Michael Connors

I was born in Jersey City, NJ in 1972. Both my parents were teachers and devoted their lives to special education. At a young age, I attended comic book drawing school. I attended State College in the Catskills on scholarship. After two years I immediately joined the work force at the local newspaper as a paste-up artist and operating the stat camera. Then I moved onto advertising agencies in the Hudson Valley, creating newspaper advertisements, logos, brochures and menus as well as illustrations. After a couple years, I started working as a freelance designer with companies in the New York City area. I worked on many porjects including: a line of snowboards for Apocalypse Snowboards (Ellenvile, NY); production work for a package design firm (Hell's Kitchen, NYC); graphic design for a bag designer (Fashion Ave, NYC); and a multitude of catalog work and ilustrations for JMJ (Printing District, NYC). While working as a consultant for a CD ROM house in South Norwalk, CT, I was first introduced to the world of interactive work. Through the years, I collected a "morgue file" of photos and resources on my computer and started distributing these files through IP addresses and my home computer. When digital photography became affordable and easily accessible, I set up a large web-based repository of morgue files that could be freely distributed to the World Wide Web community. I continued freelance work for a few years before one of my biggest clients in the advertising field, Grey Interactive, offered me a full time position as a designer. In a short time, I became Grey's lead multimedia developer and their primary Action Script coder. I worked in that position for over eight years during which time I worked on high profile media web sites, games, e-cards and utilities for such clients as Dell, Autobytel, Liz Claiborne,Cover Girl, Wal-Mart, Hasbro, M&Ms, Twix, Starburst, Skittles, NY Lottery, Pantene, Covergirl, Progressive, Harris Direct,Pringles, Celebrations, Pepperidge Farm and Gerber. At my time at grey I developed programming skills in web front end and back end technology, which I used to develop my own start ups, including www.morguefile.com, www.messagehop.com and mobile application www.fotokoi.com. In addition to creating online properties, I have been pursuing an interest in fine arts through oil painting courses at the Educational Alliance in the Lower East Side of Manhattan, the Art Students League and the Grand Central Academy.