TheGrav.com started as an experiment in interactive art. A rush of ideas and half thought out notes, on how and why to try and make the next big thing in digital portfolios. As an artist, designer, writer, and producer, I often find it hard to really call myself any one thing. Even though the title is flattering "Renaissance Man" is just that, an empty self flattery. But how do you take a bunch of ideas, a bunch of art concepts, a bunch of short stories and screenplay ideas, and distill them down into something that is both entertaining to look at and, I hope, fun to play with?

It was 2005 or so when the first ideas of what would later become this site, were kicked around. A good friend was watching over my shoulder as I worked on a spacescape and mentioned that my space paintings would make a very interesting backdrop to a web-page. The problem was, I was an okay designer, an okay painter, and a pretty decent database juggler. But I didn't really know coding, or good page design, or architecture, and I hadn't truly crossed the threshold of art student to artist. These were experiences and skills sets that I really needed if I was going to ever dive into this experience and attempt to wrestle, from the muck of the internet, my ideas into completed interactive concepts.

I couldn't buy something off the shelf, or just use any old portfolio template. I wasn't interested in just pasting my work up all over another cloned site of DeviantArt or ConceptArt.org. I wanted to use the imagery and ideas to tell an evolving story. Since that fateful conversation in 2005 I have taught myself web-development and design, taken the dive it to the scarier and often avoided concepts and ideas, and tried to push the envelope. TheGrav.com is a site at the end of a long list of half-developed and abandoned sites and ideas, it is a glimmer of what I hope to continue to create. A truly interactive art piece, that will act as part resume, part portfolio, and part window into my fictional science fiction world 'Savaged'.

I hope you enjoy. Please make sure to bookmark this site, or follow any of my random dealings on the net and in social media. I have plans, upon plans, upon plans, and this is just a glimpse of the surface of what I hope to push the existing and ever changing frontier of art and interactive design to do.

Ryan "TheGrav" Berry

E-mail: ryan[at]thegrav[dot]com