Chris Hendricks

From Club Penguin Music

Chris Hendricks (also known as Screenhog) is a music writer and producer, as well as a pianist. He was part of the Club Penguin staff since 2005 and left in 2010, but continued making hire work until 2012, and later came back to compose music for Club Penguin Island in 2016. Although he is mostly known for his music, he started his job on the franchise as a graphic artist and animator, designing penguins and items.

Hendricks is one of the most notable composers from Club Penguin, writing over 90 tracks and being the most active source of music from 2009 to 2012, as well as the first original composer for the series. Before him, all music was bought from music libraries. He also became the most popular figure for "the Club Penguin composer" due to his active presence in social media.

Music Career[edit]

Early Life[edit]

Hendricks began his music life at the age of 5, when he started taking piano lessons. By the age of 11 he had grown sick of them, but reignited his passion for music by starting to compose his own[1].

Club Penguin[edit]

He first started his career hoping to become an animator, joining New Horizons in 2005 to work on Club Penguin as a graphic artist.

In the beginning of game, all songs were bought from stock music websites, but in the process of getting a track for the minigame Thin Ice in 2007, the team could not find anything that suited it. On face of that, Hendricks decided to make the required track himself with the musical knowledge he had, using a Korg M1 synthesizer. Thin Ice was not only his first professional work as a music writer, but the first of many he would do for the game afterwards.

Hendricks began composing mostly on a Yamaha PSRE403 keyboard, ocasionally making music for Club Penguin while working on other things[2]; faced with the game's varied demand, he started feeling held back by his equipment and wished to produce music with more realistic sounding instruments, particularly motivated by the goal of making an electric guitar for Sled Racing. Upon this, he bought the GOLIATH music package from East West sounds and began making songs with it, what he considered a step up for his career, also mentioning his love for composing with the package's drums. He also started using a "m-audio keystation 88es" controler instead of the Yamaha keyboard, in order to better operate the music creation[3].

After Leaving Club Penguin[edit]

Hendricks left the team in october of 2010, but continued making music as a hire composer until 2012. His last work for the game was the Marvel Super Hero Takeover soundtrack[4].

After that he would join Hyper Hippo Productions, a canadian software developer company co-funded by Lance Priebe, his friend and former employer. There he would make music for games like Adventure Capitalist and Box Critters.

On 2016 he came back to produce music for Club Penguin Island, making the login theme as well as music for the Rockhopper quests; that would be his his last work for the Club Penguin franchise.

He worked as a hire artist for different Club Penguin fans projects, such as Club Penguin Rewritten, CP3D[5] and Keyan Carlile's Card-Jitsu documentary[6]. He also composed music for Polo & Moose's upcoming spiritual successor to Club Penguin, Parrot Party[7].

Trivia[edit]

  • His favorite song to compose for Club Penguin was "Cave of Creeps and Clarinets" for the Halloween Party 2010's Monster Room.
  • The song he restarted the most times was "Into the Box Dimension", with 6 different song attempts in total[8].
  • According to Chris, the most useful question in hire composing was asking the client if there is an existing song that matches the mood of what they wanted[9].

References[edit]