Who is Nathan Hood?

Nathan has always liked pictures. Pictures and colors. His prized possession as a youngster was his box of 64 crayons with the built-in sharpener. The problem was, he just couldn't draw very well. He could see the pictures in his head all right, but try as he might, just couldn't seem to convince his Burnt Sienna and Raw Umber to put them down on paper. By the time the great masterpieces in Nathan's young mind filtered out of his brain, down his little spinal chord, and through his chubby hand, the only things left were the abstract scrawls and disjointed perspectives of a frustrated kid who just couldn't draw very well. Enter: The Computer!

Like countless other pre-adolescent boys in the early eighties, Nathan often dreamed of trading in his box of Crayola 64 for a Commodore 64, and although his friend Suzy had a Speak & Spell, his first real exposure to an actual computer didn't come until his 9th grade year at Grace Christian School when he took a computer science class. This was GW Basic heaven for Nathan, who whiled away many happy hours after school (with his digitally-minded pal Russ Rupe) hunkered down in front of these humming machines, writing little programs that could perform such wondrous feats as calculate gas mileage, figure out grade point average, or make a dot bounce around on the flickering monochrome green screen. Recognizing the limitations of the school's ancient Smith-Coronas, Nathan practiced his early computer graphics techniques on the COLOR screen of Russ Rupe's Atari 800. Sometime in the late eighties, Nathan was introduced to a Mac, a mouse, and a program called Photoshop, and the rest is history.

Nathan went to college in Hillsdale, Michigan, where he worked nights in the Hillsdale College Graphics Lab. While attempting to stay awake, he regularly fiddled with graphics stuff, and soon found himself doing little projects for the college. Nathan's first real paying graphics gig came when he was asked to do the layout and cover design for Tower Light, the college's art and literary publication. A puzzled Nathan reportedly exclaimed-"You people will PAY me to do this stuff??!!", and with that little secret out of the bag, he's been insisting on getting paid for his work ever since. Well of course he has to get paid; his wife, Natalie Portman, has expensive tastes.