Ari Gibson

Ari Nicholas Gibson^[1] was born in Adelaide, South Australia,^[2][3] on 14 May 1983.^[4]

He graduated from the University of South Australia with a Bachelor of Visual Arts, majoring in New Media Art.^[4]

Gibson formerly worked with The People's Republic of Animation starting in 2005, where he collaborated with Eddie White on many projects, most notably The Cat Piano (2009),^[5][6][7] which received many awards.^[8][9] He also ran Mechanical Apple, a boutique animation studio,^[10] alongside Jason Pamment.^[11] The studio produced animations such as the music video for Gotye's "Bronte" (2011).^[12] Other praised animations include the music video for the title track from the album Sometimes the Stars (2010) by The Audreys,^[13] Winter Fox (2014),^[11] and Motorbike (2014).^[14]

In 2014, Gibson co-founded the independent video game studio Team Cherry with William Pellen, whom he had previously worked with on game jams. They started a Kickstarter project for their then-upcoming game Hollow Knight, which was a success; the game released in 2017 to critical acclaim. Gibson worked on the game's art and animation, while also co-directing its development.^[15]

He later worked on a piece of Hollow Knight downloadable content that eventually evolved into a sequel, Hollow Knight: Silksong, with the same roles he had while working on Hollow Knight.^[16] The game's development took over seven years, though Gibson described the process as enjoyable.^[17] Hollow Knight: Silksong released on 4 September 2025, also to critical acclaim.^[18]

For Hollow Knight, and presumably its sequel, Gibson scanned his hand-drawn art directly into the game's engine. This was done to "create [a] vivid sense of place."^[15]

PC Gamer writer Tom Marks described Gibson's art in Hollow Knight as using “a mostly monotone dark color palette.” He characterized the character designs as “relatively clean and simple”, but noted that Gibson’s animation “fills them with personality”. He also described Gibson's background art as quite complex, contrasting the rest of Hollow Knight's art.^[19] Alana Hagues of Nintendo Life described Gibson's art in Silksong as being "a rainbow compared to the muted tones of [Hollow Knight's] Hallownest", while also still being "sombre"; describing it as using a "beautiful colour palette".^[20]

Despite the immense financial success of Team Cherry's games, Gibson lives in a "very basic two-bedroom apartment", and spends most of his time at the Team Cherry office, finding working on games to be most enjoyable. In an August 2025 interview, he said that "sometimes I think, ‘You know what would be better, is a one-bedroom apartment.’ Because then there’s even less to maintain.”^[17]