Greg Tiernan (born on 19 June 1965 in Dublin, Ireland) is an Irish-born, Canadian-based animator, director, producer and voice actor. He was the Chief Creative Officer and co-founder of Nitrogen Studios. He was the director of Thomas & Friends from 2008 to 2012. He began work directing the series after the CGI transition, taking over from Stephen Asquith.
He was replaced by David Baas when production was moved to Arc Productions in 2012.
He was born in Ireland and started Nitrogen Studios in 2003 with Nicole Stinn.
Other work includes, "The Land Before Time", "An American Tail", "All Dogs Go To Heaven", "Happily N'Ever After", "Trollhunters", "Sausage Party" and "The Addams Family".
Director
Series
Specials
Filmography
Films
- Sausage Party (2016)
- The Addams Family (2019)
- The Addams Family 2 (2021)
Television
- City in Crisis (2015)
Allegations of mistreatment
Several days after the release of Sausage Party, allegations of poor treatment of Nitrogen Studios employees surfaced in the comments section of an interview with Tiernan and co-director Conrad Vernon, featured on the website Cartoon Brew. Various anonymous comments, from individuals purporting to be animators who worked on the film in question, made claims including that Nitrogen forced them to work overtime for free and that some employees were threatened with termination. One individual stated that Tiernan had developed a reputation for "disturbing behaviour and abusive management style". Publications such as the Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times, Dorkly, and Film later picked up the story.
Trivia
- He is married to Nicole Stinn.
- He has been working in the animation industry for twenty-seven years.
- Tiernan is a super fan of The Railway Series who owns a copy of both The Island of Sodor: Its People, History and Railways and Sodor: Reading Between the Lines.
- In an interview with SiF, Tiernan expressed a desire to remake Pop Goes the Diesel and Dirty Work. If it was his choice, he would bring back every character ever introduced.
- In the same interview, when asked what prototype he would like to see as a character, he replied that a fireless engine or a Beyer-Garratt 2-6-2+2-6-2 would be nice to see.
- In an interview on 98.3 Vancouver, Tiernan told the hosts of the radio station the reason why Nitrogen stopped working on Thomas was that they only wanted their team to focus one single project, along with saying they thought it was best to finish their career on the show.