Madd Rabbit / Ryan Conti bio of author & illustrator from Venustech Studios

Tidbits about me
+ I don't subscribe to cable TV or even watch TV. In truth, I don't miss it too much. I can buy episodes of good shows on DVD if I get an urge and I don't have to put up with commercials. Most of it is filth anyway and the news has a deliberate leftist slant to it in my opinion.
+ I'm trying to tone down on video games but its been difficult to do so with so much extra time in my day. I occasionally play on the internet with a couple friends from high school or take a few hours in the evening to play single player type games. I like the Metal Gear Solid series but also strategy ones like Supreme Commander.
+ I am politically conservative but am not a fan of the Republican party. I am opposed to Gay marriage (and civil unions) and abortion in all its forms. I think the best solution to America's problems is repenting and turning back to God as well as seeking out the constitutional foundations our nation was built on and reducing the size and scope of the federal and state governments, particularly in taxes, fees and in the area of environmentalism which have gone too extreme.
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MY STORY
+ I attended college and got a bachelors degree in Fine Art with a Drawing concentration and a minor in Art History. I was working mostly out of the fields I wanted to be in. I started as a dishwasher, then worked in a picture framer which I didn't poorly at, then worked in a shipping warehouse where we shipped furniture paints, then I went on into printing using Xerox Docutech printers, finally ended up as a computer operator doing some photo touch-up work for a place that put children's art on various products. I'm currently unemployed.
+ I was always a creative person. From birth right on up I was making drawings and telling stories. When I got into the comic book scene (going in and out of it at various stages of my life) I think I found my true calling. In 1987 (at least that's the closest year I can reckon) Madd Rabbit was created, the first of my main characters who later became sort of my fictional alter ego. I worked on various deranged stories with him and a group of mutant rabbits in a post apocalyptic wasteland. The short stories in this series are lost to time I'm afraid.
+ I went on to create my first comic book with Madd Rabbit teamed up with a female sidekick called Dot-Z in the early 1990's. About this time I also created a team that would later be called the Legion of Patriots in the novels. The first four characters were Czar, Coldsilver, Morning and Brickwall and they were opposed by Firefrog (later renamed Salamander), Yellow Fever, King (now Neal King), and others. The characters grew from those stories but I never got around to actually doing the comic or those stories. I also took the time to create such characters as Athena (later Miss Aegis), Nike and Crunch who sort of had their own story based on Greek mythology. This era also saw the creation of Mass Destruction.
+ Around the same time all this was being created and formulated, my friend Brian and I were playing a superhero RPG based on the Marvel Comics universe. We created new characters for a team we wanted to be THE most powerful ever... one able to trounce the Marvel characters we were playing against at that time anyway. We each created people for the team. I merged Madd Rabbit, Dot-Z and Athena with the team but later dropped Athena. Brian made Deathwish, Slugger, Anti and Static. We rounded the team out by each creating one of the twins. I created Lace and Brian created Lithe. At this time we thought it would be nice to have some mental powered character to balance the team and so Draco was born.
+ The visual looks of the characters started to take shape. Madd Rabbit and Dot-Z already had their looks established. Lace was sort of merged with a failed character called Sparrow and her looks developed from there. I pumped Brian for his ideas about what these other ones should look like and I created the first mock ups of each character. My talents were not what they are today so they looked only vaguely familiar to their current appearances.
+ I expanded the universe of characters and their stories over the 1990's. The team's consistent look and appearance didn't really come about until the mid 2000's when I first started re-writing the stories I had to fit a new model I wanted to create. The new thing was the book series you see now. The story was little more than a merging of superhero comics with the left behind series. The story was going to be twelve books long and be a hybrid between a novel and a comic book. This changed as the characters did.
+ The characters each had huge gaps in their histories and what their motives were. I had to map these out and I still am working on the side characters to some extent. The look of each character came about from many a failed drawing and still I debate whether I'll keep them as they are now.
+ 2001 I became a born again Christian after dealing with sever depression most my life. While I'm not perfect, I feel much better than what I used to as I try my best to persevere and mold these stories into something that is both entertaining and teaching the message that Christ left us about repentance. With all the recent time I have due to my unemployment, I was able to work on the stories and create the looks for many of the characters in this fictional Universe.
+ I currently live with my father where we entertain ourselves with movies and work at church. I spend much of my time in working on this website, working on writing the books, creating new art and characters, occasionally playing video games among other hobbies like LEGO or reading. I want to branch out and do other creative things like animation, stop-motion animation, graphic design, and other creative things that will be a vent for my creative urges. I'm not big on socializing or hanging out... just not into being around actual people but I get out with a few close friends from time to time from church.