About
Dillan Schmitz (A.K.A King Aurorus) is a Canadian award winning composer & sound-designer and award nominated music producer working in video games, animation and film. He is currently based in Calgary, AB.
His personal artistic interest is music composition and sound design that naturally blends with the environment of the media’s setting in more ways than just effective tone setting or impactful sound effects (creating audio that “fits” within the environment in an semi-diegetic way) which he explores in many of his current and past works.
He has worked on a variety of viral video games alongside multi award winning films and animations varying wildly in genre and tone. Dillans works have included games showcased on IGN, OTK games festival and featured by streamers such as Atrioc. Dillan was also a speaker at the largest B2B game industry conference In America, The Game Developers Conference (GDC) 2025. He has also worked on projects ranging from vtuber collaborations to podcasts. Dillan has also done music production in the folk & pop industries with award winning artists like the whimsical Miarlequin. Outside of his awards for video game soundtracks & sound design he has also been nominated for Best EDM Recording at the 2022 YYCMA’s. Dillan graduated from the University of Calgary with a Bachelors in Music focused in classical music composition and also a Bachelor of Arts in music for film, TV and video games from Berklee College of Music (Summa Cum Laude). Early on in Dillans musical journey he also competed with the Calgary Stampede Showband where he was co-section leader for his final two years. During his time with the marching ensemble they won the world marching competition WAMSB in 2014 and received Gold at the World Music Competition in 2017 in Holland. Full Credits List Here
Dillan draws heavy inspiration from composers such as Koji Kondo - The Legend of Zelda, - Masashi Hamauzu - Final Fantasy XIII, Austin Wintory - Journey, Kenichi Tokoi - Sonic the Hedgehog and David Wise - Donkey Kong Country.
Dillan is also actively involved as a director of the non-profit organization the Calgary Game Developers Association. His volunteer work with the CGDA involves helping support and uplift the local game development community through community management, community events and social media marketing.
Outside of his work some of his hobbies include video games, watching anime/cartoons, powerlifting, programming synthesizers, voice acting and streaming.
