Ven Gethenian

== About Ven== Ven is a 27-year-old Washington DC native. Educational background includes hard time in American University's English program followed by brief flirtation with the Corcoran College of Art & Design, a two and a half year apprenticeship with local artist Peter Galifianakis (uncle to better-known commedian Zach Galifianakis), and finally the majority of an associate's degree in historic preservation from Northern Virginia Community College. Ven also has 8 years of voice training and extensive experience in theatre, with some focus on clowning, mumming, and historic reenactment.

Ven is Kyle "Oancitizen" Kallgren's official title card artist and has also provided artowork for JewWario.

History with TGWTG
Ven was first introduced to TGWTG in November of 2010 via a link to the Nostalgia Critic's reviews. (Certain People seem to think that Ven behaves rather a lot like that character sometimes. Those people are entirely correct.) Finding the community of artists and reviewers remarkably welcoming, Ven soon got to know a number of other fans, artists, and eventually site contributors, and with the encouragement and support of the TGWTG community (especially JewWario and the awesome regulars on his livestream), began selling commissioned art. At MAGFest in January 2011, Ven met a number of TGWTG producers in person and became friends with them, and with Tony Helms, who initially hired Ven to do title cards for his MAGFest interviews with TGWTG producers. Tony has since joined with Dena to co-host the Splattercast podcast on TGWTG, while Ven and Tony continue to do interviews with anyone they can get from the site and anyone of interest outside of it.

History with Oancitizen
Ven has a nifty little widget installed on DeviantArt that shows the names of the last 5 visitors to his profile page. Having noticed Kyle's name on the visitor list a few times, Ven mentioned it to mutually-adopted brother Smarty, who introduced Ven and Kyle over a Skype call and arranged for the two to talk on their own. Kyle asked Ven to do a few "audition" drawings and a week later, decided to keep him after seeing the concept sketches.

The week Ven spent working on sketches was a week Kyle was away from the internet moving to a new apartment. From tales in the category of "it's a small damn world sometimes," the two realized after he got the internet up in his new place that he'd moved all of four blocks from the house Ven grew up in and still lives at during most weekdays. Only time will tell what shenanigans result from this collaboration of neighbors within walking distance of each other.