Biography
He got his start by studying Foundation Art at Pratt Institute in New York before receiving his Bachelor of Fine Arts Degree in Experimental Animation from the California Institute of the Arts in June 1992. His thesis film, Greener, won numerous awards and screened at more than 40 film festival worldwide.
Osborne has received two Academy Award nominations, including one for Best Animated Feature of the year for the 2008 critically acclaimed Kung Fu Panda which he directed alongside John Stevenson. Kung Fu Panda has netted a worldwide box office of more than $630 million to-date and features the voice talents of Jack Black, Dustin Hoffman, Angelina Jolie, Lucy Liu and Seth Rogen. The DreamWorks family-friendly action-comedy was Osborne's first major studio project. It also won him and Stevenson the Annie Award for Directing in an Animated Feature Production.
Osborne's other most well-known work to date, award winning stop motion animated short, More, has screened in over 150 film festivals worldwide. It was the first IMAX animation film to ever be nominated for an Academy Award (1999). More garnered an Oscar nomination for Best Animated Short, Special Jury Prize for Short Films at the Sundance Film Festival (1999), The SXSW Best Animated Short (1999), the ResFest Grand Prize (1999), the Critics Week selection for CANNES (1999), among many others.
Osborne has also directed a majority of the live-action material for the popular animated TV series SpongeBob SquarePants featuring Patchy the Pirate, as well as all of the live action sequences for The SpongeBob SquarePants Movie, featuring David Hasselhoff. He was classmates with the television show's creator, Stephen Hillenburg, while a student at CalArts. He also worked as director on SpongeBob episodes such as "The Sponge Who Could Fly" and "SpongeBob B.C.".
His other live action directing credits include his independent feature film Dropping Out, which premiered at the Sundance Film Festival in 2000, and has developed a cult following. Written by and starring Osborne's brother Kent, the darkly satirical comedy features David Koechner, John Stamos, Adam Arkin and Fred Willard. Bachelor Pad was also a short live-action comedy Mark did with his brother Kent Osborne and Dylan Haggerty in the late 1980s. Parts of Bachelor Pad can be seen in the unaired second episode of Taterhole, which was a spin-off to The Rudy and Gogo World Famous Cartoon Show in 1997. The entire episode can be viewed at rudyandgogo.com. Osborne's short, Greener was also broadcast on TNT's "Rudy and GoGo's New Year's Eve Flaming Cheese Ball" special on New Year's Eve 1995/1996.
For a while, Osborne taught stop-motion at his alma mater, CalArts. He later left to pursue his professional aspirations.
In 2004 Osborne was awarded the Guggenheim Fellowship to assist in the production of another personal stop-motion short film, The Better Half.
He is the brother of TV writer and producer, Kent Osborne.
In October 2010, Osborne was hired to direct The Little Prince for Gallic S3D.
Read more about this topic: Mark Osborne (filmmaker)
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