Announcing his departure via Twitter and a blog post, Dan Teasdale, senior designer at Harmonix and lead designer on Rock Band 3, has left the studio and taken a position at Twisted Pixel Games, which is known for Splosion Man, The Maw and the upcoming Comic Jumper.

Teasdale notes that while Rock Band 3 has not been released yet, it is “design complete and on the final path to 0 bugs, GM and distribution.”

"I want to be able to help drive the vision and direction of a game," writes Teasdale. "But at the same time be hands on and physically implement and iterate on the low level of making games in a more substantial way than time affords me when working as a lead on multi-hundred person titles."

He adds that this is nothing that can be done easily on a AAA title with more than 200 people working on it. Teasdale will now work on a “ridiculously cool new project” which will have a “close knit superteam”.

Rock Band 3 is set for release this holiday for PS3, Xbox 360, Wii and DS.