Hi, I'm John! I bring a harmonious blend of scientific rigor and artistic finesse to interactive sound design and game audio production as a professionally trained scientist and full-time sound designer and project manager.
Homemade zombie movies made during high school are what I think of as my roots in Sound Design & Production – Summer evenings of Foley with many celery stalks, carrots, and goopy consumables are strong memories in my mind. At university, I had the opportunity to direct student films and edit dialogue and audio; I also hosted an original weekly live FM & Web radio show on KJHK 90.7 called Kiwi Classics.
Musically, I played saxophone into secondary school, then studied guitar and taught blues guitar lessons... And the moment I discovered synthesizers, it was like a flood gate had been opened and I was able to put an instrument to a je ne sais quoi sound which I had loved growing up.
I am currently working as a senior Sound Designer for Ssun Games, a composer and Sound Designer for Ceplion, and serve as Project & Audio Director for Glazed Games, an international volunteer indie studio. I also support the Expedition to Atmora & Roscrea Beyond Skyrim teams with sound.
I am open to new contracts in Audio Production, Interactive Game Sound Design, and Ambience Development. I will be releasing my first commercial sound library Q4 2024, and continue to produce music as a hobby.
Resume
Contact e-mail: John@ambientartstyles.com
Professional Interests & Competencies
Audio Implementation: Wwise and Fmod.
Sound Processing: Reaper, Ableton/M4L, iZotope RX, Soundminer, Pure Data, FabFilter, Waves, VCV Rack.
Source Control: GitHub, Plastic SCM, Atlassia Bitbucket.
Project Management: Division coordination, team development, and program direction.
Codecks, Atlassian Jira, Notion, Trello, Airtable, Spreadsheets.
Interactive Sound Design: Wwise, MetaSounds & Blueprints; Foley, Field Recording, Synthesis, Environmental Ambience & Soundscape creation, Creature Sounds, VA/VO Direction, Dialogue Editing, 3-D Spatialization, Mixing.
I am all about diving in and developing interactive, adapative, and reactive balanced game audio.
Game Interests
Favorites with Audio in Focus
- Inside
- Pathologic 2
- It Takes Two
- Blanc
- The Witcher 3
On Deck to Play
-Tunic
-Dead Space remake
-Control
Nostalgic sonic influences
- Donkey Kong Country (snes)
- Kotor 2, pure pazzak
- Diablo i and ii
- Half-Life 2
Overviewing a decade of ambience from 1994 - 2004 (writing; coming soon).
Get to know me through some of my favorite games!
Why of course there's a blog here!
Audio Gung Fu is an audio art research journal where I detail explorations with friends and community into Sound Design, Game Audio, and Sonic Curiosities. Check out some of the gems and resources I have discovered along the way.
I am grateful for feedback and always looking to improve my design; happy to share methods or bounce ideas around. You can find me on Discord (AmbientArtstyles), Twitter, Airwiggles, Bluesky, Slack, and various professional audio communities.