Projects of my own.
Outside of client work, I keep a handful of projects going. Each one started with an idea I wanted to see exist.
Backgammon
A 3D backgammon game client with a neural-net opponent I trained. The dice physics work and the opponent plays like a real player.
Language study engine
A Greek language-learning app I'm building. Spaced repetition, generative prompts, and a custom study engine. Currently being rebuilt to meet CEFR standards across all four language skills.
BombSki
A vertical-scrolling runner I'm building in Godot. Every sprite is hand-drawn and each block of code hand-coded — no AI, just for the fun of it. Still a work in progress.
Byzantine cross pendant
One of a line of “Quantum Age Byzantine” pendants I'm currently designing. Website will be revealed soon.
Before Arkion.
Flash games and websites
Before YouTube, there was Newgrounds. From middle school on I was making Flash games and animations, trying to get them on the site. Most got rejected. I kept at it.
Freshman year of high school, Cannon of Doom (2007) was the first that stuck — played, reviewed, and not taken down.
Super Mushroom Madness (2009). A little too edgy in spots, so I cut and censored a few bits before showing it here.
A Mario animation made it on in 2009 — mostly seeing what I could get away with.
Before the games, though, there were the websites. In fifth grade I got hold of Dreamweaver and mocked up homepages for imaginary businesses, Photoshopping in the images — sites where people could sign up and talk to each other.
Whatever needed a site.
All through high school I took every web, programming, and business class offered, and ran the website for the clubs I was in — Hellenic and Chinese.
The ASMSU site I ran as webmaster — Michigan State's student government.
At Michigan State I studied Social Media & Interactivity. Sophomore year I got my first job there, with the College of Agriculture — working across the many websites it ran. Not the content; the shared template code in the PHP system behind them all. Around then I became webmaster for the student government, ASMSU.
Senior year, the student radio's site too. Graduated 2015.
Building apps for real brands
The Chicago Auto Show app.
Out of school I joined AmericanEagle.com as a mobile app developer. Over the next year I built apps for real brands — including the official Chicago Auto Show app, which talked to Bluetooth kiosks on the show floor and pushed visitors whatever was nearby as they walked it.
I also built payment kiosks for a ferry line, including LED hardware I synced to the screen — once getting a new unit running the afternoon it arrived.
Freelancing remotely
Next came a few years of remote contract work out of Colorado — somewhere quiet, with mountains to hike between deadlines.
FlintEats — for residents of Flint, Michigan.
One was FlintEats — a healthy-recipes app a university built for residents of Flint, Michigan.
Alongside the contracts I was teaching myself machine learning, and gummyarena.com is where I tried it out. Every creature in it has its own little digital brain that learns. You set what to reward — staying peaceful, fighting, foraging, surviving longest, growing biggest — then fast-forward and watch what emerges.
Every hat in the shop
A sterling silver satyr-head pendant I designed and cast.
It started because I wanted a cool cross and signet ring of my own. Some pieces I modeled from scratch; others I'd remix from open-source 3D scans of real statues — dropping a satyr's head (or some beast's) onto a pendant or signet ring, then hollowing it out so it wasn't too heavy. The sculptures aren't mine (public-domain scans of historical works); what I designed was everything around them, and the work to make them castable. I listed a few on eBay with rough renders, and they sold.
Molten metal going into the cast. Sound on, if you want it.
The manufacturer I worked through brought me on — but only if I'd do all of it: run his $60k wax 3D-printer, take orders, manage projects, and do the marketing.
A custom ring set with a pyrope garnet.
For two months I ran the shop solo — calls, customers, projects, bookkeeping, shipping, website, social. I loved it.
3D design on screen, then the same piece printed in real wax — ready to cast.
Let's talk about your idea.
Two decades across design, code, marketing, and hardware — now with AI to move fast on the small stuff — means one person can weave all these pieces together for you, instead of hiring four companies to do it separately.