Overview

I'm a graphic artist who specializes in the creation of digital artwork and graphic design. I'm proficient with most industry-standard design, illustration, and photo-manipulation software. I operate my own freelance design and illustration business, but I'm currently looking for a full-time position working for a company in-house.

Software Proficiency

I've been working with Adobe Photoshop since 1996, and consider myself to be an expert in it's use. In addition to using the program for photo-manipulation, and preparation of images for print or web display, I often use it for the creation of highly-detailed digital illustrations.

Adobe Illustrator is my program of choice for vector-based illustrations, and I've been working with it for nearly as long as I've been using Photoshop. My digital illustrations tend to be more on the realistic side, so I usually choose Photoshop as my primary tool, but Illustrator is invaluable when it comes to designing logos, or any other graphics where a flat and clean appearence is preferable to realism.

I'm equally comfortable working on a Mac or Windows-based PC.

Other software that I consider myself proficient with includes (but isn't limited to):

• Adobe InDesign
• Dreamweaver
• Flash
• HTML & CSS
• Fireworks
• AfterEffects
• Premiere
• Autodesk 3DS Max

Design

I have extensive experience working with page layout for a large variety of formats, ranging from DVD jacket design, to museum information panels, directional signage, and conceptional visualizations. I'm able to create my own graphics, photographs, and illustrations as necessary to enhance the visual impact of my designs.

Photography

While photography hasn't been the primary focus of my career, I've developed skills and gained experience in the medium which has been an important part of my overall work. Some examples of my photographic work include: product shots, promotional imagry, and design elements.

Most of my professional photographic work has been done with a digital SLR camera. In the absence of a lab to properly develop film, I've found that working digitally is the next-best thing, and provides a quick and easy way to get the images into the format I need. Working with the camera raw files directly gives me much more control over the final image than would be available from an image automatically created by the camera.

Illustration

I've been trained in the use of several traditional mediums, such as oil paints, pencil, pen & ink, and water color, but I prefer to work digitally.

My workflow usually starts with drawing the scene on paper. Next, I use a multi-layered technique in Photoshop to do all of the coloring and shading and, if necessary, I'll use 3DS Max to create a background for the image. Working in this way allows me to produce highly-detailed images much faster than if I were working traditionally, and the work doesn't suffer from loss of detail in the way that traditional artwok does when scanned for digital use.

Web Design

My experience in the field of web design isn't quite as extensive as my other skills. However, over the last 2 years, I've become quite skilled in the use of HTML, XHTML, CSS, Adobe Dreamweaver, and Adobe Flash.

I don't feel that I have enough experience with databases or server-side programming to work as a website administrator, nor am I looking for that kind of position. Instead, I consider myself to be, primarily, a graphic artist, but with the ability to create and implement graphics for website use, and even create and deploy web pages that I design from scratch. (Such as this one.)