RIGHT NOW...
I have my own Web Design business called Webskinz that my wife and I have been building for the past 4 years, and I've had no time for anything but making money to support the family. Evelyn's in her last year of Masters so hopefully at the end of this year I'll have even more time to relax.
I just designed Richard Christy's website. He used to drum for Death & Iced Earth, and now he works for Howard Stern.
I teach Photoshop classes at IADT in Olrando Florida, and if you're one of my students don't ask me "Aren't you that guy that sings in a band". It's school people, I can't talk about that sort of thing on school grounds. Come to a show or email me. I love the fact that you're a fan but don't put me on the spot in school, I will deny being in a band, nuf said.
By the way, those of you that know me, I've decided to make a major change in life and quit 5 Billion Dead, and I'm now singing for Dead Mens Dreams.
Keepers of the Orb is a novel I've been working on since 1991. It was a comic I drew until I wanted to make it into a novel. There were too may things I wanted to do with Keepers to just have it a comic book, I wanted read more...
Woodrow is a comic strip I started in 1988 at Art School, it was then called Murray's Friend, I've since revamped it and read more...
Gary Dufner's Bio (the quick version):
"Born
as Gary Dufner in Mt. Kisco NY, I grew up living in several
different towns in New York State. Having only a couple of
close friends, I went through schools listening to teachers
and never studying and passing with good grades (Did you
hear that, I listened to the teacher in order to achieve
a good grade). Friends are a dime a dozen, find a friend
that will stay with you through thick and thin is another
story entirely! I only have a handful of those. High School
sucked! I was NOT a jock, hippie, art fag,
burn out, nerd, popular,
etc... BUT I was an outsider looking in. I watch EVERYTHING!
As my dad says, "Show
that kid how to do something once and he'll be able to perfect
it." Thanks
dad... Anyway, I didn't know what I wanted to be when I grew
up, I still don't, but I did know 2 things; I was good at
drawing, and I loved looking at girls.My
parents were very generous and even though they didn't understand
me (they still don't), they backed me with anything I wanted to do, and I love
them for that. They sent me to the School of Visual Arts
in NYC '87-'91. I was taught by some of the BEST! Will
Eisner (Spirit), Harvey
Kurtzman R.I.P. (Mad magazine) , Sam
Viviano (Cracked magazine), Gene Colan (comic
book illustrator), Jerry
Moriarty (freelance artist), the Vice President of DC
Comics at the time, and even had a lesson by art
spiegelman (Maus) in one class.What
famous artists did I go to school with? Well... they're not
really famous, but...
- I heard Sam
Henderson is a writer for Sponge Bob Square Pants, Check
out this piece I drew in Irwin Hansen's class
with Phil
Avelli and Sam Henderson
-
I shot the shit with Nelson
Decastro many a time, and he's the one that got me
into Mucky
Pup! (Nelson did the inside artwork for their first cd
"Can't you take a joke?")
- Digger
Mesch was in our Will Eisner Drawing class
and I was one of the editors of the comic we published. I
think he has his own company that makes action figures.
- Mark
Morales was in that class too. He started inking Evil
Ernie comics and actually told me that he gave my name to
the company saying I would be a better candidate then him,
oh well, at least he tried.
I
graduated and achieved my Bachelors Degree at the School
of Visual Arts. I was not ready for the REAL world.
 I
was living with my girlfirend at the time and she was
about to move to Arizona. My parents had moved to Florida
during the last semester of my schooling, and I had no where
to go. I lived in a bunch of places in NY, and Connecticut,
I
formed my first band Acid/Plato's
Cave (we didn't know what to call the band), I
befriended a singer/guitarist, Jeff Armstrong, of the band
D.I.E. from Poughkeepsie New York, Jeff showed me the ways
of Metal! I wasn't that far into the Metal realm as a teenager,
sure I loved Led Zepplin, Van Halen, Pink Floyd, Anthrax,
Gwar, S.O.D., Metallica, & Megadeth, BUT Jeff was my
turning point. After I met him he wanted me to do some art
for his band, went over to his house to go over some ideas
he turned on Cannibal Corpse and that was it for me. I asked
him if I could borrow some cassette tapes '91. It's was
all I listened to. I love Metal, and other forms of music,
like Classical, Jazz, Dead Rockers, some 80's,
and I don't care for Metal snobs. What's a Metal snob? People
who listen to Metal but HATE most bands that play it, or
make fun of bands that don't sound the way they want them
to. I Digress, so Jeff was the turning point, and he asked
me to put a Fanzine together with him called Vicious
Metal, do some album reviews, interview bands, and do
the artwork. So we headed to NYC and saw a few cool concerts
in '91-'92; Entombed, Grave, Massacre, Nuclear Assault, Immolation,
Suffocation, etc... as we were working on the first issue
of Vicious Metal I wanted a pen name for my art. Since my
style back then was solely made with my croquil pen, there
were a lot of scratching, and ripping of the paper I did
my art on, and most of my art consisted of dead people and
gruesome scenes, hence the name Strain. I
was still working in my dad's business, but since my dad
left and gave my step brother the business I was
not getting paid! So
I left that job and worked at Caldor in NY (equivalent
of Target). I got sick of that place real fast, and the first
day of '93 I headed for Orlando, Florida.
I
worked for a screen printing company, and learned EVERYTHING
about screen printing. I joined a band and we eventually
called ourselves DNS.
I was able to make really cheap shirts for my band working
there. When that job was over I worked for my dad again as
a slipcover cutter, using my hands as usual. During all of
these shitty jobs to support myself I was working on freelence
art, mainly artwork for bands, and some art for underground
comics.
I
started drawing Keepers of the orb as a comic book back in
'89, my second year of art school. I was bored during the
summer after my freshman year at art school, so I wrote to
my buddy from art school, Phil Avelli, and we wrote back
and forth to each other, and did sketches in those letters
of what were to come of this book. Since Phil and I were
deeply into Heavy Metal like Slayer, S.O.D., and other stuff,
we called the book United Forces in tribute to the S.O.D.
song, and it summed up the book because Phil teams up with
Victor to save the world (or do they?). I started drawing
the book and it was fun as hell! When I got stumped on what
to do next, Phil would jump in and give me ideas. Then Phil
Drew a comic called Leaf for an independent comic publisher,
and asked me if I wanted to put a few United Forces pages
in the back of the book, who wouldn't say yes. So there was
my 15 minutes of Comic Book fame! I
kept drawing the comic, and I hooked up with this other guy
who said he could help me publish it, so I called Phil and
told him how I wanted the story to be and he came up with
the pencils for the second issue and some cool story things.
I redrew the first issue to look like the second issue because
I had been working on this comic for so long that my art
style changed. so I had finished up 2 issues, but the deal
fell through. We both graduated school, and went our different
ways. Phil is stil in NY, and I moved to Sunny Florida, but
we've still kept in touch over the years. I can't say that
about too many of my friends, so I consider phil a very good
friend because of that! He even came out to Queens, NY to
see my old band DNS play
a show there on our shitty tour! Now that's a friend! I was
way into my comic and began writing and drawing more and
more of it. I have 2 issues drawn and done.
Over
the years I became bored with just drawing it and not getting
anywhere. So for the past few years I've really gotten into
reading books about Cyber space:
• Rudy
Rucker:
Freeware series, If you like reading about sex, and robots that think
for themselves, and people who have sex with robots and weirdness, and a twisted
plot thrown in just for fun, then you’ll love this book! It’s the
third book in a series of 4, get them all!!
White
Light, this was a cool read, about a math professor either having
an out of body experience or a really fucked up dream of what happens when
we die.
Master of Space and Time, this book
is HARD to find! I was actually given a hard cover
copy of it for this past X-mas. It was the first
book I read that got me into reading when I was a
teenager. It’s about a guy who makes a Inter
Dimensional Machine and can visit a lot of different
dimensions, but for only 3 times and each time the
stay is shorter and shorter. This is one wild weird
book. All of Rudy Rucker’s books rule!!! ALL
HAIL RUDY RUCKER!!!!
• Eric
S. Nylund:
Signal
to Noise, A Signal Shattered, Part 1 and 2,
part 3? Part 1 is about a guy who comes into contact
with an alien named Wheeler and strikes a deal with him.
He gives the alien info about his planet, and Wheeler
gives him alien devices. The world eventually comes to
an end and you get to see where they live next in book
2.
• Dennis
Danvers:
Circuit
of Heaven, End
of Days, Part 1 and 2, what would happen if
almost the entire world of human being downloaded them
selves into a computer to live happily forever?
• Robert
J. Sawyer:
Flash Forward, almost time travel, what would happen if you saw yourself
20 years from now for only a minute?
Calculating
God, Aliens have been watching the earth. One alien goes to earth,
and seeks out a certain archeologist who works at a museum to help him with
their research. The archeologist is soon diagnosed with cancer, and the alien
gives him the choice of going to the end of the galaxy to see God before
he dies, but he will leave his family behind forever.
• Michael
Crichton:
Timeline (the movie sucks! the book is great!) I LOVE thick books
with lots of pages when the author is good! When you step into a time machine,
fax yourself through a "quantum
foam wormhole," and step out in France 1357, be very, very afraid. If you aren't
strapped back in precisely 37 hours after your visit begins, you'll miss the
quantum bus back to 1999 and be stranded in a civil war, caught between crafty
abbots, mad lords, and peasant bandits all eager to cut your throat.
• Jim
Butcher:
Storm Front read the first 2 chapters online!!
Their
books have given me inspiration to write Keepers
of the Orb as a novel. I wanted more of the story to
come through, and drawing the comic didn't have much room
for the words, so the Novel has taken on a life of its
own since I started writing it. Now I know why movies don't
always have what the book has in it!! BUT remember: The
movie doesn't change what's in the book! My
parents moved away to Kissimmee and I got work as a maintenance
man at the JCC (no I'm not Jewish, but I did learn a lot
about the that faith). At this point I was way
in deep with my band stuff, and DNS broke
up and Deform
Nation had just
begun. I was not drawing anymore, but I was writing my novel.
I learned how to fix all kinds of toilets, doors, walls,
etc... at the JCC. I actually got paid decently to learn
a trade.
Life
altering experience:
In the morning at the JCC one of my main jobs is to clean
up the kitchen, make coffee for the senior citizens and set
up whatever program was happening for the day. I was in the
seniors' lounge watching the news and setting up something
when the first plane crashed into the World Trade Center.
I couldn't believe what I was seeing. This could not be a
mere accident I said to myself. I kept watching and others
started watching behind me, and I saw the next one coming
for the building and I said out loud "This means War!",
and everyone around me was baffled. I knew there would be
a war, but didn't know who it would be with? The next week
everyone was walking around in a daze trying to get every
bit of info off the TV and radio. Everyone analyzing the
hell out of it. I was laid off from the job about 3 weeks
later. I was given 2 weeks severance, and then I received
unemployment. This was the first time I had ever taken unemployment,
but even though this was a bad thing for the country it turned
into a possitive thing for me, because I got to go to school
for FREE from the government. All of these people were getting
laid off and had no skills for other jobs, so the government
put this prgram together to send all of these laid off people
back to school to learn a new trade. I went and learned Web
Design at Winter Park Tech. It was a 1 year program, and
I was the first student to finish in 6 months (I brought
the work home and did it all on my computer). The next six
months I was researching and teaching myself everything the
schol didn't teach me about Web Design. I started freelencing
for multiple web companies (making sites, and scanning images
all day). Those 2 years after I got laid off were hard ass
hell (paying bills, mortgage, car, food, etc...). But
now I'm doing really well and enjoying my life.
I am now working as a teacher at IADT and have my own Web
Design compnay Webskinz. I have a freelence programmer and a freelencer
web designer working for me. So Deform Nation broke
up and I formed a new band with the drummer from that band
called 5
Billion Dead. I just quit 5 Billion Dead, and I'm currently snging for Dead Mens Dreams. If
you’ve read this far, I’d like to say thanks
for spending the time to get to know me. My early life as an
artist and a musician has been a great ride. Whether you’ve
followed me through the years, or you’ve just discovered
me, I hope to make something that will last the test of time. Everybody
wants to be famous, a Rock Star, some kind of Artist, and
so do I... maybe it will happen."
-Gary Dufner (aka Strain) |
