I’m Austin Brunkhorst. I live in Seattle, where I build delightful things.

Ever since childhood, I've had a fascination with gadgets, contraptions, and making anything I could imagine. The idea that you can take ordinary household items and build something that sparks joy—useful or humorous—continues to fuel my creative inspiration to this day.

My journey writing software began in middle school following the release of Call of Duty: Modern Warfare. I quickly latched onto the cultural phenomenon, spending countless hours grinding toward 10th prestige. Enamored by zzirGrizz montages, I convinced my parents to buy a Dazzle capture card, with which I produced my own montages and uploaded them to YouTube using the included Pinnacle Studio. This introduced me to internet forum subcultures, where I discovered video game hacking and the explosive popularity of modded multiplayer lobbies in the early 2010s.

My first exposure to coding was with GSC scripts—originally used by the Call of Duty franchise for campaign missions and multiplayer game modes. Hardware exploits like the Xbox 360 JTAG enabled an entire marketplace of creativity and entrepreneurism. These exploits leveraged custom GSC scripts to sell invites to lobbies that granted features like super jump and instant promotion to 10th prestige. Despite having no knowledge of computer science fundamentals, my enthusiasm led me to learn web development, which I combined with amateur graphic design skills to build an e-commerce site selling these lobby invites. I had some explaining to do when my dad's PayPal account was frozen after receiving thousands of dollars for an intangible product of questionable legality.

My passion for games led me to complete a job shadow during freshman year of high school at a ProjectFUN workshop hosted by DigiPen Institute of Technology. Throughout high school, I worked on projects that interested me, such as a website that scraped my school district's closures page to display whether school was canceled — particularly useful during a year of historic snowfall. During junior and senior years, I attended a technical trade school for half my day, focusing on game design and development. There, I was awarded Student of the Year in my program, which included a small scholarship. I ultimately earned my bachelor's degree in computer science at DigiPen and subsequently worked at Microsoft for over 8 years following an internship during my senior year.

Today, I continue exploring my fascination with creative production through videography, home automation, and most recently, 3D printing. Over the years working professionally, I've discovered a lot of meaning through design thinking and making things that meet the needs of humans and their capabilities.