American director Mark Gustafson, who specialized in stop-motion animation and who received an Oscar for his adaptation of Pinocchio (co-directed with Guillermo del Toro), has died at the age of 64.
Stop-motion artist Mark Gustafson, who won an Oscar for Guillermo Del Toro’s Pinocchio, died Thursday February 1 at the age of 64, announced The Oregonian. He was also the animation supervisor on Wes Anderson’s Fantastic Mr Fox.
Guillermo Del Toro paid him a vibrant tribute on X:
“I admired Mark Gustafson before I even met him. [C’était] a stalwart of stop motion animation – a true artist. A compassionate, sensitive and witty man. A legend and a friend who inspired and gave hope to those around him. Today we honor him and we miss him.”
He adds: “They tell us: “Never meet your heroes,” and I disagree. You can’t be disappointed by someone so human. (…) I am delighted to have met Mark the human being and honored to have met the artist. (…) I loved having the chance to spend time and space with him during the ups and downs. Forever.”
WALTER / BESTIMAGE Mark Gustafson
Mark Gustafson began in 1985 by creating the plasticine animation scenes for The Adventures of Mark Twain and Oz: An Extraordinary World. He also collaborated on sequences for Harold and Kumar’s Merry Christmas (2011) and Is There Anybody for the Ambulance? by Dennis Dugan with John Turturro.
His work on Pinocchio with Guillermo Del Toro can be admired on the Netflix platform, which financed the production of the film with the Jim Henson Company.