Resume
Christopher Nierhaus
160 Cherry Oakland, MI 48363
Home: 586.752.3827
Cell: 586.651.6236
Email: chris@tinbug.com
Profile
Creative Director with a highly technical background and proven business experience in both start-up ventures and large long-standing corporations. Career-minded professional who is detail-oriented and welcomes challenges, works well with internal staff and external clients. Over 20 years of creative, technical, and project management experience.
Objective
Professional, creative problem-solver seeks to improve the identity, products, workflow, enthusiasm, and overall visibility and value of the company while continually gaining knowledge, contacts, and new experiences.
Experience
Art Director, Fathead LLC., Livonia MI April 2008 – Present
Art Director responsible for the product design of full-size Fathead, Sidekicks, Teammates, and Tradeables products. This position has required building a close relationship with NFL, NBA, NHL, Marvel, DC Comics, Disney, and other licensees to blend the look of their style guide with the Fathead brand for a final retail product.
Senior Creative Director, New Media Technologies, Greenestuff, Inc., Clinton Twp., MI August 2002 – April 2008
Creative Director for the Award-winning national television series ‘My Bedbugs’. Created full-size maquettes of the main characters for NATPE Conference and investment purposes. Engineered and fabricated the animatronics for the character heads worn by the actors. Designed the main set furniture and several secondary sets. Created the ‘My Bedbugs’ and Greenestuff Corporate websites. Redesigned the logos and created style guides to regulate color consistency of characters and the brand. Responsibilities include managing the graphics department personnel, budget, and vendor pricing negotiations, multimedia design and programming, corporate investment pitch packages, motion graphics and animation for television productions, character and set designs, product packaging designs, point-of-purchase and trade show display design, and virtual prototype mock-ups. Recipient of two International Telly awards for animation and special effects and nominated for one Emmy award for Art Director.
Engineering Design / Application Support, GM through Add-Staff, Inc., Warren, MI- April 1996 – August 2002
Application Support, Web and Vis Products: Assigned to General Motors Tech Center in Warren, Michigan. Provided user assistance and mentoring, created and conduct instructional workshops, designed web-based information solutions and graphical interfaces, performed UAT testing of new software releases, designed and implement workflow processes. Provided solutions for design programs utilizing Unigraphics, iMAN, Vis Products and the Web.
Engineering Designer: Responsible for complete air induction system designs from January 1998 to December 2000. Designed complete fuel and exhaust systems from April 1996 to December 1997. Responsible for Air Induction Design website and contributor to the GM Air Induction Design Guidelines. Also Mentored other designers in Unigraphics.
Major accomplishments: Developed GM truck group’s air induction design guideline book. Created the guidelines and online Digital Installation process that digitally managed CAD design drawings for all of GM North American Operations. Created the process to implement labels from the label art group directly into Unigraphics CAD system for virtual mock-up.
Mechanical Designer, APX International, Madison Heights, MI October 1994 – April 1996
Designer: Responsible for Body-in-White welding and GD&T advanced studies. Illustrator: Created product assembly document illustrations and prototype build concept studies.
Detailer and Coordinator, Megatech, Warren, MI February 1994 – April 1994
GD&T designer and detailer for Midsize Car Division. Responsible for coordinating information data translation to and from CGS systems.
Detailer and Coordinator, Mascotech, Warren, MI April 1991 – February 1994
Coordinated activities for processing and illustrating PAD and PDM documents for General Motors vehicle programs.
Stylist and Technical Illustrator, Vehma International, Troy, MI April 1990 – April 1991
Created graphic illustrations related to automobile prototypes designs and build processes. Responsible for creating future product concept renderings and studies.
Education
General Motors University, Pontiac, MI 1996-2002
Engineering/Design, Unigraphics, iMAN, VisProducts (now Teamcenter Visualization) – 8 Certificates
Project Management, Management Skills – 12 Certificates
Oakland Community College, Auburn Hills, MI 1997
Catia V5.0 surface design- Certificate
Macomb Community College, Auburn Hills, MI 1996
Unigraphics V. 10 – Certificate
Cardboard Modeling – Certificate
Batavia School of Design, Troy, MI 1995
Unigraphics V. 10 – Certificate
College for Creative Studies, Detroit, MI 1989
Industrial Design / Graphic Design
Eisenhower High School, Washington, MI Graduated 1988
College prep courses, physics, chemistry, calculus, commercial art – Diploma
Continual Education and Training
I believe in continual life-long education, this is especially important in a field where technology is constantly changing. The Internet has afforded us the luxury of endless training resources, whether it is in a life-skill such as learning another language or technical skills such as learning another software. This attitude also keeps good study habits in place, allows for quick absorption of new skills, and increases performance potential.
Skills
Operating system proficiency:
Mac OSX, Unix, Windows, and Linux
Software proficiency:
Unigraphics, Catia, VisMockup, Microsoft: Word, Excel, Powerpoint, Project, Publisher, Adobe: Photoshop, Illustrator, InDesign, After Effects, Acrobat Pro, Dreamweaver, Flash, Apple: Quicktime Pro, Motion, Shake, DVD Studio Pro Logic.
Programming / scripting proficiency:
HTML, CSS, XML, JavaScript, Actionscript, Unix shell programming.
Referrals will be furnished upon request.