Born in
Trenton, New Jersey, Osborne grew up in
Woodstock, Vermont until at age 14 he moved to
Flemington, New Jersey and graduated from
Hunterdon Central Regional High School in 1988. He began his career 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 was screened at more than 40 film festivals worldwide. He 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 more than $630 million worldwide to-date. The 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, the award-winning
stop motion animated short
More, has been screened at 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 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.
Bachelor Pad was also a short live-action comedy Mark made with his brother
Kent along with 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 of
The Rudy and Gogo World Famous Cartoon Show in 1997. His short film
Greener was broadcast on
TNT's ''Rudy and GoGo's New Year's Eve Flaming Cheese Ball'' special on New Year's Eve (1995–96). Osborne taught stop-motion at his alma mater CalArts, but 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. Between 2010 and 2015, Osborne was directing an animated film,
The Little Prince. In November 2016, it was reported that Osborne had been hired to direct and co-write an animated film adaptation of
Jeff Smith's comic books,
Bone. In April 2017,
20th Century Fox Animation and
Blue Sky Studios announced they would produce
Escape from Hat, an animated film adaptation of Adam Kline's fantasy book of the same title, with Osborne set to direct and co-write the script with Kline, and Jinko Gotoh producing the film along with Osborne. However, in November 2018,
Netflix acquired the film rights and Melissa Cobb joined the production team. As of August 2023, the film was no longer in development at Netflix. Osborne, along with singer
Chris Martin, wrote the story of
Coldplay's
Mylo Xyloto concept album and directed the video for its track "
Hurts Like Heaven". He wrote the first issue of the
comic adaptation and still hopes to turn the album into a film. ==Personal life==