Aaron Garbut is an art director and studio head at Rockstar North. His work on Grand Theft Auto III helped turn Liberty City into a place players could explore freely, with life continuing around them beyond the story missions.1
Art direction and world-building
Garbut’s approach puts as much emphasis on what happens around the player as on the missions themselves. GTA III offered a first glimpse of that: a city whose inhabitants and everyday activity gave players reasons to stray from the next objective.1 Garbut argues that size alone can work against an open world; believability, variety, content density and complex systems matter too.1
He later served as Rockstar North’s art director on Grand Theft Auto: Episodes from Liberty City. Rob Nelson held the art-director role at Rockstar NYC on the same release.2
Rockstar North and GTA VI
By October 2026, Garbut and Nelson were heading Rockstar North’s Edinburgh studio. Together with Phil Hooker, they shared the title Head of Development across Rockstar’s development teams.3
GTA VI’s nightclubs show how that attention to a living world works at a smaller scale. Patrons, drinks, animation, music and lighting all contribute to the atmosphere. Garbut also credits the team’s years together with giving them a shared understanding of how to solve development problems.3