2021 Senior Exhibition Artists

Jackson "Mako" Burke

Art + Design: Animation + Game Arts

About Jackson “Mako” Burke

Jackson “Mako” Burke is an Integrated Visual Arts major with a primary focus on new media including video editing, game design, writing for video games, and digital music production. Mako is constantly seeking to challenge himself. To improve his craft, he dives into artistic experiments ranging from introspective video projects to performance incorporated sculpture. Over the past two years, Mako has continued to delve into the development of platforming RPG Steel Wool alongside the game’s developer and long-time collaborator Marcus Johnson. He contributes to the writing of both music, story, and even scheduling and directing a week’s worth of voice acting auditions. Mako has also recently begun the process of founding Social Practice Fight Club, a both artistic and musical coalition with the initiative to inspire personal agency within future generations of potential artists.

Statement

Charlotte’s Bluff has changed quite a bit since its conception, evolving rapidly in terms of format to accommodate its ultimate objective. The game is set in the eponymous town of Charlotte’s Bluff, in which you take the role of angels. Through manipulating a program designed to perform miracles, Angels seek to fix sticky situations for the town's less fortunate souls. The gameplay functions much like that of a traditional visual novel, with additional elements of difficult decisions that change the story’s direction permanently. Your objective is to use your influence to right injustices across the lives of several individuals across a nonlinear timeline, helping the townsfolk of Charlotte’s bluff rise from their failures and become better people. The game’s mechanic of permanently game altering decisions is designed to invoke awareness of the fact that we are all constantly changing in a way that we cannot control, taking us from points of fear when faced with a dilemma to comfort in knowing that we have the potential to improve ourselves through our development.