About Jonathan Nagel

Hello! I’m Jonathan Nagel and I was born in Albuquerque NM. For as long as I can remember i’ve been drawing, painting, and making art in various forms since 1981. I’m not sure where it all started to be honest, but legend has it my creativity began one day while visiting my grandparents in Pennsylvania. It was a dreary East Coast day like any other and I got into some mischief like a little boy does and sent to my room. Most kids would cry and scream, but not me! I busted out my crayola crayons, strapped my cowboy boots on, hopped up onto the heater and opened the window. I looked back for a moment and realized at that point that the past was a waste of time. I spent the rest of the afternoon sprawled out on my grandparents roof with my tongue hanging out, eye squinted, and my tiny little hand wrapped around a giant crayon scribbling away!

Ever since that moment i’ve been excited about all art forms for expressing one’s feelings and emotions with the world. I later found out that I could paint my face for Halloween and create costumes or build castles in my living room out of cardboard. The possibilities seemed endless. Even as painful as playing the violin was, I found that it was just another form of expression. I would even design games based on instructions from the back of cereal boxes, stick a stamp on it and send it in only to never hear back from the company again. Creating, playing, exploring and adventuring was just one facet. Little did I know back then but my little mind was falling in love with cartoons, animations, films, and video games. Even toys, children’s books, legos, lincoln logs, and erector sets were imprinting their creative mojo into my mind. I also loved boardgames like Sorry! Life and Candyland. The more I explored, the more avenues I found for how others were inspiring the world. I even got into Magic the Gathering before it was cool. My friends and I would spend hours crafting our decks to wield the wildest combos and win. When we weren’t playing cards we were playing chess or building forts in our back yards. I would even love building scale models of airplanes or RC Cars. The possibilities seemed endless. I knew very early on that I wanted to create ideas and inspire the world!

After studying at the University of Denver (BA 03’) and creating short films and working in broadcast production I was in luck and met some of my childhood heroes, Ray Harryhausen and Syd Mead while attending a visual effects conference in Marin County California. During this conference, little did I know that it would plant the seeds for my career and future endeavors. This experience cemented the idea that playing, creating, and visualizing your imagination through the lens of design for the rest of your life can be a career choice. Just like I learned on the roof of my grandparents house, I stopped looking back. Along the path I decided to work in high tech software for some of the top start ups of the last decade including Anark Corporation (Acquired by Nvidia), AI.Implant (Acquired by Presagis), Scaleform Corp (Acquired by Autodesk and team behind Oculus), and Ready At Dawn Studios (Top independent game developer behind PSP: God of War: Ghost of Sparta). In 2014’ after a decade working with top tech companies and teams I decided that in order to communicate my ideas visually and more effectively I would attend Art Center College of Design and graduated with a degree in Illustration Design with an emphasis on Entertainment Arts in 2018.

I’m honestly not sure where i’m headed but I know that I’m not looking back and i’m excited by the endless possibilities that my creativity holds waiting.