Who is this guy?
Well, that's a tough question; I'm gonna try and break it up into two sections: What I do and Where I came from.
What I do
I'm a multi-disciplinary designer and developer with years of experience in not only front-end (HTML/XHTML, CSS, Javascript, AJAX), but also back-end (PHP, ASP.net, MySQL) development committed to delivering the absolute best web experience you can give to your visitors. To that end, I write clean, standards-compliant code that degrades gracefully and emphasizes usability over plain aesthetics.
I care very deeply about information architecture and providing effective navigation to users; to this end I work my best to create clear heirarchies that reflect how users already move through websites.
I have years of experience working with more or less the entirety of the Adobe Creative Suite, on every major operating system (Windows of any flavor, Mac OS X, and several different Linux distributions), and for many different browsers (particularly all major browsers and even several minor ones). In my hands, you will be taken care of.
Examples of my work can be found in my Portfolio, and if you would like to contact me about a project you have, please take the time to fill out the form on my Contact page.
I've also got experience as an indie game developer; indeed, I started off in college going for a degree in Game Development (I switched to Interactive Media during my sophomore year). You can look at my projects page for more, but the focus of my work in games is on spriting (pixel art) and the design of game mechanics (coming up with actions the characters can perform).
Where I came from
Ever since I was a kid, I've known that I would end up being some kind of creative; whether it was a musician, artist, or designer, I knew that I wanted to create things; old things, new things, crazy things, it didn't matter. I had an impossible thirst for new experiences, possibilities, and perspectives, and I wanted to be able to express that in whatever it was I would do.
When I was younger, this manifested itself in the multitude of activities I was able to do (with the help of my family, of course); Before I was ten, I had already taken up playing the trumpet, mastered MS-DOS, was an active Cub Scout (and, later, Boy Scout), loved going to see live theater, had made my first animation (a claymation of Pac-Man eating my little brother), and many others.
Throughout my teenage years, I tried my hand at even more; singing, acting, marching band, the peer leadership team at my local church, and, most importantly, I built my first website and learned about indie games. Since then, my life has changed. (Never mind that my first website was made in Frontpage and I had dozens of indie game projects that never got off of the napkins I made notes on)
You see, I had found two things that I not only loved to do, but that I never managed to lose interest in. They fought for my attention throughout high school, and by the end it was looking like game design was where I wanted to be. So, when I enrolled at DePaul University and started in 2006, I put myself into their Game Development program and simultaneously worked on getting an Interactive Media Minor.
Eventually, these two flip-flopped (I realized that I didn't want to work in the game industry; it's not exactly an easy industry to get into, and it seemed to be heading in a direction I didn't want to be going), but I've still kept my love for both.
So here I am now, about to graduate college and go into the big, scary real world. What it holds for me, I don't know, but I do know one thing; I'm ready. Ready for whatever life has to throw at me, and ready to get right into doing what I love to do.