About Me

Syrsly's happy face

Hi! My moniker is Syrsly (or Syr for short). That's "syrsly" like saying "seriously" slurred or "seer-slee". Perhaps I picked a hard name to market with, but it's the name that stuck. Deal with it.

I've grown up in the 80s and 90s and spent most of the early 2000s playing video games and soaking up as much knowledge and skill as I could. I didn't really have any goals growing up and continued not to have much purpose in my life well into my early 30s. When I wasn't gaming, most of my formative years were spent taking care of siblings, going to school, and getting into lots of fights and doing lots of stupid stunts which probably should have killed me. I got into programming thanks to a MMOG, Graal Online, which allowed me to host my own custom world and develop custom behaviors for it using GraalScript. I also toyed with RuneScape Java-powered private servers for a short time. I went from that to being a Macromedia Flash 5 animator  and went from that to educational game development in Flash CS3 and AS3 and went over to Haxe and eventually Unity v3 later on in an attempt to break into 3d development.

My Flash Animations

I worked on a lot of personal/fan projects. I didn't really do anything commercial, but a lot of my later work featured advanced stuff few other people were able to accomplish at the time. I noticed this and started studying more serious programming languages and gave up animation as a career path. Anyway, you might know my work under the username FJGamer or FantasyJam. I made a system that was somewhat recyclable for making vector animations with a video-like time controller. You can still see this working in That FJ Show 2 from 2007. I also made a sprite animation called RuneScape Dragoons which garnered tons of positive feedback back in 2006.


While RuneScape Dragoons didn't have the same video playback functionality, it did have tons of advanced features in its DVD-like menu system. I personally enjoyed making the credits sequence of that one! RuneScape Dragoons was so popular it got ripped off and reposted on video sites in very poor quality by people pretending to be me. I chalked that up mostly to them being fellow kids who just couldn't be bothered to credit the creator properly, but I really wish I handled that better and utilized my brief time in the spotlight to build something special.

I made a lot of other sprite animations along the way, but I honestly don't think anything is worth your time. You could check out my early illustrated animations, like RuneScape Advance: Part 1, which led to an unfinished Part 2 I never published which was going to feature actual voice overs! Yeah, things were getting fun there, and the only reason I didn't finish it was I just had to start being an adult. Oh, and the credits of that one were also pretty fun to create. I learned a lot from that project, but unfortunately, that was the end of my animation career... so far.

My Artwork

Like most artists, I drew a lot when I was young, but I only started to really draw on a regular basis when I grew bored of a MMORPG that was all the rage back in the day... RuneScape. I began my first guild, Rune Gods, which had the purpose of helping new players, made sprite-based, Flash-powered animations for the guild's website, and eventually stopped playing the game all together so I could focus on those animations, which made me fairly popular in the game's community under the alias FJGamer. After many years away from the game, I posted a forum thread on Zybez.net/"RuneScape Community" to ask players if they wanted me to draw their characters. The response was staggeringly large, and I got a lot of practice into drawing humanoid figures based on not-so-well-described characters. I created some of the most popular RuneScape animations throughout the years and even started a fully voice-acted sequel to my frame-by-frame anime style cartoon based on the game, though the files for that project were lost to a network virus I caught from my family's questionable tastes in websites. Thanks to my fascination with the RuneScape community, I learned a lot about Macromedia/Adobe Flash as well as ActionScript, which led to my programming career. If you like my work, I'm always open to commissions if the pay is reasonable and I have the spare time to meet your deadline.

My interests and current hobbies

I enjoy video games, movies, and the usual scifi/fantasy garbage your parents warned you about. I also enjoy programming, illustration, and storytelling. I have made games, websites, cartoons, and open source code. My professional experience is mostly as a career web developer supporting legacy sites and occasionally building some impressive storefronts. My freelance work history consists mostly of website development with a sprinkle of educational game/app development, digital cartoon animation (Macromedia Flash 5+), 3D modeling (Blender, VR apps), and VR/AR/XR development. My games and apps have propagated across hundreds of Flash-powered arcade sites and also been published to the iOS app store on occasion.

I love animation and often prefer a good anime to a live action show, though some live action adaptations are amazing, like One Piece. I have a fondness for anime and other equally beautiful and often impressive animation styles. Some of my favorite anime of all time include Dragonball Z (the first few sagas anyway), Cowboy Bebop, Battle Angel Alita, .Hack//Sign, Log Horizon, and ReZero. What are your favorites?

Gaming is definitely my priority.  My favorite video game genres are action RPGs (Zelda, Graal Online, Fable, FF7 Remake) and explorative platformers (Donkey Kong 64, Mario 64, Pseudoregalia, etc). I really love games that offer me a creative outlet or tons to explore. Good stories are great, but there's not a lot to do after the stories end if there's not anything else on the table.

I purchased my HTC Vive VR headset on April 20th, 2016 and finally got it on October 19th, 2016 (tweet), and I've not once stopped having fun with it. When my VR games were kind of dull or uninteresting, I kept myself interested in my Vive through game development in Unity. Some of my favorite VR experiences so far are Accounting, Neos, Sairento, and Tilt Brush (which went FOSS in 2021 and retitled to Open Brush).

Josh and his wife in the early days

I am happily married to  @HistoryGal

Our wedding was something interesting: an outdoor party with video games and tacos! Sarah and I share a lot of interests, including an appreciation for history and storytelling and a general enthusiasm for video games. We're the light of each other's world. She is my moon and I am her sun and stars.

The future is coming, and now my watch begins. It shall not end even after my death. I shall take her as my wife, hold her hand, father her children (maybe). I pledge my life and honor to our joined house, for this night and all nights to come.

We started our extended family off with my wife's cat. We rescued an outdoor feral cat from the pound and raised him for a long time indoors until we had a backyard where he was much happier outdoors. Much later, after my wife's original cat died and we were set up fairly comfortably, we started adopting corgi pups! These pups are quite a handful, but they're worth it.

Care for more?

I run a blog to document and share some interesting stuff in the works and to recap news. I also talk a lot about technical things there. I may post a few nice pictures of my hikes and travels, though I'm really bad about taking pictures when traveling. The blog has an RSS feed if that's something you're into. Contact me anytime if you're interested in hiring me for a project or would like to arrange a coop game sesh.