Mark Andrews (filmmaker)

Career

Andrews studied animation at the Character Animation Program at CalArts. After that he was one of five who got a Disney internship, but was fired after three months. He is also considered to be Brad Bird's "right-hand man". Some of his student films have been featured at MOMA's exhibition TOMORROWLAND: CalArts in Moving Pictures. Unlike most other CalArts alumni, he was not a huge fan of Disney films, and claimed he was a bigger fan of anime such as Kimba the White Lion, Speed Racer, and Robotech.

He is the father of Maeve Andrews, who voiced Jack-Jack Parr in The Incredibles. Andrews replaced Brenda Chapman as director of Brave (2012). Both were credited as directors, and they won the 2013 Academy Award for Best Animated Feature.

On January 13, 2013, it was announced that Andrews was writing and directing another original feature film at Pixar. Having now directed an animated film, Andrews found the storyboarding phase on Brave to be a frustrating and overly time-consuming process since a 2-D context was being used to convey a 3-D film and it left little room for change later on. This contrasted with his experience on John Carter just before where that film was always being made in the context of the live-action medium and changes could be made in real time. Andrews pitched to Pixar Presidents Ed Catmull and Jim Morris his idea to make his next film at Pixar using mo-cap instead of storyboards for sketching ideas. Andrews' intention for using mo-cap was to be in a 3-D context earlier in the process of making a 3-D film, which was approved. Andrews ultimately left Pixar in 2018 with the understanding that the studio no longer wanted to make the film, which he described as a "big action-adventure fantasy epic".

Since leaving Pixar, Andrews has been a vocal proponent of implementing tools such as Unreal Engine to work in 3-D animation in context with significantly fewer financial and creative constraints while producing significantly more content. The series was made using Unreal Engine developed by Epic Games in collaboration with Reel FX Animation.

In October 2021, it was announced that Andrews was attached to write and executive-produce an animated fantasy drama for Fox Entertainment and Bento Box Entertainment titled Hawkmaster. In July 2024, Andrews was also attached as the showrunner of a "post-apocalyptic samurai dinosaur" series for animation and VFX studio Floating Rock titled Kyōryū.

Filmography

Films

Short films

Television

Music video

Video games

Other credits

References

References

1. "Mark Andrews, Director, Pixar Animation Studios". AIGA San Francisco.
2. (June 26, 2020). "Mark Andrews on Interview Friday - Lunch Therapy 79".
3. "Circle of Stone".
4. (October 22, 2020). "Circle of Stone".
5. (July 6, 2012). "SVN with Mark Andrews - Brave".
6. [http://www.thekennedycompounds.com/the-pixar-braintrust-blog/2016/8/23/day-89-mark-andrews Day 89: A113 Series: Mark Andrews — the Kennedy Compounds]
7. (Jun 22, 2012). "Mark Andrews: "Brave" - Talks at Google". Talks at Google.
8. Click, Stephanie. (June 22, 2012). "Brave: The Review". Stephanie Click.
9. Barnes, Brooks. (20 October 2010). "Pixar Removes Its First Female Director". New York Times.
10. (February 24, 2013). "Oscars 2013: Brenda Chapman's 'Brave' Win a Vindication After Being Fired From the Project". The Hollywood Reporter.
11. (January 13, 2013). "Mark Andrews - backstage interview - Golden Globes 2013".
12. (January 28, 2025). "BRIC-AVG Speaker Series: Animating in Unreal Engine".
13. Milligan, Mercedes. (June 22, 2021). "Netflix Announces Trio of Animated Kids' Comedies from Top Talents & First-Time Creators".
14. (January 25, 2022). "Behind the Scenes on Super Giant Robot Brothers! with Reel FX {{!}} Unreal Engine".
15. (October 4, 2021). "Fantasy Animated Drama 'Hawkmaster' In The Works At Fox From Ex-Pixar Pair Mark Andrews & Andrew Gordon & Oded Turgeman".
16. (June 7, 2024). "Oscar-Winning ‘Brave’ Director Mark Andrews to Showrun Postapocalyptic Samurai Dinosaur Series ‘Kyoryu’ (EXCLUSIVE)". Variety.
17. (February 25, 2020). "Circle of Stone Official Trailer".
18. (August 19, 2022). "Mark Andrews directed Super Giant Robot Bros animation in record time ~ D.A.Livecast #35".