Adam McDaniel grew up in Connecticut and New Jersey.  He attended New York's Vassar College, winning honors at various festivals for his student film work and receiving the college's academic film & cinematography prize upon graduation. He also wrote and directed a stageplay that had the misfortune of opening the same night as an on-campus Billy Joel concert.

Drawing since an early age, he is largely a self-taught artist with no formal training.  While in high school, his artwork won several local and regional art competitions, but when we went to Vassar, he dropped out of studio drawing after the very first day of class.  Upon the recommendation of an upperclassman, he turned to theatrical set design as a creative alternative.

McDaniel has gone on to serve as a technical director and set designer for several theatrical stage shows, and as a production designer and cinematographer for independent films and documentaries.  After moving to southern California in late 1996, he has worked with such companies as Big Ticket Television, Revolution Studios, several divisions of Ascent Media (including Soundelux, Encore, R!ot, and Level 3 Post), as well as Columbia College Hollywood.

He currently works in southern California within the field of post production for TV and film, and does freelance illustration and writing in his spare time. He shares his home in southern California with an adopted 14 lbs. Siamese cat named Kubrick, and a tiny but destructive spawn of Hell named Posey.

McDaniel is the author of the novel How To Succeed in Heaven Without Really Dying, which is currently being developed into a stage musical (of all things). He is also co-writing the book Chasing Echoes Through the Dark with Daniel James Wessler.

McDaniel's first screenplay, Heaven Spent, was featured by entertainment website Aint It Cool News as one of the best "undiscovered" scripts of 2000; it was also a second place winner at Words From Here's Third Annual Screenplay Competition. His second script, In the Footsteps of Thaddeus Thackeray, was chosen by Hollywood blogger "The Unsung Critic" as the best script of 2006.

McDaniel is the founder and editor-in-chief of Aisling Eye Books.


EDUCATION

VASSAR COLLEGE, Poughkeepsie, NY.

Bachelor of Arts Degree, May 1996. Major: Film Studies. Graduated with Honors.

SELECT HONORS & AWARDS

  • SPECIAL AWARD/BEST IN SHOW. Bernards Regional Student Art Showcase, 1992.
  • HONORABLE MENTION, for "8:00 a.m." SMPTE & RAVA Short Film Festival, 1995.
  • THE DAVID C. MAGID MEMORIAL FILM PRIZE. Vassar College, 1996.
  • DIRECTOR'S CITATION AWARD, for "8:00 a.m." The New Jersey Short Film & Videomakers Festival, 1996.
  • Feature film screenplay, HEAVEN SPENT, awarded second place in the WORDS FROM HERE 2004 screenplay competition.
  • "Digital Color Artist of the Month" by the Digital Consciousness website. November, 2005.

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Artwork also featured on the following sites:

Ani-Jobs.com
Art Bistro
Art/Illustration Community
Deviant Art
DigitalConsciousness
Drawingboard.org
FanArt-Central.net
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