Phantom Nimbus Studios represents an idea I have had since high school. I am Beau Severson and I am a creative individual. I do web design, graphic design, and game design in my spare time. I have obtained my knowledge from the school of “The guy with no free time”. This school involves learning everything yourself and liking it that way. I live in Burnsville, MN with my wonderful wife Jessica and our two beautiful cats Neeko and Kairi.

I am currently a full-time student attending the University of Advancing Technology (UAT) online. I am going for my bachelors in video game design and development. I’ve always been very inspired by video games and love making them in my spare time. My passion for games extends far beyond the digital realm as well. I love card and board games of the very nerdy variety (Thunderstones, Zombies!!!, Last Night on Earth) and I am in the works of developing a few of my own.

I work primarily with Photoshop and Illustrator but have knowledge of InDesign as well. I have been working in print shops for about 5 years and have picked up a lot of print design skills using these programs. I have worked and designed for digital copiers as well as 2 and 4 color presses. I have also learned the many pitfalls that designers face when they move from digital design to print design. Just another of the many skills I can bring to the table.

I started learning HTML as a middle schooler with just a few books from the library. Fast forward to late high school and I was introduced to CSS by a friend. The thought of being able to style all your elements at once was quite amazing. I have been expanding and growing my skill all the time with whatever personal projects I can dig up. Often offering free work for a chance to do something new. In the past few years I have learned Javascript and just recently started taking up jQuery library that has made working with all three so much easier. I validate to HTML 4.01 strict, I work mostly with CSS1 and 2, though I try and dabble with CSS3 if I can find cross browser work arounds (I am one of the many designers that hates IE).

UPDATE: I actually started about 4 months back with a small web design studio in Burnsville, MN called Checkerboard Strategic Web development. It has been a great opportunity and is helping me to grow my web design skills even more as I go to school for video game design and development. Since we work primarily in PHP and with WordPress I have learned quite a bit about both.

Besides the programs and languages I have learned above I also have a knowledge of some scripting languages (Actionscript, Python, Lua) and I’m even teaching myself PHP and MySQL that I hope to use to create a back end for this site. Eventually creating a blog system for myself as well. I know there are many out there, WordPress being one of the bigger names (and the one this site currently runs on), but if anything is worth doing, it is worth doing yourself, or something like that.