Mark McDonnell

To say that Mark McDonnell the artist is animated would be an understatement. Passionate and obsessive with an eagerness to share his knowledge of the animation industry would be closer to the truth. I learned about his passion not solely based on my research of his success but because the first portion of my interview with Mark was done in silence (broken audio, we were Skyping from remote locations). As we sat there soundlessly, monitor to monitor, face to face, I enjoyed the rare opportunity to observe him in a way he must frequently employ to study his own subjects, that is by carefully taking studied notation of their physical characteristics. In short, I over analyzed his body language. I carefully watched Mark as he fumbled to get the audio to work, rolling his eyebrows up and down in waves of frustration, shrugging his shoulders while shaking his head. Mark was determined to fix our technical malfunction. At one point, Mark's hands gesticulated through the air, he paused and whipped out his pointer finger, and held it up at me authoritatively. I thought we were about to have a technical breakthrough then I watched as he quickly scribbled something on a paper. He then held up a sign that read Sh*t Balls! His gesture fit so perfectly with the situation that I felt the only thing missing from the exchange was a cartoon bubble over his head. While I sat back laughing at our comic strip of a situation, I could see the thought balloons forming above his head as he diligently continued to perform tech support. Finally, after two trips to the nearest computer store, and five attempts to figure out how to make the audio work, Mark's problem solving expertise prevailed. As you'll discover, he is no quitter.

With the publication of his new book, The Art & Feel of Making it Real — Gesture Drawing for the Animation and Entertainment Industry, I was curious to understand the man behind the process and why he was so eager to share the hard won secrets of his craft with other artists in his industry.
Being in the entertainment industry as a designer and instructor for Disney, and working for other studios, has taught Mark many things, and one of the most valuable is the facility to express attitude and personality through gesture drawing. As one of the masters of an emerging generation of animation art, his understanding of body language and gesture along with his ability to capture it has progressed beyond mere proficiency to the level of teacher.

When did you first realize you were an artist?

“I knew as a kid. I was always drawing something, sketches of The Hulk, etc. But, I didn’t make the effort until after college. It wasn’t until I went to college and I learned absolutely nothing that I knew I had to try and take this seriously, and when I graduated, I began to seek out apprenticeships.”

What attracted you specifically to the animation industry?

“I sat down and had a meeting with an animator Kathy Bailey, who still works for Disney and she told me what I needed to do if I was going to get serious about becoming a professional animator. It was interesting because at that time, I had just seen Aladdin the animated film, and OH MY GOD!”

Mark’s hands are now stretched out like he’s about to do a chest press, illustrating the size of the impact the movie had on him at that time, and his eyes widen to the size of silver dollars. The room suddenly feels electrified by his enthusiasm. He collapses his pose and smiles calmly back into a more relaxed posture as he continues.

“It was just the combination of my chance meeting with Kathy and being awestruck by Aladdin that I decided, huh, this could be me, this is what I need to do. People really do this for a living?”

Karl Gnass (renowned artist and author, The Spirit of the Pose) is one of your protégés and I’d like to know what is it about this particular field that Gnass warns against not getting too comfortable with your “plateau?” What does that mean to you?

“So when you’re going through your artistic career you are sort of like a child. You are learning all these things, you’re learning how to draw the head, the structure, the anatomy, you know, Warner Brothers cartoons versus Disney, etc. You have all this influx, and as you take it all in and spit it out you are sort of putting your own stamp on it but also trying to learn that style (by imitation). But as you get older and you get more experienced in order to increase and get more proficient in a particular area you sort of plateau.”

As Mark talks his hands rise and then he slowly drops mimicking the motion of a plateau.

“And at that point everything you do begins to look the same, you hit an area where you’ve already gone as far as you can and in order to get better at the discipline you have to dive back into the pain of the learning before you can level off and climb another rung. In the beginning, it’s so exciting because you are learning so many things, and climbing to many new rungs, but as you get better you hit a flat part, and it takes more to get to the next rung.”

In terms of sophistication, is there just a basic hierarchy within your industry? For instance, does it go illustration, figure, gesture drawing? Or are they all on the same level of difficulty just different specialties?

“You know its weird; there are all these different classifications about when to use what. I think you sort of classify things individually and sort of try to master them, but as you get closer to mastering them, they all become the same thing, and it becomes amoebas, and you start to add things and interject things all the time. Where as in the beginning you may think first gesture then anatomy, then structure, and technique, which is how I would typically start a drawing. But as you get more proficient you can use anyone of those at any different time. You start to weave and move things organically as oppose to step by step. When you are beginning its easier to get lost, so you follow step by step, you follow the rules, but as you get better; you can break the rules later on.”

How closely do you observe what is referred to in animation as “the bible of the industry” the twelve principles of animation? Do animation artist truly hold to that in this modern age?

“In the golden days of animation,” Mark lowers his voice and rolls his eyes affectionately toward me. Thankfully, he decides to continue on in his regular voice. “ During the old days of animation they had the Nine Old Men at Disney and they defined animation. And how to go about it. So now, I wouldn’t consider myself an ‘animator’ but a designer that uses animation principles to make things more entertaining and well designed while still carrying a sense of weight.”

To what degree does the tradigital/3D age of animation affect your work? How has it challenged your work as an artist?

“For me personally, I think people are way too dependent on 3D. It is very time consuming. That’s not to say that traditional animation isn’t time consuming.”

Mark wipes his hand across his face as though he were a little boy cleaning off his milk mustache. He pauses for a moment before he continues,

“Actually, it’s funny you mention that because today I just got a call back on a set I had designed a year ago for a film and now I need to go back and redesign it. It was sort of a castle on a hill and these waterfalls and cliffs were jetting out, but now that they are going to build it in 3D I need to redefine it almost and do more what you would consider prop designs. I need to now go back and ask myself, what is on the top of the castle: Is it gold? Is it gilded? Is it made of rock? Marble? So something that was easy to design and then show paintings of is now having to be redesigned for 3D. And there is no wishy-washy part about that process. You have to go back and redesign it with a mind like an architect.”

It sounds a little counterintuitive, because people think that with the advent of computer assisted animation it has become easier for the animators to go about their craft. But, it sounds like the artistry has become more complex. Is that true?

“I would definitely say that 3D has not made the artistic standpoint better except for being able to visualize something in a more realistic way. Take for instance Kung Fu Panda, which I think is the best animated film of 2008. The way that the 3D in the computer worked in that film was unique. It actually took the artists designs and made them 3D in a way that you could have never been done in a 2D animated film. I mean the design remains intact in that film, which usually is not the case. Usually the design gets somewhat lost, just boiled down and altered significantly in many cases. But, it does give you the ability to add nice things like fur patterns and various textures. These things that were never possible before. But it takes time to not lose the artistry, and if the studios are willing to spend the time and money doing it, you can produce a film that holds the artistic integrity of the design while still enjoying the nuances made possible by the technology. Which most of the films do not accomplish.”

I know you make a very clear distinction in the beginning of your new book, The Art and Feel of Making it Real that the premise of this book is not about figure drawing but gesture drawing. And I want to understand the difference between the two.

“Figure drawing, generally speaking, makes a drawing that is more illustrative, it follows the way light falls more on the subject, and its main concern is with the changing of values. Gesture drawing is more the point that you’re not copying the model, but you’re making it better. You're pushing it farther than what you are seeing before you, and you are making it much clearer. You’re not copying the light. They are different thought patterns. When you’re going for animation you are going for gesture and life. When you work on an animation film you are enhancing reality. This is not a Xerox machine, you as an animator have to add more than what we see in reality, your goal is to make it more exciting than what we see on a daily basis.”

You state that your goal as an artist is to be able to communicate something about someone’s personality by what they look like. You also said that gesture drawing is a symbiotic partnership in terms of the creation of images? What does that mean?

“You’re embedding energy and life force within this mannequin so you cannot have one without the other and you have to exhibit an understanding of their figure but you also have to have that purity of action and a clear readable pose which is what animation is founded on.”

Is that what you mean when you say you are trying to distill the eternal from the transient to show humanity at its finest?

“When you look at a painting of Rembrandt and you are attracted to it, its not a painting of a person, it’s a painting of that particular person, and some how you glean life and who they are just by looking at that painting and that is the most important thing an artist can do. I think you’re capturing humanity. You’re not capturing a drawing or a pose. I do a copious amount of sketchbook drawing. I sit at coffee shops and just watch, and the hardest thing to do is to not just draw a pose that you are comfortable with. It’s not that that person is walking; it’s that that person has that walk. So, those are the hardest things. It’s easy to default. And you just go out and start drawing people and what they look like, but you are not drawing who they are as people, you are not capturing the individual, which is the goal. Art is so hard because there can be so many different things that an artist is going for. But, you have to get to the truth of the statement. And whether it is by capturing the subject's posture, clothing, or personality, these are all factors that should not be overlooked.”

You mentioned that you want to capture a person’s individuality when you are sketching, how does the notion of stereotypes fit into your art?

“A good thing about stereotypes is that it offers an instant recognizable nature. If a particular race or say a nerd has a big forehead and glasses” Mark immediately puts on his glasses to highlight his point. The change in my perception of him is instantaneous. Point taken. Mark continues, “There are physical truths to a lot of races and people. They are universal. With a drawing, and no color, you can recognize that person, or that thing. And I think that is amazing. However, embedded in our culture we have certain stereotypes that we can recognize but that is because we’re constantly shown that stereotype which might not be in truth, it might just be because we have seen too much of it in other editorial cartoons. So, you have to be honest to that particular person or the thing that you are drawing and not just draw something that is just the easy thing to go to based on past trends”

I’m wondering if that is not a huge part of your job, that is to decipher between the two (true stereotyping versus faulty ones) and if so do you touch on the subject in your new book?

“I don’t break down culture. But, if you look inside there are a lot of stereotypical Asian, Africa American, or even European sensibilities of skeletal structure. And I draw from that knowledge all the time. Take for instance; if I were looking at an Asian person, it’s not necessarily their eyes that I am going after. There is a zygomatic arch which is underneath the cheek bone, and that is supported in a very unique way, which does tilt the eyes, but done so in order to help shield them from the sun. And that is no different than looking at the skeletal structure of a Siberian Tiger which also happens to have a similar shaped zygomatic arch.”

Mark points behind him, in his office resting high on one of his shelves resides an abundant collection of skulls.

You mentioned that you studied cadavers in the beginning of your career, which I found interesting. When I think of animation, I think imagination. And I’d like to know why studying cadavers was essential to your craft?

“One thing that is completely important is that you don’t know what you don’t know. And you really need to learn about anatomy before you begin your work in this field.
Because as an animator or as an artist working in the animation and entertainment field you have to learn to work as though the lights are turned off. And I knew I had to learn how to do that in order to be successful in my field. Before I could learn how to construct what was in my imagination I had to learn the fundamentals of the way real construction, real humans, worked. I needed to know what was underneath and what was driving these forces first so that I could create something with more weight, more of a life force, whether it be a woman, or a mouse. You have to understand real movement in order to caricature it.”

The inspiration for your book, where did it come from?

“I always wanted to get into Disney, specifically Disney Feature Animation. And at the time Disney had these classes that were modeled after this amazing instructor, Walt Stanchfield. And when he retired from the industry he taught these classes full-time. And while his classes were going on, I was far too young and way too inexperienced to take them. I only wish I could have during my high school years. However they were only being taught to Disney employees. So I had to find a way to sneak in. And by some odd twist of fate, I was able to. And I did. Eventually, I found my way in to one of these classes taught by Diana Coco-Russel and I spent six or seven years studying this particular style of design and drawing called Costumed Gesture Drawing. I was eventually offered to teach the class. It was an honor for me. However, during the time that Stanchfield was teaching these courses, his notes or his sketches were kept very private and very hard to find. Disney owned them and if someone from outside the class could get their hands on his notes, well, it was a rare opportunity. I think Walt’s notes were amazing, but what I think my book will be able to do is give people in the entertainment industry (not just Disney animators) an opportunity to share in this legacy and grow it into my own sensibilities and teachings. I want to make these things available to those who are not able to take the classes. This is my way of giving back. A lot of my chapters are designed from questions that I have been asked by students while teaching classes at Disney.”

So would you say that someone reading this book would help to enhance their specific shape language regardless of what area they are in the animation industry?

“The book is designed to make you better at what you do at whatever level you are at, it will make you think more, and therefore become a better artist. I don’t talk about technique or style; it’s more about principles, and how to make your artwork better. I’m not interested in selling myself. This is about the thinking process. The book will make your drawings and your poses clear and more readable. This is the first time that anything like this has been offered. Disney withheld the knowledge for so long. It’s time for it to come out. My book offers that to everyone who picks up a copy and thumbs through the pages, from professional to hobbyist”

So what makes you unique as a teacher?

“Suffering. I suffer. You’re not born a great artist--you’re made. Start now. The time you put in and the passion behind it will get you to the level you are trying to achieve. But, you have to go through the battles. Try any medium, try it now! Pastels, charcoal, color-pencil, whatever! Use all the tools, so when you are given the opportunity, you know how to express it. You will eventually unlock the secrets of whatever medium you are choosing to use. But, there will be suffering, that’s learning. But once you understand that medium you can use if to your advantage. So the more you experiment with different styles and mediums the better your visual language will be when you are making your own personal statement with your own artwork. You gotta make your statement about life, cause its short.”


So how does being such a keen observer of motion change your daily life? Can someone sneeze in front of you without you slicing it up into five hundred tiny motions?

“You cannot turn it off. It can be hard. My girlfriend will be cooking and I’m watching the way she’s moving her hands, or in a film I’m like, ‘Oh! Hey! Look! There’s, um, that color there, and that color there!’ And people are like, 'Dude, you just ruined the movie, I just want to watch the movie'. You can find yourself over analyzing someone’s posture to the point of exhaustion. The way they sit, cross their legs, close their arms, etc. I could never go to the zoo ever again with someone just to go. I would have to bring my sketchbook, I would have to draw. So there is that neurotic sense of urgency that you place upon yourself. I’m trying to balance that out, but its hard, I’m obsessed. And I think that’s the point.”