
I began with researching music that was composed with similar topics. Stuff like Devil May Cry and Van Helsing were where I turned. I studied how the songs started, built up, and transitioned to new motifs and ideas. From there I went into Cubase, my current program of choice, and began dabbling with various instrument combinations for the introduction. A simple repetitive building introduction is what I went for. In the final product you can hear just that. A percussive church bell-like sound giving suspense to the build, low strings gaining volume and intensity while bowing quick notes. Everything slowly builds, more and more, getting increasingly rapid until all of a sudden it stops, leaving the listener hanging. There's a definite feeling the piece is not finished, and they want to hear more.
It's this feeling I was wanting to generate at the beginning of the piece, to keep the listener interested in the narrative as it's read to them. The music, while composed before either the visuals were put together or the narrative was recorded, is there to supplement the story, keeping the listener present and engaged.
In the end, I dedicated a few days to research before composing, three weeks to composing the music, and one week to get the narrative and visuals together for the concept to be complete. All the visuals I used were from images and videos posted by Riot, as I do not at this time know an animator who could have done the work. Similarly, I both do not have the income to hire a voice actor, nor have the time to have an adequate recording session, so I brought in a friend to record the narrative and did some editing to the voice to make it as close as I could to what I was wanting the voice to sound like.
Based on the feedback I've received the idea behind the concept has made it through to the cinematic. This could potentially be the beginning of a long term commitment depending on how the video is received by both the public and Riot, if they choose to watch it. My confidence is not necessarily high but it's definitely not weak at this point. I suppose only time will tell where this project is going to take me.