David Battilana is a creative director working across games, XR and live entertainment. For twenty years he has designed the look of music-driven worlds that respond in real time to players, performers and crowds.

He spent fifteen years at Harmonix in Cambridge, Massachusetts, starting as an environment artist on Rock Band, leading environment art on Rock Band 2 and 3, and going on to lead art on Dance Central 2, Fantasia: Music Evolved, Amplitude, DropMix with Hasbro and Fuser.

Along the way he designed for plastic guitars and drum kits, Kinect cameras, NFC-chipped DropMix cards, and console, PC and mobile screens.

At Wave the stage became a live broadcast, with suitless mocap performers streaming to Quest and Pico across 60+ live virtual concerts. As Sr. Art Development Director, he directed the visual identity of shows including Justin Bieber, Calvin Harris on PICO and TikTok LIVE, and Riot Games' Pentakill. Over time his work shifted from building shows to building the tools behind them: platforms that let performers shape their own stage in real time.

In 2014 he presented at SIGGRAPH Real-Time Live, walking through how Harmonix brought motion control into Fantasia: Music Evolved. Based in Boston, he holds a BFA in Illustration from MassArt, where he has assisted with coursework in professional illustration and takes part each year in the graduating students' portfolio reviews.

The work here reflects the talented developers at Harmonix and Wave, and the partners and collaborators outside both studios who helped build it.

Each project page names the role: visual direction from first look to final sign-off on most, a specific part on the rest. Hands-on work was there to prove an idea or set the bar.

Clients and publishers:

Production partners: