Project Burbank

From May 2024 until February 2026 I worked at a small startup called Midsummer Studios. My official title and primary role on Project Burbank was as the Principal Character Artist - responsible for end to end character production of a small cast of characters used to populate the town of Oakdale for our game codenamed Project Burbank. I was 1 of 3 artists on the team and though I was primarily focused on characters, I also had the opportunity to work on nearly every aspect of the visuals for the demo. From lighting, to material / shader creation, to environment kit setups, to UI work, and even designing various pieces of swag for our employees. I wore many hats and loved every minute of it.

As a team, we operated with an 80/20 philosophy. We focused on getting assets in early and iterating until we were 80% satisfied with how they looked and performed. Though this wasn’t the first time I had worked with that philosophy in mind, having the entire development team operating that way focused our development wholly and really gave us all permission to be ok with painting with a broad brush and not getting too bogged down with meticulous details that would not significantly improve the player experience.

In the post below, I will outline and showcase some of the work I did on Project Burbank and do my best to articulate the decision making and showcase the work that went in to bringing the town of Oakdale to life.