Hello 

Hi, I’m David. I’m an artist who loves telling stories and making games and working in small teams. I grew up in Baltimore, MD, and now live in Emeryville, CA.

My best known work is the art for the acclaimed indie game Braid, released in 2008. My painterly art work was often cited as a highlight. Braid was featured in the documentary, Indie Game: The Movie. We recently released Braid, Anniversary Edition on all major game consoles. It’s a true-to-the-original update with repainted high resolution art, new effects, enhanced music and audio atmospherics, and an ambitious commentary system.

Before Braid, I made a web comic called A Lesson Is Learned But The Damage Is Irreversible with my close friend, writer Dale Beran. This project has a special place in my heart because of its bold, naive, restless experimentation, and how the stories wrestled with those fears on the murky coastline between childhood and adulthood. The gaps between episodes grow ever wider but I will never consider the series over as long as Dale and I are surviving.

In April 2022 some friends and I announced the creation of a new video game studio called Furniture & Mattress. Our first game is Arranger: A Role-Puzzling Adventure, releasing this year. Please look forward do it!

Since mid-2018 I’ve been a member of Democratic Socialists of America, doing art for zines and flyers and helping out with other stuff when I can. For a little while I was running the chapter’s podcast, Report Back. Worker organizing and Palestinian liberation are issues I hope to devote more energy to this year.

Second Quest (2015) is a graphic novel made in collaboration with writer Tevis Thompson. It’s the story of a girl living on an island in the sky who begins to doubt the legends she was taught growing up. By asking dangerous questions about her culture’s history, she incites a conflict with the city’s elders. Second Quest was inspired by the famous videogame series The Legend of Zelda, and on one level is a skewed reflection of its mythology. Among Tevis’s brilliant critical essays, “Saving Zelda” describes the decline of the Zelda series and remains a major critical underpinning of Second Quest, a work with many layers and influences. Through Kickstarter we received funding from over 1,500 generous backers. Second Quest is available in hardcover and digital versions, although the physical version has become something of a rarity!

Jeff & Casey Time (2011) is a comedic animated series starring Jeff Roberts (of Rad Game Tools) and Casey Muratori (of Handmade Hero) as demented versions of themselves. There’s a frantic grandiosity to their misguided plans, but the characters’ resilience and friendship carry them through. At first I was doing all the art myself, but after “Book 1” I hired Nolan Fabricus, a talented cartoonist, and Raber Umphenour, a skilled filmmaker and a leader of the arts community in Boston. The joys of this project were dreaming big, laughing with friends, and translating Jeff and Casey’s performances to animation.

Besides long-term projects like these, I also enjoy contracting on things like album artwork when I can fit them in.

Feel free to get in touch via email or twitter/X.