An Introduction

I am a graphic artist and illustrator and have been creating original art in many forms my entire life. While I have entertained the masses with drawings since Elementary School, my first public work of art came with a life-sized Olympic skiier for the Winter Olympics when I was in High School.

My first computer graphics drawing program was a demo of Corel Draw! 3 I had downloaded from an Electronic Bulletin Board mid-1990s (pre-Internet days). I did drawings of my room mates, of airplanes, same stuff I do now. It was neat-o.

When I went on to work security for a Chemical Plant, I would sometimes pass the hours of boredom by creating screensavers on people's computers. And got in trouble for it, too, fussy little chemists.

After that, I went on to work in the graphics/computer lab in a Utah Kinko's, where I helped customers design media of all kinds, and instructed customers on our own in-house MAC and Win 98 machines.

I was snatched up by Phone Directories after that, where my graphic talents were put to use creating graphics and ads to lure new customers to buy ad space. I was pretty good. I became known as "The Photoshop Man". You can see a couple of the pieces I did while there on my OtherArt page with Richter on bricks piece, and the sailing ship graphic.

After a couple years there, I was once again swept away. This time by eUtah, the State of Utah's Official Web Site design company. That was fun, and educational, but the worldwide corporation thing (eUtah was part of a worldwide digital corporation providing interwebz portals for city, state and national web sites) was a little stuffy for me, and I soon found myself pushing the freelancer's mouse across the now maturing Internet.

My first web site was an AOL site with three pages. Yeah, it was bad. Very bad.

Then I went to freeservers.com for a free site, named Atrox Graphics, which was better.

But the name was too long; "Atroxa-watta-watta?", so I changed it to FritzFX. But too many people would tell me, "I went to FritzEffects and couldn't find you," despite how it was spelled correctly on my biz card.

So I went to IAMFRITZ.com in 1995, and I never looked back.

People ask me, "So, is IAMFRITZ.com about you, or is it a portfolio page, or a business?" My answer: "Both." I mean, the portfolio page is part of my biz, so, you know, I clump those together. But I can't sell my warez without putting my own personality into the site. It's what makes me... me.

So, please surf around IAMFRITZ.com. Check out the FreeStuff page. Let me know if there's anything free you'd like me to make for you along those lines. And check out the Store. Lots of products in the Store.

And most of all, thanks for surfing IAMFRITZ.com!

A History

John "Fritz" Gunter was born back in the late 60's in SE Virginia. Bred in farming country just outside the State's capital, his family moved before he was able to complete kindergarten but at least he got to keep his blue sleeping mat. Or was it red? Hey, lots of people can't remember things from the 60's.

After getting over the road trip excitement, Fritz found himself living in a small, non-descript town on the outskirts of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Here Fritz was raised, which is often confused with growing up. Grade school, Junior High School, and Senior High School came and went, and it was time for Fritz to move on as well.

Upon graduating said High School, Fritz volunteered to serve a two year mission for his church in Southern California speaking Spanish, which to the surprise of some, he completed honorably. After which service, he kissed Mom and Dad good-bye, well, shook Dad's hand firmly, but kissed Mom, and went to the Big K- College!

Brigham Young University is nestled in the foothills of Provo Utah, where Fritz was very lucky to have found since he had paid a lot of money to get there. Unfortunately, after several years of studying with almost as much goofing off, Fritz pulled a stupid doing something he knew was going to get himself hurt during early morning Physical Training in the Air Force R.O.T.C. And get hurt he did. The following two years whiz by in a medicated blur . . .

Some time after recovering from said accident, although it's debatable it was an accident if he knew something bad was going to happen, Fritz met a certain beautiful blonde model who had grown up and, by and by, married him and give him three beautiful little boys. Although they were aiming for a girl or two, those little things travel like carnival darts when they want to, dont they?

It was at some point during these events that Fritz woke up, looked out the window and saw the beautiful NW, Oregon Coast. This is where our interview begins:

Q: So, Fritz, we'll start with the most obvious question: why name your web site after yourself?

A: I'm told it's catchy. Lots of people tell me, once I've introduced myself, "Wow, I've never heard that name before," or, "Well, I won't forget your name anytime soon." Problem is people walk up to me and say "FRITZ! Man how are you . . . " and I'm stuck because I know their face and can't place their name. But I digress. The name "Fritz" sticks, and "IamFritz" should stand out as well.

Q: And how did you decide what you would do with your site?

A: Well, the site's always changing, though it's remained art-based throughout. It began as strictly an on-line portfolio back in the mid-90's. Now, I've added a store. Soon, my writing section will go up. So as the technology changes, as people ask me different things for me to post, that's what I'll do.

Q: How long have you been doing art?

A: My first publicly posted "advertisement" was for the Winter Olympics in 1984 (?). Our school classes made big posters to raise awareness and funds for Olympic-related charities. A year later I designed the logos for our Class of 85 graduation shirts. As far as art in any form, I was drawing airplanes, birds, space ships and caricatures of my friends way back in elementary school.

Q: Have we seen your art anywhere else?

A: You might have if you're in the United States Air Force, the Air National Guard, or U.S. Army, as I've done some work for recruiters and a couple squadrons adn the like. Also, if you've opened the Yellow Pages in the last 13 years you've seen some of my work, too. I also made the Wilsonville, Oregon's Arts Council logo, two years in a row. That stuck and they're flashing it all around town to this day.

Q: Where did you get your name, Fritz?

A: My mother tells me it was actually her idea long before I was born. I was a little fair-skinned toe head with blu eyes running around, looking like a little German boy. So, she and Dad started caling me, "Fritz." It stuck, then spread. But for the longest time, I had a memory of finding it in a Cheerios box when I was about 3 yrs. old. So, I'm kinda confused about that.

Q: Were you really born in the south?

A: I was born in Virginia. I would prove this by driving my Virginian social security code around town on the side of a rented truck, but maybe it's easier if you just believe me.

Q: Will the south rise again?

A: Wow. I can't even get bread to rise. Hope they're not waitin' on me.

Q: Where did you get that sense of humor of yours?

A: Now, that I'm sure came in a cereal box.

to be continued . . .

Ever Google yourself? I did. Here's what I got.
Way to get to know somebody...and way to find
out who else out there is a freak masquerading
with your name...

http://www.siteadvisor.com/sites/iamfritz.com/

This is a McAfee site that kinda monitors the web and checks out sites to see if they've got spyware, viruses, and so on. Yep, that's me and I'm clean!

http://tieba.baidu.com/f?kz=726483001

Looks like China has caught IAMFRITZ.com fever! This site even quotes me as a "dragon expert"

http://www.vtap.com/video/IAMFRITZ.com%2521/CL0136113721_fe75df0e_T0lQVFYyMTF-aW46OH5xOmJyfmJ3Ok9JUFRWMjExLENMMDMzMjkxMjQ4NH5pbjo0fnE6cmw

OK, I don't see what this has to do with ANY Fritzes on the Web, but it comes up and as far as I Can tell, it's pretty harmless. Not me, though.

http://www.websiteoutlook.com/www.iamfritz.com

Stats, more stats and @*&! Lies... this is a summary of the traffic I get, my worth on the web, and where my server is. Yep, that's me!

http://www.metacafe.com/tags/iamfritz.com

Metacafe is aone of the bigger YouTube wannabes, and I go there sometimes for military videos. How these two YouTube videos of mine got there I don't know, but they're there, and that's me, yes.

http://forum.combatace.com/user/23938-iamfritz/page__tab__aboutme

This one's a flight sim forum I used to frequent, not so much these-a-days. But yes, that's me, and there's not a lot about me since I haven't done much there. Not even sure what my log in is.

http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html?topicId=16473144353

OK, let it be clear to everyone, everywhere- I do not play World of Warcraft, yet my name appears about 1/5 of the way down this page... I am forced to presume someone else out there has donned my nom du fas and is trying to make their way in the World with it.

http://newsgroups.derkeiler.com/Archive/Sci/sci.bio.paleontology/2006-03/

This one? Soooo me! I was researching the idea of writing a dinosaur book, and poked a Q out there at a professinoal paleontologists forum. Got some good answers, too.

http://index.migman.com/index.php/simulations/articles/560-back-to-baghdad-graphics-upgrade

This one is a communication from myself to the curator of a virtual museum of flight sims. Over a decade ago I did a graphics overhaul to a then-popular flight sim, Back To Baghdad. MigMan posted the link to it at his site, and when I moved from one site to another (pre-IAMFRITZ.com days here) I notified him thusly.

http://jajaah.blogspot.com/2008/01/krezip-what-are-you-waiting-for.html

I'm not this Fritz, but it's okay. They're a fan of this Dutch music group. And it's not a bad sound.

http://www.mombu.com/science/paleontology/t-dinosaur-art-comics-and-contest-3276110.html

This is from a paleontology thread where they had artists strutting their dino art, of which I had plenty. Big Yes, it's me.

http://www.scalpelsedge.net/?p=426

Well, I was kinda scared to click on this one, but it turned out harmless enough. It's just some Twitter sub-tweet where I posted about my CaptionIt! Contest.

http://boards.history.com/topic/Jurassic-Fight-Club/T-Rex-Versus/520006570

This is a forum from the History Channel where I occasionally post about dinosaur documentaries. They've rearranged it a bit so I'm not as easy to find as I used to be, but there ya go.

http://www.wowprogress.com/guild/us/frostwolf/WiLD

Evidently, there's some World of Warcraft player that is named IamFritz. It is not me. Is it someone else.

http://groups.google.com/group/comp.multimedia/index/browse_frm/month/1998-01?_done=%2Fgroup%2Fcomp.multimedia%2Fbrowse_frm%2Fmonth%2F1998-01%3F&

This is a geek forum I once asked for help about documentation and got no answer. Don't feel sorry for me, though- no one on this forum gets any help it appears.

http://theftalk.com/t240-p5-Advertise-Promote-Your-Sites-Here.html

This site is a forum about...something...something "F"...really am afraid to ask...lots of pink and diabetically cute icons on it, though. There's a link to someone's site in it that contains "iamfritz" in the title, but it doesn't go anywhere. I think I'm glad. Summary: It's not me.

http://punditkitchen.com/2009/09/01/political-pictures-hero/

Don't know about this one. Google brought it up, but I can't find IamFritz anywhere in it, neither can my web browser's search function. Hmph.

http://www.nerdworld.com/cgi-bin/subjects.cgi?usr=52&cat=1370

Someone on nerdworld.com was kind enough to make an exhaustive, alphabetical search of...sites. Can't tell how they're related. Hope it's not incriminating in any way, but it includes a link to my old web site, FritzFX. OK, so I'm there. Nothing of interest, and the site is mini-sited in this site off my other art page or something. Hmph.

http://www.facebook.com/iamfritzian?hiq=iamfritz&ref=search

OK, now this one SCARED me. This chick (I think it was a chick) had some nasty, freaky stuff up on her Facebook page. Not me. Not me. Not me. She's gone now, though, and I'm glad. Lots of people probably are, frankly. Chick was more than a little bit dangerous.

http://forum.keypublishing.co.uk/showthread.php?t=86061

Hmmm. This is a military aviation forum where a page in one of my mini-sites is quoted as having a certain allegedly true but none-the-less exciting report of USAF F-15s downing two former Yugoslavian MiG-29s. The forum is a little dark in the respect that it argues, contentiously at times, events of that war.

http://foro.chileaviacion.dm.cl/showthread.php?832-Enciendan-Un-F-16-Block-50/page2

This is a link to a pic I used to have on my web site of cockpit diagrams of a jet fighter cockpit. No harm done there. I love being a technical reference.

http://forum.airserbia.com/viewtopic.php?p=40844

Similar discusion as the above keypublishing.co.uk one. But in a diffrerent language. My, I'm quite the cosmopolitat, aren't I? I hope I used that word right.

http://tshirtsngiftideas.com/results/Military/Iamfritz/IamFritz_123rd_FS_Day/iamfritz123day.htm

Here, someone has lifted my entire IAMFRITZ.com Store from CafePress and is selling my goods. I'm checking into them now to make sure they're not selling my goods with bad intent. Prices are all the same, so I think it's okay, but I'll find out.