Nicholas Peterson is a graduate of the California Institute of the Arts (CalArts) where he developed skills in stop-motion animation. In 1998 Peterson crewed on the first ever stop-motion IMAX film More, later nominated for an Academy Award for Best Animated Short Film. Soon after, he made his own stop-motion short film MuM receiving critical acclaim at the 2000 Sundance Film Festival and winning a College Emmy Award Archived 2014-01-04 at the Wayback Machine.