The 13 year Pixar veteran has storyboarded on several of the studios most beloved films, including serving as head of story on both The Incredibles and Ratatouille, as well as co-director on Brave. He also knows his way around live action, having boarded out scenes for Spider-Man and serving as second-unit director on John Carter, fellow Pixar director Andrew Stanton's live action feature.
And Thursday night AIGA SF, the professional association for design, brought the acclaimed Academy Award winning director to the stage to showcase his storyboarding talent and boundless energy and humor to Adobe Systems.
“At heart I’m a storyteller,” he told the sold out crowd of professionals, students, film fans and designers. “I've always drawn since the age of three. I think I drew because of my imagination. It was the only way for me to get the stuff inside my head out." Originally he wanted to work in comics, but he didn't let a scathing rejection letter from Marvel knock him down. "I took it as a challenge," he said.
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| Attendees awaiting the presentation. |
He turned in a portfolio at Cal Arts and after graduating with a degree in film and living a life as a starving artist for a year, landed his first gig at Hanna Barbara Studios.
As he told the engaged crowd, “I'm a solid D student but I can draw like a mother,” and he put his talents to good use on popular shows like The New Adventures of Johnny Quest, and later on Samurai Jack and The Clone Wars. "The thing that I learned doing TV was to trust your gut," said Andrews.
"I learned back in my TV days that the proof is in the pudding. We had only eight short weeks to turn out a 22 minute episode of storyboards...and I cut my teeth on storytelling there."
His experience boarding for TV greatly influenced his approach to boarding for feature animation.
"What I saw right when I got into feature animation was waste. Waste, waste, waste, waste, waste. It was waste of thinking, it was over-thinking, it was noodling drawings. It wasn't getting into the essence of the gut, into the essence of the feeling," he said.
"I'm the audience, I'm trying to make it happen in my mind and get it on the page so I can eloquently tell my crew what I'm going for so they can put their massive amounts of talent to get it to the audience." He used his skills in TV to help usher in a form of cinematic storytelling often missing in many animated features.
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| WiA SF member Kristen Sanzari waits for the event to start. |
His work ethic and good relationship with the crew encouraged Lynch to call him to work on Spider-Man, where he was now second unit director. In a serendipitous turn, Bird called him immediately after Andrews got off the phone with Lynch to be head of story on The Incredibles, enabling him to work on back to back super hero films.
Boarding for live action enabled him to see how animated films could benefit from live action techniques. And as proof, he showcased three scenes he boarded for Spider-Man, The Incredibles and John Carter, complete with dialogue and sound effects. Andrews love of film and energy was infectious and his unbridled enthusiasm propelled him to do things differently than what was considered standard in animated fare at the time.
Working with director Sam Raimi on Spider-Man was a learning experience that greatly influenced how Andrews create films, he said.
"It made me realize what I've been trying to emulate in animation for a few years. We're trying to emulate live action. We're trying to make a movie. And the things that make movies movies are the limitations in the physical world," he said. "It is the camera weight. It is the lenses. It is the light. It is actual gravity. It is location spatial awareness. It is physics. And in film they've developed a whole way of shooting and capturing something on film and coming up with it in a certain way to put these images together to convey a story. So that's when I started to think like a real filmmaker. When I would draw it would convey to someone actually physically getting the shot. That was a big lesson."
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| Mark Andrews discusses the tone and feel of The Incredibles. |
“Animation has this stigma of being as kids genre,” he told the audience. “But it’s changing.” He pointed to the change in animated film ratings, and how more and more films are being released as PG instead of G. “The first PG-13 animated film if it’s good, will make more money and open the flood gates,” he said.
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| Director Mark Andrews and WiA Co-President Angela Entzminger |
Ultimately though, it is all about story, which is one of the things he enjoys the most about working at Pixar Animation Studios.
“One of the best things about working at Pixar,” he said, is that “everything is story-driven.” The other, he said, is that Pixar is run by artists, and that his bosses do what he does. They are “very realistic about making money,” he said, but they understand the importance of both story and business.
When asked how he resolves creative differences with the team, he replied that it is a conversation. He may get into loggerheads with other directors, but “ultimately that’s a good thing,” he said. “It’s something that’s better.”
At the end of the day, it’s about what needs to get done. “I am not doing my director any service if I’m not selling it one hundred percent. You need that conflict to push you. It’s not about right or wrong, it’s about what’s best for the story.”
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Special thanks to AIGA SF’s Dawn Zidonis, Rob Duncan, and the many other talented staff members and volunteers of AIGA SF for putting on this event, and Adobe for their support of AIGA SF's Design Lecture Series. For more information on AIGA SF events, visit:
http://aigasf.org/events
Thank you to Pixar and Mark Andrews for speaking to the crowd and answering questions. Check out his artistic endeavors on his blog:
http://talesofcolossus.blogspot.com/
And for more information on Women in Animation San Francisco and to get updates on other animation related events in the area, check out our Facebook page:
https://www.facebook.com/wiasf
And Twitter:
@WIASanFrancisco
