SHOWREELS

BIO

I’ve been playing all my life. Playing games and playing with sounds. From my Masters in Electroacoustic Composition to building new instruments to realise game mechanics at Aardman. From cheesing Yie Ar Kung Fu in 1986 to proposing new IP to a major Japanese game company in 2019. From winning the Best Music Award at the British Horror Film Awards to composing music and sound design for BBC interactive’s, Oculus Rift release, ‘Is Anna OK?’. As a player, a composer and sound designer, I’d love to add audio to your game.

I work freelance on multiple projects at a time and am always up for talking through new ideas and how audio can enhance the experience. Please feel free to email me at:

edwardhipkins@gmail.com

Favourite Games

Inside, Hades, Limbo, Journey, Resident Evil 4.

Currently Playing

Hades

GAMES

New Unanounced Game 2022

I am the composer and sound designer for a new game with existing Aardman IP which will be a launch title for a new platform. Release in Q2 2022.

2020-21

I worked with Oxford VR as their sound designer, composer and audio implementer on a series of therapeutic VR experiences to help users deal with feelings of anxiety and depression. I have been both working directly in Unity and also with Wwise to implement music and interactive sounds.

IS ANNA OK? -oculus rift release

‘Is Anna ok?’ is a VR experience from Aardman Interactive in which players live through the experiences of twin girls after one suffers a severe brain injury in a car accident.

I was asked to compose the music and sound design, as well as implement and mix all sound, including extensive dialogue in FMOD.

You can find the trailer here;

IMPLEMENTATION- creating a dynamic language in FMOD

Below is an example in FMOD of a language I created from short syllable sounds that adapts to the NPC’s mood and player interaction.

Using semiotics to Create emotional sound design

Building a game mechanic and audio machine

As part of my work at Aardman Interactive I helped put together a pitch for a new VR game to a different major games company. It was a fairy tale set in a world where architecture could be interacted with as musical instruments. It was for this project that I made the first version of my instrument, to realise game mechanics in a practical way. The idea was to slot beaters into different parts of the wheel to make different rhythms. You had to match the rhythm you can hear in the environment on the wheel to open a door to the next section. Here is the instrument and the wheel in action.

And here is the music from the trailer.

Aardman IP PITCH

I was lucky enough to be involved in an open pitch at Aardman to a major Japanese Gaming Company for new 360 IP in 2019. My team and I managed to develop an idea that was one of two selected from dozens to pitch to leading executives at the company for developing a new console game, animated series and product line. Unfortunately ours was pipped at the post by an amazing idea which is now in development. However, the pitch was a hugely valuable insight into the process of game development and involved world building, story writing, play testing as a table top game, art direction and of course, music.

The game was an irreverent, couch co-op, play against your family romp through a hyper-British sports league. Here’s the music for the trailer.

FILM

British Horror Awards Winner

In 2019 I won the award for best music for ‘Fire Lies’ a short horror film that I composed almost exclusively on the horror instrument I built.

Maya Angelou ‘Love Liberates’ - BBC Radio 4

This was a commission from Radio 4 to score the trailer for their Maya Angelou documentary series.

The Director wanted music in the style of Young Blood Brass Band that started up beat, then went into music reflecting the abuse Maya suffered as a child including being raped and not talking for 5 years, going into modern hip-hop reflecting her influence on current musicians, going into music that spoke of her time as a Calypso dancer, going into 60’s protest march music and then finishing upbeat and positive.

From a composition point of view it was a great puzzle to work on.

The link to the film on the BBC website with VO and SFX is here:

 Horror instrument

In early 2018 I worked on a VR game developed at Aardman that was an puzzle adventure through a huge dilapidated tower. The tower, it turns out, was a huge instrument which you gradually ‘solve’ and then play. We were having difficulty envisioning how the specific mechanics and games might work in VR, so I decided to build an instrument that could be used as part of a ‘game’, to hopefully inspire and start a conversation amongst the dev team.

That turned into the first version of the Horror Machine. (see above)

That then moved onto wanting to make more of a live instrument that could handle horror to beauty so I redesigned it, adding more plucky things and a guitar neck (realising that people had thought about this sort of thing before and actually guitars are a very efficient way of being able to play chords and melody in a small about of real estate), a piano wire on a cello bridge and a looping pedal and the second version was born!

Circus and theatre

I have also scored multiple shows for Circus and the Theatre. These include headlining circus shows for Glastonbury 2016 and 2017 as well as productions at the Round House Theatre in London and Bristol Old vic. As part of this I perform live as Bassdrummer.