A sampling of some of the stuff I’ve worked on, with some of the most talented collaborators anyone could hope to encounter in one lifetime.

Kiln (Double Fine, 2026)#

A still image from Double Fine’s Kiln. Some anthropomorphic clay pots are dancing on a retro disco floor.

I’m a graphics programmer on Kiln, an online multiplayer party pottery brawler.

Like all of Double Fine’s recent titles, this is a game built on the foundation of a studio-specific fork of Unreal Engine 5. We have a pretty small programming team, so if something’s on the screen, I probably had something to do with it. More specifically though, a major area of focus of my work was the game’s core differentiating feature: a GPU-accelerated pottery wheel and studio where players can sculpt and glaze their own pottery in real-time, which they then ‘inhabit’ with a their tiny spirit avatar and compete in team-based combat.

I also worked on the studio’s in-house animation pipeline and Unreal tooling, which is used for Kiln’s extensive modular character customization and expressive flipbook-style mesh animations.

In addition to the focus on graphics and animation, I also led the charge to get the game running at our aggressive performance targets of 60 FPS on low-end current-gen console hardware. No small feat, given the fast-paced heavy-on-physics action and extensive use of Unreal’s latest advanced graphics features like Nanite and Lumen.

Kiln is really a pleasure to play, and a wonderful creative achievement for the team that made it. You can try it out on PC, Xbox Series, and PlayStation 5.

Keeper (Double Fine, 2025)#

A still image from Double Fine’s Keeper. A strange, teal bird perches upon a gnarled lighthouse.

Keeper is a pensive journey through a surreal, post-apocalyptic landscape. Also, you play as a walking lighthouse.

As part of the studio’s Core Systems team, I played a supporting role on this title, which was in production concurrently with Kiln. Keeper uses the animation system built for Kiln as part of its bird-like deuteragonist, Twig. I also shepherded the latest versions of Unreal Engine into our studio-specific fork, so the project could make use of the latest Unreal technology, merged with Double Fine’s extensive set of in-house tooling for animation, cutscenes, dialog, and gameplay.

Keeper is available on PC and Xbox Series consoles.

Notability (Ginger Labs)#

A digital sketch of a person’s face, created with the application Notability.

Notability is a popular iPad and macOS application for note-taking and drawing.

I was brought into the fold at Ginger Labs to re-architect their legacy graphics technology stack based on Apple’s Core Graphics, and replace it with a proprietary drop-in solution that satisfied the expanded scope of their future product direction.

This work resulted in a GPU-accelerated 2D vector graphics stack, based on the Metal framework. This required replacement coverage for a substantial portion of Apple’s Core Graphics API, with near bit-for-bit accurate image output when compared with the original, in order to avoid disruption to Notability’s sizeable entrenched user base.

The really cool thing was what the net-new feature: a vector-based graphite flake simulation that would replicate the experience of sketching with an actual pencil. The expressive input and sensitivity provided by the Apple Pencil accessory made this really fun to work on. Additionally, the aggressive 120 Hz frame rate target was crucial in providing a lag-free and natural experience on supported devices.

Notability is available on Apple’s App Store.

VSCO#

A still frame from a video collage, featuring an obscured face, hand, and flora, framed in concentric squares.

VSCO is a platform for editing and sharing photos and videos on mobile. I had the pleasure of working on a bunch of really cool stuff during the more than six years I spent at the company.

I was part of the core team that replaced VSCO’s legacy CPU-bound image editing stack with a fully GPU-accelerated version, bringing high-performance and better battery life to their users. I also worked on the Film X feature, a next-generation film stock emulation tool. Fun tidbit: our team pulled old Kodachrome stock from freezers all over the world, and succeeded in creating a clean-room reverse engineer of the lost-to-time photo chemical process for developing it! A lot of really brilliant people worked on this. The result was an extremely accurate digital recreation of a timeless film look, available on any modern smartphone.

Additionally, I helped bring VSCO into the modern age with the team that worked on the company’s first video products. First, a video clip editor with complete feature parity with VSCO’s award-winning still image editing suite. Finally, I was the tech lead on a ground-breaking non-linear video collage tool we called Montage.

Perhaps the most surreal bit of my time at VSCO was when the company briefly broke into mainstream public consciousness via the “VSCO Girl” cultural phenomenon. It was everywhere you looked online for a few months. Save the turtles! Sksksksksksksk. (You had to be there.)

VSCO is available on iOS, Android, and the Web.