Bio

My name is Noah Kankanala and I am an Associate Audio Designer currently working at Skydance Interactive. Prior to this, I was an Audio Design Intern at Obsidian Entertainment.

I have always been passionate about the crossroads between sound, story, and games. At the age of six, I watched as my dad and sister crept through the creepy corridors of the Shadow Temple in Zelda: Ocarina of Time. I can still hear the ghostly moans, deathly traps, and crackling fires reverberating throughout the dungeon. In retrospect, I was mesmerized by how pivotal sound was in conjuring palpable feelings of fear that teleported me into the world, and dimensions of depth that motivated me to dive deeper into that world. 

Subconsciously influenced by this early childhood memory, one of my favorite audio domains to work in is ambience design. I enjoy being immersed in a world, and experiencing audio as a form of environmental storytelling that expresses the story of places, characters, and timelines. I also find great fulfillment in designing sound propagation systems that render environmental audio more believable by adapting based on distance, obstruction, occlusion, and room size. 

I also am constantly eager to explore and apply game data to make the audio experience more dynamic. For instance, I enjoy leveraging kinesthetic input to drive velocity RTPCs, gameplay states to drive ambience variations, and physics properties to modulate impact velocities and surface switches. 

My penchant for leveraging game design data and pillars to drive audio, is influenced by my multi-discipline academic background. I received a Masters in Entertainment Technology from Carnegie Mellon University and a BS in Game Design from Indiana University - Bloomington. At these institutions, I worked in multidisciplinary teams at the intersection of experiential storytelling, emerging technologies, and transformational design. At Carnegie Mellon, I worked on experiences that explored topics including animal sensation (in a project called Vesp), and music theory (in a project called Lyraflo). 

As an audio designer, my goal is to collaborate with others to build beautiful, immersive experiences, and contribute to the storytelling experience through the creation and implementation of audio that elevates the player experience.