Michael J. Kraycik

Michael J Kraycik was born on December 14, 1967 in Allentown, Pennsylvania, USA. Michael attended Kutztown University where he majored in Kutztown's World-renowned BFA Communication Design program. Widely recognized as one of the Nation's top visual and performing arts colleges, the Kutztown Communication Design curriculum fuses graphic design and advertising methodologies with fundamentals in traditional and new media arts. Michael also studied photography and art history while attending Kutztown. Michael grew up in the picturesque Lehigh Valley - just west of Allentown. From an early age, he displayed a high aptitude artistically and worked in many various mediums - primarily concentrating on drawing and painting. As a youth, Michael attended the prestigious Baum School of Art in Allentown and won various awards in both scholastic and private competitions. Inspired by his father, Michael began directing and shooting many films as a young man. By the age of fifteen, he had completed at least twenty films utilizing his father's Super 8mm camera (and a great plethora of friends willing to participate in his usually sci-fi inspired projects). His innovative shorts included many special effects - such as laser beams cut onto the film with a needle, stop-motion animation, and pyrotechnics. Michael also spent a great deal of his time writing stories and completing his own original comic books. Prior to his time at Kutztown, Michael attended Parkland High school in Orefield, Pennsylvania, where he won the National Honor Society Nation Award in Art in 1986. While attending Parkland, he also contributed to the school theater and stage crew groups, as well as time serving as the school's yearbook photographer and newspaper cartoonist. His extracurricular activities included ten-plus years in the Boy Scouts of America - where he earned his Eagle Scout award at age fifteen, and various sports including baseball, weightlifting, hockey, archery, and lacrosse. He is a member of the elite Lenni-Lenape Delaware Indians/Boy Scouts of America National Honor Society, The Order of the Arrow, and was a member of Kutztown's NCAA lacrosse team during college - playing the position of Midfielder. After writing several screenplays, Michael attended Philadelphia's University of the Arts - taking multiple film courses. This subsequently inspired him to begin using his creative abilities and film experience to work as a crew member on various local independent film projects - including New York University's Tisch Film School student thesis short film entitled, "The Hollow Tree" - which debuted at the 2008 Cannes Film Festival. As a film crew member, Michael has served various roles such as storyboard artist, concept artist, production designer, and set assistant on these indie projects. In addition, he has also worked on several large studio productions in the Philadelphia and New York regions as both actor and crew member. Michael is a member of SAG-AFTRA and the National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences - and has served on the Philadelphia SAG-AFTRA Local Board since 2010 and on the SAG-AFTRA National Board of Directors since 2019. Michael also holds a Master's Degree from the Savannah College of Art and Design.