Brandon Jackson (aka: bigdaddykraven) is the owner, designer and webmaster of this entire domain. The purpose for this web page is to give myself and my various works a place to be displayed to the world, via the web. This is my little home in the digital world so-to-speak, welcome and watch your step over the threshold. Here is where I'll store much of anything that I've done and see to be worthwhile, from articles or stories I've written to artwork, physical or digital. So now that you know a little about what this site is for and why I pay the money to have it up on the net, I suppose you want to know who the heck I am.

That's a good question! I'll tell you what I know about me, but sometimes even that knowledge is limited. I'm a very complexed person after all, well, complexed and insane are really separated by a thin line.

Ok, you see that goofy looking guy in the top left corner? No. Not the one in the very top left in black outline...well actually, yeah that's me too but it's not what I was talking about, smart-alike. That divine, young man is your's truly. Handsome guy huh? Well, nobody asked you (shh, disregard the part where I asked you)! From time to time that image of myself may change, even if the content of this page rarely does so it's worth a visit every once in a while if nothing else but to see the many (goofy) faces of, well, me. I'm a bit indecisive at times which is why the picture will change, it's one of those things I do. Deal with it. This web site has actually had about three other designs before this current one came up and odds are, I'm working on a new one right now.

First things first, my name. I'm sure many of you who have typed this in are wondering why I bought bigdaddykraven.com if the web site is about me and my artistic endeavors or whatever I want to put up on here. Well, simply because I am bigdaddykraven...well that and brandonjackson.com was taken already and the jerk never e-mailed me back about buying the name. Go to the web site and e-mail the guy at least five times a day and tell him what a jerk he is, just uhh, don't tell him I sent you. Actually the name bigdaddykraven has a bit of a history to it, so get out your text books and turn it to page 236 and follow along. You see, at first it was a wrestling name, Kraven, my ring persona for a backyard federation that I was involved in. Yes, I know, wrestling!! It was the "thing" of the time and I was just a sheep following the herd like everyone else into that fad. I then began getting into the internet and computers more, thus brining me to the question as to what I would use for my internet handle, seeing as how I was always told not to use my real name. Kraven was taken because unknown to me, that was also the name of a Spider-Man super villain so I had to add a suffix, my wrestler's alter-ego villain himself, bigdaddykraven. So that's why I use that name bigdaddykraven. Odds are, anytime you see it on the web, it will be me because in all this time of having the name I have yet to run across another one.

Are you paying attention so far? Well you better because they'll be a quiz after it's over (don't worry, I'm too lazy to make up a quiz).

I, am a Visual Communication: Interactive Multimedia student., currently enrolled at Ohio University in Athens, Ohio. Sounds exciting doesn't it? I got into graphical design type interests because I have always had a love of art ever since my early years of life. Despite my pencil skills, or lack there of, I would always draw various things and fill up a page of paper with sketches. I'm a creative person and like to see my ideas and creations actually making a difference in my job which is one of the reasons I decided to work with graphical designs. With most other jobs, unless you manage to make yourself a big-whig executive or something, your ideas are worth about...(hmm, carry the three, add in the multiplier) nothing, give or take a few, math never was my strong point. In design however, you get to present your works, your ideas and creations to the client and it is your direct work that becomes the product. So in this field, your ideas are the most important thing. It's kind of a selfless job though. I mean come on, how many people know the name of the guy who created the logo for gateway, that lovely little cow patterned "G", or who made the big bucks for doing the Batman movie designs on the McDonalds cups. That doesn't matter to me though, it's seeing my ideas or work in use that makes me feel all squishy inside, well that and eating rotten food.

Computers are another big enjoyment of my life and another big reason that I decided on computer graphics. It used to all be done with paper, pencil(pen or whatever), glue sticks and so on up until computers became so accessible. Now with technologies of the day, everyone has a scanner, computer and printer at their side, as well as the internet (which is good for bigdaddykraven.com's business). Because of this, instead of cutting and pasting it on paper, as much anyway, you can do a lot of the work in the computer, creating endless possibilities with how far you can push the medium.

I have many programs and tools that I love to use, but I generally stick to the Adobe Suite, with the exception of a couple things. As for the creative aspect of Graphic Design, I use Adobe Photoshop and Illustrator to create the images, or at least do the graphical editing of them and digital drawing. Other Adobe products I use but not as normally as I do the two listed already are GoLive and InDesign are web design and publication programs, respectfully. Now when it comes to running this web page, and doing flash animation, I turn to Macromedia and their line of expertise in the creation of web software. Dreamweaver is the powerful program that I used to put this web site together and maintain it. I just created a template in Photoshop and Illustrator, then took the files into Dreamweaver and created magic, also creating many headaches along the way (Asprin please?). Now finally, is Macromedia's Flash program, used to make many of the snazzy flash displays that you see from time to time on the web. I don't use this program nearly that much, but it is the main program I use when I do wish to create a flash document for the web.

Ok, wake up! I understand that this isn't the most exciting thing in the world to read but you did choose to come here. If you don't like it, you can just click one of those pretty little links I designed to the left and it'll take you away from all this non-sense. NO WAIT! Come back, please? I promise I'll try to make it a little more exciting for the rest of this introduction.

Finally, about my hardware. My computer is nothing special but it runs great and has a lot of kick to it. Over a gig of ram, 3.2 ghz processor, video capture card and all the works. After a bad experience with my first computer, I decided not to give my money to a nameless, faceless organization and paid someone to make one for me (although I am able to do so myself but there's where that lazy thing comes in again). Now for the camera, and what a sweet camera it is. We have long since evolved from the need of film cameras and before too long, photo labs will be a thing of the past, aside from having do-it-yourself card readers and print stations at Wal-Mart. I too, have gone the way of digital imaging and shelled out the good cash to purchase a beastly camera from Nikon. Picking from their awesome selection of cameras, I selected the Coolpix 8700 with 8.1 Megapixels, Raw Imaging and much more, but this isn't an advertisement for them, they haven't paid me to do so and thus they get no more of my web space.

Well, the technical part was painful I'm sure but now I will let you dig into my person life a little more. I'll let you see what makes me "tick", or the wheels turn or whatever generic phrase you want to throw in there, they all will work just fine. You see, I've already told you that I love art and computers but a large part of me is based in athletics, especially Baseball and Football. Baseball is my number one passion but I have always loved football. I follow the teams of Cincinnati on the professional world, The Reds in baseball and The Bengals in football and in case you're wondering, The OHIO STATE Buckeyes are my favorite college team. As I stated, baseball is my life passion (more like an obsession) and each spring that comes rolling around the fever catches full force with me and drives me into a state of total baseball bliss for at least three months, when my summer league is over and the Reds have long since squandered away any chance of a postseason run (sigh). I also ran track in high school but never was the fastest person out there, even though I did go to the State Track meet my junior year with my 4x400 team but that was just something to pass the time before baseball started.

I'm partially a nerd in the sense that computers have played a large part of my life since I was really young. I didn't get my own computer until the mid-90's (which by the way was voted somewhere as the biggest do-nothing decade in modern history, go figure it was the beginning of the information age, but back to the point) but I was always playing on those in school, which were Macs at first, or playing video games at home. Computers have always been my friends when no one was around. Currently I still play on computers all the time and own a Playstation 2 and Xbox both.

Now onto my future goals. Nothing but, just fame, wealth and to marry Hilary Duff (granted I'm four years older but who marries the "same age"), is that all to much to ask for? Yes? Bah, party-pooper. I suppose I should be realistic. My true goals are to finish college and gain my Visual Communication degree, get a couple years under my belt under a firm somewhere and possibly move out to Florida with the ambition of opening my own shop or firm there. Why Florida you say? Well, for one, I love it there and secondly business would be more prosperous there while a hidden third reason is because they have baseball year round, so my baseball bliss would never have to come down.

Well, that's about all I have to say about myself. I may, make changes to this portion of the site from time to time, if I see it fit to make a change or if something in my life does in fact change (like to announce the wedding date of Miss Duff and I). As you may have taken from enduring the reading on this page, this page won't be a formal affair but more or less reflect my good-times, laid-back personality. This site is supposed to be about me and my work, so why not have my own personality reflect in it? Makes sense, no? Well, I'm glad you've found my web site and I really hope you enjoy your stay here. Tell you friends and come back and see me again yourself.