GuruStump.com: About the Host

About Me

I was born in the state of Utah during the 70s. My family lived for a year-long stint in France at the beginning of the Regan era, and so for a while there I was fluent in French (although that faded with the years). I displayed an early penchant for drawing pictures, and was often found doodling battles between Roman soldiers and Viking warriors (probably influenced by my favorite cartoon during the European epoch: Asterix). When people ask me how I learned to draw, I often tell them that I didn't really learn to draw, per se. I was simply the kid that never stopped drawing.

In high school, I got all dramatic and started trying out for school plays. I was regularly cast in them, usually as the murderer or some other criminal. Go figure. I was such a nice boy. In any case, I spent my senior year as the cartoonist for the school paper, as an actor in every play that was staged, as a competitor in Academic Decathlon, and as enough of a nerdy little brainiac that they actually allowed me to speak at graduation (where of course I just told jokes for three minutes).

For college, I attended Brigham Young University and majored in film. They must have been impressed by my jokes, because they let me do my entire bachelor's degree for free. The National Merit Foundation also liked me and chipped in with a few hundred bucks per semester. So I spent college keeping my grades up (because if my G.P.A. had dropped below 3.5 at any point, they would have actually started making me pay tuition) and working on people's student films. I logged a lot of time holding up a sound boom, gripping, gaffing, camera assisting, sound mixing, assistant directing, and yes, occasionally actually writing and directing. See the fruits of all that work here (my final project).

During the course of my college years I took what you might call a sabbatical and sallied off to Ivory Coast, in French West Africa. I marauded around the countryside, preaching Christianity for two years and working on my tan. I came back platinum-haired, red-skinned, French-speaking (again, but this time it stuck better) and weighing 15 pounds less.

Upon graduating from university (magna cum laude, but they didn't let me speak at graduation this time...darn them), I whisked away to Los Angeles to seek my fortunes. Here I have been ever since. I worked for Fox Sports for a couple of years and Amp'd Mobile for a couple more, with a number of odd jobs and freelance gigs interspersed between. I kick out the occasional short film with my local cohorts, and enter a video contest every once and again, and have accumulated quite a bit of equipment pursuant to this pastime in the meantime.

Whereas I still have cinematic aspirations, I've lately grown more and more into a full-blown computer geek. I'm well versed in Adobe Photoshop, After Effects, Premiere, Encore DVD and Illustrator. I can't say that I'm an expert in Adobe Dreamweaver, because I only ever use it in "code view" and hand-code all my web pages. I use CSS for all my layout and styling, and make sure my XHTML validates.

I'm currently available for various types of work, from illustration and design jobs, to web coding, to video production. If you want to contact me, please visit my e-mail form here. Otherwise, I invite you to enjoy the rest of my site. Thanks for the visit.