About Greyscalegorilla
Who we are, what we do, and why we're here.
Greyscalegorilla is an active community and resource for training and tools for creative types. We want to make learning more accessible and effective by creating easy-to-follow tutorials and training that show you way more than just what buttons to push. We also work to develop tools to streamline your creative workflow and to help remove tedious and repetitive tasks so you can spend time making great work.
Meet Nick
Hi, I'm Nick. I grew up a nerd in Detroit, the oldest son of a fireman and a roller skating teacher. In middle school, I won first prize on America’s Funniest Videos with my impression of Edward Scissorhands imitating Michael Jackson. It earned me $10,000, a girlfriend for a week, and, not surprisingly, very few cool points with my friends.
I landed a string of pretty silly jobs as a magic trick-yo-yo salesman, roller skate rink-wedding DJ, and one of those snobby record store employees. My love for audio engineering, Protools, and Macs crossed paths with a short animated film and my new passion for Motion Design was born.
I studied design, film and animation at the Illinois Institute of Art Chicago and ended up at Digital Kitchen Chicago where I worked on TV commercials and title sequences for Target, Dexter and The Tonight Show with Conan O'Brien. You can see this work at my personal creative portfolio, CreamyOrange.
While studying and working, I started Greyscalegorilla, a personal blog to talk about design and education. This has quickly become one of the leading sites to learn about motion graphics and 3D software bringing over 20,000 visitors per day. Nutty, right?
In 2009, I left Digital Kitchen to start an iPhone Photo App company and to focus more time creating tutorials and designing products for Greyscalegorilla. You can see my random bloggy-blog stuff at Quick Multiball or watch me pretend to be a musician over at CampbellandMonson. Lately, I’ve been speaking to creative types at places like SXSW, SCAD, OFFF, and Hyper Island about how to end up with a job doing work you love to do.
I work in Chicago where I drink a lot of craft beer, play a lot of pinball, and listen to a LOT of podcasts.
Greyscalegorilla Team
Chris Schmidt
Chris is the Director of 3D Product Development and helps make tutorials. This guy really knows his Cinema 4D, is a great teacher, and is hugely helpful on the technical side of things. His lego collection is probably MUCH bigger than yours.
Danny Schmidt
Danny programs your favorite plugins from Greyscalegorilla. This guy has brains for days and will try everything to make things work. He has a wicked addiction to orange Starbursts and Warhammer tournaments.
Dave Kiss
Dave makes this site run and makes great looking videos, too. Coding, videography, editing, design... If something is wrong, Dave will definitely help. Just don't let him near your pinball machine. He will TILT the heck out of it. And yes, that's his real name.
Alexia Brown
Alexia is the head of customer support for Greyscalegorilla. She is forever helpful, patient and ready to answer any questions you have about our products. She has a complicated love/hate relationship with Chicago local newscasters.