Musiquest

Overview

MusiQuest is a music education platform for K-12 students, focused on the gamification of music education through interactive narrative, characters, and composition software. I interned with the company Edify on MusiQuest for 7 months in total, working on concept art, writing, editing, and ideating.

Being a tech start-up, the team was very small, only being about 12 people across all departments. This gave me a great opportunity to get to work with people in all areas of production, from gamification to production to art. Despite being an entirely remote company, there was a big focus on team culture and community that I really appreciated.

My Work

My internship was overseen by the Gamification team and was led by Anna Horzen. This team focused on making the actual game aspect of MusiQuest, while the rest of the team worked on making the lessons and platform functional. Gamification was still in earlier development compared to the rest of MusiQuest, so a lot of my work primarily involved concepting characters, environments, and props. I would also help with writing, editing, file organization, and keeping the social media up to date.

The Art Director Kirk Wallace joined the team full time part way through my internship, and as such I also got to work with him on some more finalized vector graphics. Kirk did all of the early visual development work I had been basing my concepts on, and likewise has his own very unique style. During the course of my working there, I learned a lot about replicating art styles, especially when the style is out of my comfort zone.

Having daily meetings with the team taught me so much about professionalism and the importance of team culture. There was a bit of an adjustment for me at first – I was sometimes too stiff and professional, and then sometimes too casual – but the team was incredibly patient and helped make it a great learning experience.

Reflection

I feel so lucky that my first experience in a professional work settings was with Edify and the MusiQuest team. Being a smaller team afforded me freedom to work on so many facets of production, from art to writing to editing. The team was also filled with incredibly talented, kind people, who were very passionate about the work they were doing: making music more accessible to kids. I realize how lucky I was to find a team like this, and am incredibly thankful for everything they taught me, and the work I produced with them likewise.