I came into the world October 4th, 1971 by way of my parents Linda & Keith. My folks had already had two other boys Clark and Tad. We lived in the Cottonwood Holladay area until I was around 4. It is somewhat ironic that my family during this period were members of the Cottonwood Club, I later found out that Melissa's Grandparents were also members and she went there as well.

The family Stippich, which now included another boy named Josh, packed up and moved to the Alpine area which is about 30 miles South of Salt Lake. We rented a small house while the folks built our new house in Bull River. I attended kindergarten at Forbes Elementary. For first grade I attended Barrat Elementary. Before entering the second grade my family moved into our new house in Bull River, which showing my folks quirky nature was shaped as a half circle. Bull River was a really cool place to grow up because it had all this wild land to run free, many cool kids to play with and most of the adults were involved in someway or another with the arts as a profession. I entered the second grade at Highland Elementary where I would finish the rest of my elementary schooling. It was during this period that I met most of my closest friends that I am still to this day lucky to have in my life.

My parents separated when I was going into the sixth grade. This was sad and caused some turmoil in the family but was nice in that later in my life it brought Dave, Nöel, Erica, Jacob, Emmaly, Sol and Connie more into my life as basically step dads, friends, sisters, brothers and earth mom's.

As for most people I entered in many respects my lowest period in life when I went to American Fork Jr. High School. It was not the most open minded of environments and I lost a lot of motivation for doing well in school during this period. The only positive thing about Jr. High School was that I formed closer relationships with many of my friends due to this environment.

High school was a much better time for me, at American Fork High School. I had a great group of friends to hang out with which included almost nightly Volleyball or Basketball games. I found a really great teacher in Kathy Coletti. She helped me to direct and refine my love for drawing and art in a more focused way. By finding an interest in art I also started caring more about the rest of my subjects as well. I graduated from A.F. High School in 1990.

I entered the Fine Arts Program at the University of Utah in the fall of 1990. Before beginning up at the U of U I got a summer job working for my mom's graphic design firm Stippich Design. For close to three years I was in the Fine Art Program at the U until I finally decided that since my main interest in art was drawing comic books this was not really a focus of the art department at the U. I decided that I would shift my major to something to fall back on if the comic book art thing did not pan out. My second love in life at this point was Basketball. I decided that I would join the Exercise and Sport Science Program so that I could be connected in some way to Basketball most likely through coaching. I spent four years fulfilling the requirements for my degree and Graduated with my Bachelors in 1997.

The most bizarre turn of events though was that I found that I really liked doing Graphic Design and working for my moms company. I found it very hard to leave a job in which the pay was good, I really loved my co-worker and liked the work that I was doing, thus I have stayed working in the Graphic Design field and have as yet to use my degree. In 1998 I met Melissa which has opened up a whole new world to me.