19 years. Nearly every seat.
I'm Dan Sandberg. I started as an environment artist on Ghostbusters: The Video Game in 2007, and I've been widening the range of jobs I can do ever since.
I spent a decade as a contract artist and technical problem-solver for AAA studios, where I was usually brought in for one job and ended up in pipeline discovery, mentoring, and prototyping. Along the way I learned to direct other people's work through written critique, paint-overs, and concept, and to task programmers and artists directly. I founded Atom Switch, Inc. in 2013. In 2022 I raised $3.4M to turn it into a full studio, then hired the team, directed the game, ran the business, and shipped INFESTSTATION. When seats emptied, I filled them, all the way to shipping the final two updates solo.
That's the unusual part of my background. I haven't just managed these disciplines. I've done the art, design, production, and business jobs myself, and directed the engineering hands-on. So when something breaks between them, I can see every side of it.
Based in the Greater Chicago area.
How I got here.
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2024 – Present
Consulting & Rebel Core: Awakens
Consulting through Atom Switch: diagnosing and fixing a UE5 cinematic capture pipeline for a licensed-IP pitch (via FX Chamber), and UI & technical art for Lost Lake's Vaunted. Also building Rebel Core: Awakens, a near-solo action platformer prototype (including composing its soundtrack) now in public Steam Playtest, while developing additional game prototypes alongside it.
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2022 – 2024
Atom Switch, Inc. · CEO & Creative Director
Raised a $3.4M seed round as solo founder in August 2022, on a concept-only pitch, just after venture funding for games had peaked. Over the next two years investors pulled back from games, with funding falling by roughly 70% from 2022 to 2023 and staying low through 2024. The rest of the $5M the project was planned around never came, and nearly every founder in my cohort hit the same wall. I restructured the plan so $3.4M covered the full two years of development, hired a remote team across five states, directed and helped build INFESTSTATION, and ran every business function. I then chose to ship in Early Access rather than stop, and followed with 11 updates. I also wrote the game's development blog, which follows the project from pre-production and funding through release and beyond.
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2020 – 2022
Bonfire Studios · Arkheron
Two-year embedded contract: seamless four-sided level tiles, a card-based scrollwork system that met the art style's visual and performance targets, and prototypes for a tutorial template, environment process, and a full play-space redesign. Case study →
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2019 – 2020
High Voltage Software · Fortnite
Weapons for Fortnite: Save the World, from blockout to in-engine, plus cleanup and rebakes of other weapons, and environment props and set pieces for Battle Royale and the Battle Pass agent rooms in The Hideout. One bow started as a side-view-only concept, and I worked it through with concept and direction until it fit the rig and animation set.
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2013
Atom Switch, Inc. founded
An interdisciplinary studio spanning games, design, and branding. Its first product, InfinitasDM, was a desktop and mobile tabletop RPG app and one of the only apps of its kind approved for Steam. On a fixed, Kickstarter-funded $40,000 budget with a single engineer, I designed, roadmapped, and managed it, and it shipped on time and on budget, including every Kickstarter reward. I also wrote its campaign content and ran live sessions at GenCon 50.
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2011 – 2022
Independent AAA contractor & design consultant
Shipped Call of Duty: Black Ops III, Rise of the Tomb Raider, Rage 2, Homefront: The Revolution, SMITE, Tribes: Ascend, and The Amazing Eternals. Work included modular Black Ops III weapons whose parts swap for attachments without visible seams, for launch and DLC, and full material direction from rough line-drawing concepts. Clients included Activision/Treyarch, Crystal Dynamics, Crytek/Deep Silver/Dambuster, Hi-Rez, Microsoft Game Studios, and AMD. Outside games: early 3D UI prototypes for Amazon's Fire Phone, VR UX for TRIPP, and a Kinect diagnostic pipeline for AveXis. Case study →
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2007 – 2011
Terminal Reality · Environment Artist
Shipped Ghostbusters: The Video Game. Spent nearly two years on Kinect Star Wars, built in Terminal Reality's proprietary Infernal Engine: prototyping new environment art pipelines, texture blending, and damage systems, whiteboxing kit-based levels, and doing sole-artist pre-production pipeline work alongside the publisher's Technical Director.