Insights from Pixar and 30+ yrs cross-media design practice for how Cinematic Thinking can align Story, Visuals & Emotion into a cohesive experience.
Why This Matters Now More Than Ever
How CDT can help creators rediscover clarity, emotion, and resonance.
Across film, animation, games, and emerging media, the line between creativity and content has blurred. Stories are increasingly engineered to satisfy algorithms, schedules, and risk metrics rather than to move people. Imagination has been systematized, favoring sequels over discovery, formulas over curiosity, leaving audiences hungry for innovation, authenticity, and resonance.
With AI accelerating production through imitation, the challenge is no longer just efficiency but meaning. When anyone can generate content, mastery risks losing relevance. The trained creator’s role, the drive to make deliberate, emotionally intelligent choices, becomes both rarer and more vital.
Cinematic Design Thinking restores that advantage by helping creators design with intention, clarity, and emotional depth, transforming skill and perspective into what algorithms cannot replicate: human resonance.
Cinematic Design Thinking is for filmmakers, game designers, visual storytellers, educators, and studios who want to bring clarity, authenticity, and emotion to the center of their craft. What makes CDT different is its synthesis. It’s not about software or style, it’s about thinking cinematically: understanding how every choice of story, image, and rhythm contributes to a designed emotional experience. You’ll learn to:
Clarify the emotional and thematic intent behind your work.
Strengthen the design connection between story, visuals, and audience experience.
Balance creative authenticity with real-world commercial and technological realities.
Reconnect with the purpose and joy that drew you to storytelling in the first place.
Learn to recognize the visual, emotional, and thematic structures that make stories immersive, engaging & memorable.
Connect creative intent to audience experience through cinematic principles that synthesize intent, execution and impact.
Create work that doesn’t just entertain in the moment, but connects more deeply enabling critical & commercial viability.
The Journey Behind CDT
At Pixar, every visual design choice carries emotional weight—each color, frame, and movement considered for how they can impact audience feelings, memory and impact.
Drawing on sixteen years in Pixar’s Art Department and another fifteen in interactive & immersive media with such companies as EA, Maxis, Google & Facebook, I developed Cinematic Design Thinking as a framework for aligning narrative, visual, and experiential design across any visual-experiential medium.
My goal is to help creators and teams build stories with clarity and resonance—connecting purpose to craft, and design to feeling. Whatever your medium: films, games, immersive, comics or picture books, CDT presents a mindset for aligning intent with execution.
Competitive pricing to help you become more competitive in the current & Post-AI market
I know how rough our creative industries are right now which is why I am offering sliding-scale pricing, payment plans, and sponsor-a-seat pricing so cost isn’t a blocker. In this saturated, AI-heavy market, clarity & emotional design become the advantage. Inclusive pricing lowers the barrier to building the skills that set you apart—now.
See your options to find which best serves your present situation. Let's work together to learn, grow and make storytelling and storytellers more meaningful.
LEARN ABOUT STUDENT OFFERINGS
Whether you’re an artist, writer, designer, or educator, CDT gives you tools to bridge the gap between what you make and how it moves people.
2-hour deep-dives into topics like: Visual Clarity & Orchestration, Narrative Structure, Emotional Structure, Thematic Structure, Story Foundations, etc.
6-wk/2-hr Workshop Section: Story Design or Visual-Emotional Design. Each Section offers broad & deep structured learning within its core focus of intentionality or execution.
Full three 6-wk/2-hr masterclass for a comprehensive under-standing of the Cinematic Design framework for aligning Narrative, Visual & Emotional Design.
Small group or 1:1 guided masterclass for applying course work directly to projects with personalized feedback for aligning intent, execution, audience impact.
Learn about Company / Team Training & Services
▶︎ WORKSHOPS FOR TEAMS: Custom on-site or online workshops that bring CDT principles into your workflow—helping teams align vision, strengthen collaboration, and connect story, design, and audience experience.
▶︎ CREATIVE PROCESS / CULTURE DESIGN: Advisory for studios and schools aiming to strengthen creative culture. We apply cinematic design principles to leadership, collaboration, and feedback—building environments where clarity, trust, and innovation thrive together.
▶︎ STORY-WORLD / IP DEVELOPMENT: Consulting for teams developing story-driven IP or transmedia worlds. We refine theme, structure, and world logic to ensure emotional coherence, creative originality, and scalability across film, games, and interactive platforms.
TESTIMONIALS
What Mark's entertaining and compelling series does so well is break down the craft into it's component parts...The perspective awarded from this thoughtful approach has enriched virtually all facets of my game-making craft.
Strikes the perfect balance between practical knowledge and theoretical understanding, making it an invaluable resource for anyone looking to elevate their creative and art direction skills.
This course was a journey that equipped me with tools and techniques that helped me execute my vision authentically. Highly recommend it for artists looking to broaden their creative horizon.
Taking his class has provided me tools to analyze films more deeply. A tool kit that has given me more appreciation for the art of film making but also the ability to look at my own work critically.
I have no doubt that his clear and succinct explanations of topics, ranging from color usage and composition to the origins of cinematic design, will ensure that individuals of all levels of expertise will find valuable takeaways.
I am so glad I took this class. There are images, principles and takeaways that I still reference almost daily in my story boarding work...and Mark himself was an incredibly patient, thorough and welcoming teacher.
His insight into how & why renowned storytellers make their choices demystified their god-like powers and made great storytelling approachable. I'm more inspired and encouraged to pursue my own ideas and feel confident in my ability to execute.
Mark is a great teacher, and has a knack for making visual storytelling accessible to all. He can translate cinematic design principles to any other medium – including video games – while making it fun in the process.
Stories are not just told, they’re built, frame by frame, choice by choice. Learn how to design yours with purpose.