At San Diego Comic-Con, journalist Nick Williams spoke with Alex Seaver, the composer behind the hit animated series Arcane. Seaver discusses the show’s music, the creative process, and the highly anticipated second season.
San Diego Comic-Con 2024, held from July 25th to July 28th, was a whirlwind of excitement for comic book and popular arts enthusiasts. This annual extravaganza in San Diego, California, showcases everything from comics and movies to television, gaming, and interactive multimedia.
Additionally, attendees revel in panels and presentations brimming with exclusive previews and Q&A sessions with creators and stars.
The Music of Arcane: An Interview with Composer Alex Seaver
Seaver, who co-composed the score with Alex Temple, described the unique challenge of creating music for a world that is both high fantasy and gritty urban. The music needed to reflect the show’s contrasting settings, from the opulent Piltover to the seedy underbelly of Zaun, and to capture the emotional depth of the characters.
Arcane is an adult animated steampunk action-adventure series set in the League of Legends universe. The series follows two sisters, Vi and Jinx, as they navigate the escalating conflict between the utopian city of Piltover and the oppressed underground of Zaun. Praised for its stunning animation, complex characters, and mature storytelling, Arcane delves into themes of social inequality.
The show explores the origins of some of League of Legends’ famous champions, as the delicate balance between Piltover and Zaun is threatened by the creation of “hextech” and the dangerous drug “shimmer.”
The World of Arcane
One of the most distinctive features of Arcane‘s soundtrack is its incorporation of original pop songs. Seaver explained that this was a deliberate choice to create a new musical vocabulary for the show. Each episode features a song that reflects the themes and emotions of the story.
“It was really building this new vocabulary of, like, every episode gets a song, like a pop song. Okay. Yeah. How do we do this? What artists do we use? What does it sound like? What languages are we? All those questions. It’s just so fun to, like, build something from scratch because you really get to make those decisions.”
Seaver’s favorite song is the finale song, which he co-wrote with Sting. He described the experience of working with the legendary musician as both terrifying and exhilarating.
“The favorite one for me was probably the one I did with Sting, the finale. It was probably so satisfying because of how terrified I was the entire time through it.”
The characters of Arcane are complex and multi-layered, and the music plays a crucial role in bringing them to life. Seaver spoke about the challenge of writing music that captures the characters’ emotional journeys, from childhood innocence to adult trauma.
“It was like, oh, this is deep. Like, these characters are not I mean, it’s it’s, you know, it’s sort of based off of this video game, but the video game doesn’t really have the same level of, like, narrative depth. So all sudden you’re confronted with this thing where you’re like, this is an animation, and I’m crying because of this older sister abandoning a younger sister.”
The character who resonated most with Seaver was Jinx, for whom he wrote the most songs. He described her as a fascinating and complex character who has broken his heart many times.
“The one that I ended up writing the most songs for was jinx. So it’s weird when you think about it like, this animated character has been my muse for like five years.”
The success of Arcane
Seaver couldn’t reveal much about the upcoming second season. However, he assured fans that it would be just as exciting and emotionally impactful as the first. He and his team have been working hard on the music, and they can’t wait to share it with the world.
“And to then actually, like, have it touch real oxygen and people respond, you’re just like, oh my God. I mean, it’s the dream. It’s like literally the dream.”
Seaver enthusiastically declares that the success of Arcane has been a dream come true. He spoke about the joy of seeing fans connect with the show and its music so deeply. Additionally, he is grateful for the opportunity to have worked on such a special project and is excited to see what the future holds for Arcane.
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