hustic.art

Megan Barnes

A woman with tattoos, piercings, pink mirrored sunglasses, and a gray cap, standing in an outdoor marketplace with tents and clothing racks in the background.

Project Manager • Art Manager • 3D Character Artist

Project Manager with proven expertise leading XFN teams internally and externally from global tech and gaming companies to small indie studios. Successfully built efficient outsourcing pipelines for Concept art, 3D Character/Prop art, and 2D art from the ground up. Familiar with startups and beginning phases of development as well as live ops.

Interested in both full time and part time employment currently - don’t hesitate to reach out to see if we would be a great fit.

Current Work (Meta Reality Labs)

As Project Manager at Meta Reality Labs, I led the creation of 1,500+ assets across Avatar Clothing, Fantastical Avatars, 3D Props, Stickers, and Character Art for Horizon Worlds VR and Mobile. Highlights include: Shipping 700+ Avatar Clothing items while pioneering Meta's new Style 2 system, leading 130+ Fantastical Avatars — several becoming top-downloaded across all users, producing 400+ 3D Props for partner studios, collaborating with ILM on a Star Wars VR experience, building the Sticker ingestion pipeline to remove engineer dependency, and defining the Character Art pipelines for Sky Pets.

Across all projects, I managed multiple outsource studios simultaneously, building the outsourcing pipeline connecting external vendors with internal developer teams from the ground up. I created extensive documentation and style guides, and personally art-directed every asset to ensure top-tier quality. I also provided technical direction, coordinated QA and release timing to align delivery with developer deadlines, in-game events, and launches, and tasked out duties across XFN partners while maintaining clear communication between all stakeholders.

The projects below are organized by category to reflect the breadth of this work.

Past Work

Before Meta, my foundation in project management began across several projects in my Lead and Senior roles as a Character Artist. Highlighted below are the two most impactful projects I worked on — WithMe and Kindred Fates — along with a selection of personal and indie artwork. WithMe is a mobile avatar project I worked on from early development through initial release. In that time, I managed outsourced assets from external studios, built art pipelines from the ground up to improve workflow efficiency, and developed new pipelines in a brand-new proprietary engine. While working on Kindred Fates — a PC/Nintendo Switch Pokémon-like game — I scoped and carried out a major overhaul of the player and NPC system, enabling a large library of customizable, mix-and-match characters. These experiences — managing vendors, building pipelines, solving production problems, and leading technical initiatives — are what naturally transitioned me from an experienced artist into a dedicated Project Management role.

Shipped Titles

See below a selection of shipped titles I’ve contributed to, highlighting my roles of Project Manager and Character Artist for 2000+ assets across 17+ titles from early development through release and live ops.

*click each image to take you to the game’s store page!

DressX Fashion Rivals (Meta Quest/Mobile)

Star City Pizza Kitchen (Meta Quest/Mobile)

Kindred Fates (Nintendo Switch/PC/Steam)