Welcome to another chapter of our Developer Diaries. First chapters of our diary are dedicated to the introduction of our development team, the people responsible for creating “Klotzen! Panzer Battles.” In today’s episode, you will get a chance to know the mastermind behind Klotzen’s music.
Hello. Please introduce yourself.
Hi, my name is Tomas Oliva. I am a video game and trailer music composer based in Prague, Czech Republic.
Could you tell us what you have worked on for Maxim Games?
I was responsible for creating background music for „XXX“ (I double checked my correspondence with Zoran, and I was never told the name of the game :D)
Well, it is Klotzen! Panzer Battles now 🙂 Having played Alpha, I can say that the music is great. It is immersive and gives the great feeling of the wartime. Could you tell us how does one do a music for a video game?
There used to be a big difference between doing music for a movie and for a video game. Currently, these differences are disappearing because video games start to care a lot about giving a stunning impression by top-notch graphics, game design, voice acting, sound design and, of course, music. Levels and scenes in games start to be treated the same way as scenes in movies – there’s a need to set up a right atmosphere, proper lighting, positions of objects and characters, high-quality voice acting and underneath a music that brings up hidden moods. Same as in the movie industry.
For Klotzen, I took a similar approach. It is a game set in World War II, and therefore, the music had to go hand in hand with the setting. The dark war music with a lot of drums and heroic melodic lines was mandatory. However, that is not the only emotion that is being associated with war. There is also sadness, desperation, and suffering caused by loss of a family, friends, homes. When working on the music, these exact emotions were in my mind all the time. They affected my creative process.
Speaking of movies and video games, do you have any favorite composers and games?
Yes, I do. When it comes to video games, one of my all-time favourites is Kai Rosenkranz. He is the author of music for the video game series Gothic and Risen. It was actually the Gothic 1 soundtrack that inspired me to start composing music in the first place! I remember spending countless minutes in the main menu just to listen to the music. Besides Kai’s music, I always enjoy the work of Jeremy Soule (The Elder Scrolls series, Guild Wars, etc); composers from Blizzard (World of Warcraft soundtrack is a masterpiece); and the work of Michael McCann (Deus Ex). Besides video game composers, I absolutely love music of Thomas Bergersen (Two Steps From Hell). He is a true genius.
Could you please name us a few of your works?
Over a last couple of years, I worked for several big and well-known companies, such as Riot Games (League of Legends), Microsoft, Sony, Mitsubishi. I am currently working my way to the Hollywood trailer music industry, my second focus after video game music. Though I must admit, video games rock 😀
Oh, wow! Anything people have seen/know for sure?
I hate this question! 😀 Most of the top jobs I have ever worked on were done as a complete buyout with NDA. So I have no idea where that music ended up. And even if I knew, I couldn’t tell you!
But besides those projects, I often collaborate with a youtube production company that shoots short video-game movies. Quite recently we’ve done a movie based on Tom Clancy’s Ghost Recon Wildlands which got featured by Ubisoft itself.
I’m pretty sure most of the people have no idea how a typical day of a music composer looks like. What about you?
I have no idea as well 😀 But If I’m to describe MY day, I would say this. Usually, I get up very early in the morning to be really fresh unless I am totally destroyed. I start my day with a healthy breakfast. Imagine a completely dead person drinking one coffee after another and then ending the whole morning ritual with a nice bar of good chocolate. This really makes my engine running. Then, for roughly 12 hours, I struggle to come up with some good and fresh ideas for the project I work on. Usually, late at night, I finally get a great idea and I work on it till 4 am 😀 That’s pretty much it.
Sounds like a life of “L” from Death Note, but instead of solving crimes you do music 🙂
It kinda is, except I don’t squat like “L” used to 😀
Thank you for taking the time to make this interview possible. You seem to be very positive and interesting person!
I thank you! It was a pleasure doing this interview.
Below you can hear and watch some of the works that Tomas could share with us. As you now know, Tomas has worked on the music for Klotzen, and we will share it in our future dev diaries. You can hear more music from Tomas at his SoundCloud profile, Facebook group, and BandCamp website.
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