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ARCHON Creative Design and Darkside Studios

My name is Matt Tice…  I’m the owner/lead designer for ARCHON Creative Design and Darkside Studios. I'm a graphic/web designer, a painter, a sculptor, an illustrator, and a bit of a game geek. I was born in New York, NY and have geographically migrated further and further South over the last few years, currently residing in Ellenboro, NC. I aspired to be an artist since my grandmother brought me a stack of old comic books when I was in third grade. I've been surrounded by art my whole life; my uncle was a designer, my aunt is an illustrator and my great aunt is an art teacher.

I graduated from Virginia Polytechnic Institute in 1998 with a Bachelor of Science degree in Fine Arts, and I have been working as an Art Coordinator, Graphic Designer and Computer Artist on a professional level since 1995, currently on a freelance basis.

 I began my career with a small game publisher, Chameleon Eclectic Entertainment, as Art Coordinator, Sales Manager and Production Assistant. From there, I moved to Pinnacle Entertainment Group in the capacity of Sales Manager, and quickly advanced to Production Assistant, Web Master and finally a member of the art staff while finishing my education. After Pinnacle, I became the Assistant Art Director responsible for the Internet Graphics team at Another Universe.com/Fandom, Inc. in Manassas, VA and further broadened my experience at Data Search/S&J Printing, a print shop and mail house. After moving to the Baltimore, MD area, I worked with United Communications Group and held the position of Print/Web designer. Subsequently, I contracted with Aquent, doing website work for the City of Rockville, MD and Yellow-Pages ads for Verizon prior to moving to North Carolina.

When I arrived in North Carolina, I quickly discovered that jobs in my line of work were scarce in Rutherford County. After several unsuccessful months of job searching I decided to focus on freelance work to supplement my family’s income, and in doing so ran into another major issue… lack of high-speed access. I lost several jobs solely on the fact that I couldn’t get large files back and forth in a timely manner. Lucky for me, the folks at Blue Ridge Internet put me in touch with the Tim Will and Foothills Connect. I rented one of the incubator offices and I’m happy to say that business is going very well.

ARCHON Creative Design handles the majority of the print and web design work while Darkside Studios is for the game design and comic book coloring. You can visit on the web at: www.archoncreative.com or www.darksidestudios.biz for more on what services we have to offer, or just give me a call at 828-748-9044