Suzanna Jelsema began her musical career playing violin at the age of 5 and began growing her knowledge of strings and other instruments through various orchestras and performance groups. As her love of music grew she learned piano and first started composing music of her own at the age of 16. Her first piece was performed in public by a live orchestra during her senior year of high school. From there she started attending school at Digipen Institute of Technology studying Music and Sound Design. While there she worked on the audio of both video games, and short films while honing in her craft .
Suzanna has a lot of experience working on indie game teams and has developed an excellent work ethic from her personal projects and time at school. She begins each project by gaining a thorough understanding of its direction, from there she determines the best techniques to complement the project. This also helps her stay on top of the workload by planning things in advance with a distinct schedule. Her work is informed by a strong musical ear and ability, and she’s able to compose music that lends emotion and suspense where needed. Her strong love of music, knowledge, and her personal experience lends well to her work as a composer and sound designer. She loves creating music and sound effects that help keep the audience engrossed in the story.
In recent years Suzanna has been slowly growing her personal repertoire and has been working on a number of projects. University Atlas is a podcast following 4 friends and their ghostly adventures. Suzanna has made all the music featured in the podcast and has contributed audio mixing expertise as well as various sfx that lend to the story. She has worked with the narrator to compose music and design sounds that represent the various boss’s and battles the four students must face, these pieces of music add character and help immerse the audience in what they are hearing.
She has also worked on a number of short films and trailers for various games and animations. Some of these animations went on to win awards at various film festivals thanks to her and the animation teams talents. Her work in film is lead first and foremost by the vision of the team she’s working with. Gathering ideas and thoughts from the animators allow her to create the perfect blend of instruments and sound effects that fit the mood and setting of the film.
Suzanna has experience using both Wwise and Fmod through personal studies and indie games. Developing the perfect interactive music system is one of her favorite processes in the game development stage. She believes feedback through music is one of the most exciting ways to enhance the gameplay of any project. Whether that is having certain instruments correlated with different enemies, or satisfying musical stingers that play when a player lands a powerful hit; Suzanna is sure to spend plenty of time brainstorming the best way to have music support and complement gameplay.