About Nathan

Where is Nathan from?

A little village in southern Ohio where people love to collect antiques. He always enjoyed frolicking in the countryside around his house.

What inspired Nathan to get into animation?

I had always loved all forms of animation. I spent many many hours in front of the TV watching any cartoon I could find. I enjoyed drawing and creating art. I think by about age 6 or 7 I started telling everyone I wanted to be a cartoonist and make cartoons when I grow up. But, I didn’t know what it took to become one. So, I spent my early years sketching and doodling during all of my classes. Gotta love stick figure comics!

I sort of lost my early ambitions of becoming an animator around high school because I didn’t think it was something that I’d be capable of doing. Then after high school I was heavy into video games and got my first computer and a pirated copy of 3D Studio Max. I didn’t realize that all these films, “Toy Story” “Jurassic Park”, could be basically made on my home computer. I thought it was something that could only be done on big computers in Hollywood like I saw on the “Making of Toy Story”. That was another thing that got me interested in animation was watching shows about making movies and special effects.

All of this was inspiring but it still wasn’t quite enough to pull me away from my video games and pursue a career. Until one day I saw a job for a 3D animator on Blizzard‘s website. It sparked a determination to get a job making awesome cut scene’s for games like that. I began studying the 3D programs on my own but this wasn’t the right path, it was all software. About the time I started discovering what animation actually was I heard about Animation Mentor. I was a bit skeptical about going to an online school, but after researching many other schools I just wasn’t seeing the same effort of support that Animation Mentor seemed to offer to their students.

Well, that’s how I got here. As for the career, I’m hoping to start that shortly after I graduate.