Draft:William Alexander Ryan

Will Ryan
Birth name	William Alexander Ryan
Born	(1992-04-29) April 29, 1992 Leeds, West Yorkshire, England
Origin	Leeds, West Yorkshire, England
Genres	Nerdcore Electronic Hard Rock Alternative Metal Industrial Metal
Occupation	Singer-songwriter, Writer, Animator, Voice Actor, Youtuber
Years active	1999–present
Member of	DAGames IRIS Will Ryan Originals
Formerly of	Onyx Colony
Website	daonline.co.uk

William Alexander Ryan (born April 29, 1992) is an English YouTuber, musician, animator, writer, and video game developer. He is most known for his songs based on video games, which he releases under the DAGames alias. He also releases original music under the IRIS and Will Ryan Originals aliases.

Career

Ryan began his career in 1999 on Newgrounds by making various animations, eventually resulting in the creation of the ComiX series in the year 2008. ComiX was a series focusing on two guys who befriended each other in their school days and now work in a comic book store because of their deplorable academic performance. Around 2007, Ryan started creating music and uploading it on his Newgrounds channel, as well as MySpace, with two separate projects: Epical Trance (seemingly becoming W.A.R later, being an acronym of Ryan’s name), a solo project focusing on electronic, pop, and trance music, and Land of Hell a metal project consisting of Ryan and his friend Joshua Spreight.

Ryan continued working on music announcing two albums, one for each project: Imagination! for Epical Trance and Cus the Bitches Can for Land of Hell; being almost finished and ready for release; however, a majority of the songs featured have either been lost or have remained unreleased. In the latter part of 2008, Ryan started expressing his qualms with animation, saying that he felt like he could not push himself to animate even though he had no problems writing the scripts and recording the lines for the projects; around this time, Ryan also announced that he is starting music college. Near the end of the year, he announced that Land of Hell would be changing its name to the simpler name, Colony, along with an album called Devilution, which seems to have never been released.

In January 2009, Ryan announced the first actual Colony album, The Sky. Later that month, he would release an EP with the same title containing four tracks from the album. The tracklist for the full album is unknown, and all the songs off of the EP other than Tears Drop to the Ground have been lost.

In July 2009, Colony's name was changed for a final time to Onyx Colony. At the same time, another album, Claustro Ego, was announced and released in September. During this period, the band consisted of Ryan, Joshua Spreight, Liam Ledger, and Danneh Parkinson. Around this time, Ryan started his first YouTube channel, where he uploaded animations, Let's Plays, and Onyx Colony songs.

2010 marked Ryan's retreat from most of his projects. It marked the year of his daughter's birth and the start of his time at Game Developer College.

In 2011, while still in college, Ryan started uploading animations and music on YouTube, mostly leaving his Newgrounds channel behind. He only made posts when new videos were uploaded to his YouTube channel; that year also marked the creation of a new YouTube channel named Diamond Armada Online, which would later become DAOnline and DAGames.

In 2012, Onyx Colony released the 15-track "Borderlines EP " on Bandcamp. However, a large part of the EP remains lost because it was removed from Bandcamp.

2014 officially marked the Diamond Armada Online channel's name change to DAGames, which focused more on Let's Play content. Around 2015, Ryan released the FNAF 3 animation, "One Animatronic At Freddy's," which gave the channel a significant boost in popularity. Just a month later, Ryan released his first nerdcore song under the DAGames name, a FNAF 3-inspired track titled "It's Time to Die."

Through the years, Ryan continued making more songs inspired by various videogames, releasing the greatest hits album Press Start to Begin Vol. 1, and in 2017, he released his most popular and loved song to date, a song inspired by the hit indie horror video game Bendy and the Ink Machine called Build our Machine, which currently has over 180 million views. Around this time, Ryan started feeling tired of making nerdcore music and started working on original music, launching a series of singles starting in December 2016 in preparation for his first original album in years, titled Heart of an Artist, which was released on May 24, 2018, alongside DAGames' Greatest Hits, Vol. 1.

Since then, Ryan has continued making both nerdcore music as well as original music under the alias IRIS, releasing the album Goliath's Throne in October 2019, Dawn of the Dimetrix in August 2021, and a remake of Heart of an Artist, titled Heart of an Artist: Resurrection, in December 2023. Ryan also launched an original album titled Flashdrive in 2020 under the DAGames alias with the tagline "Songs made in an hour" because each song had been completed in just one hour. In 2022, Ryan announced that a remake of the album called Flashdrive: SSD was in the works, later getting a projected release date of 2024 and then getting delayed to an unspecified date.

Another currently worked-on project is Open Infinitum, a completely original album, not being inspired by any game, whose songs are to be later connected to a certain game or show by the rest of the DAGames team. The album was also projected to be released by the end of 2024 following the release of its first single, Mad Man, but has been delayed indefinitely.

A greatest hits compilation, titled "Press Start to Rewind," was released physically on July 15, 2024, with a digital release set to follow later. The DAGames channel has over 2.2 million subscribers as of November 2024.

DAGames

The DAgames channel and alias contain all of Will Ryan’s video game-based songs and compilation albums; his most popular songs, such as "Build Our Machine" and "Get Out," come from this alias.

IRIS

Will Ryan began the IRIS project by releasing its first single, Heart of an Artist, on December 5th, 2016, followed by a 12-track album with the same name on May 24th, 2018. The record was then followed by two more albums: Goliath's Throne on October 30th, 2019, which kick-started the actual story for the IRIS project, which was then expanded upon by the last actual album in the IRIS trilogy, Dawn of the Dimetrix on August 21st, 2021. At some point in 2019, Ryan announced that the album Heart of an Artist would receive a from-the-ground-up remake titled Heart of an Artist: Reignite. Two remakes of the tracks Why Do We Hold and Draw the Line were released in preparation for the project's release before the announcement of its postponement. Later, in March 2023, Ryan announced that the project was being worked on again under the title Heart of an Artist: Resurrection. Three remakes of the tracks Why Do We Hold, S.O.S, and Draw the Line were released as singles in preparation for the project's release on December 15th, 2023. In addition to the remakes of the older tracks, the album also included a brand new track titled Castle That Burns.

All albums in the IRIS project are concept albums that tell the story of the realms Hithaföl and Yondrathöl, their people, and the unimaginable power of the IRIS, an emblem of archival, holding the knowledge of everything that ever existed, which merged with the story's protagonist Goliath, as a result of an invasion on his home, the Pergaprime Castle, caused by the story's antagonist Abrahm Valentin and his flawed copy of the IRIS called the Dimetrix. A virtual TTRPG experience based on the IRIS story called Jaws of Dawn, in which people from the official discord server could participate, was streamed live in 2020, coinciding with the release of the single Mothohive for the Dawn of the Dimetrix album. Ryan held the Iris Direct event on October 30, 2024, During which a board game version of Jaws of Dawn was revealed to be in active development under the title Jaws of Dawn: The Board Game. And the rerelease of all Iris albums planned for 2025. The Definitive editions will include extra CDs with bonus content for each album and tweaks in design. Ryan also announced that a new song called Birth From Exile, which continues the story of Goliath's Throne, was in production. Upon release, the song will receive a 3D animated music video, the first of its kind for Ryan's music.

A series of novels covering the entire IRIS story is being written. The story consists of three arcs: Valentin, Behemoth, and baltornae. In the Iris Direct event, the first chapter of a novel covering the Behemoth arc of the story was announced to be releasing in early 2025 in audio and digital formats.

Will Ryan Originals & Pandorium

Will Ryan Originals is a collection of Ryan’s original stories and music; the collection currently includes two series: IRIS and Pandorium. Pandorium is an anthology series of interconnected stories that began in 2021 with the announcement of Ryan’s dystopian sci-fi story Solitude. The project's first song, "Hail to the Jester, Queen & King," was released on June 20, 2021, followed by a second song titled "Know Your Place" on October 28, 2023.

Solitude will be spread across a comic book series and a video game titled Solitude: Echoes from the Bloodline (developed under HammerScorn Media), which will be released sometime in 2024 alongside the comic book's first issue. The third Solitude song, Join the Bloodline, was released on June 30, 2024.

The Pandorium anthology includes three other stories: HumN, Mercy's Garden, and an unnamed 4th project.

Discography

Albums

Epical Trance / Will Ryan

Imagination! (Unreleased)

Knocked Down to Disaster (Unreleased)

W.A.R

Crank It Loud (Unreleased | 2007-2014)

Land of Hell / Colony / Onyx Colony

Cus the Bitches Can (2008 - Lost)

I'm Watching, I'm Waiting (Lost)

Devilution (Lost or Cancelled)

Claustro Ego (2009/2011)

The Sky (2009 - Lost)

The Encrypt (2011)

Borderlines (2012 - Mostly Lost)

Corruption (2012-2014)

Borderlines (The Lost Relics) (2020)

DAGames

Press Start to Begin Vol. 1 (2016)

Pizza Puppet Panic (2019)

Eternal Swing (2019)

Flashdrive (2020)

Borderlines (The Lost Relics) (2020)

Flashdrive: SSD (2025)

Press Start to Rewind (2024)

IRIS

Heart of an Artist (2018)

Goliath's Throne (2019)

Dawn Of the Dimetrix (2021)

Heart of an Artist: Resurrection (2023)

Video games

Tetris flash edition (2006)

Will on da keyboard! (2006)

Will + co: Tipsy Turvey! (2007)

IRIS: Jaws of Dawn (2020)

Solitude: Echoes from the Bloodline (2024)

IRIS: Jaws of Dawn: Behemoth Update (TBA)

IRIS: Jaws of Vegala (TBA)

Personal life

Ryan has revealed that he has two brothers: Joseph Charles George Ryan (younger brother) and Thomas James Ryan (older brother), and a daughter named Jessica Ella May Ryan. He is in a relationship with one of the head moderators of his Discord server, InuTrash (otherwise known as Sofia).

Ryan is known to have had many pets throughout the years, such as two hamsters named Iris and Megara, and multiple birds, all of which are different species of parrots, named Zelda, Axel, and his current pet bird, Odin.