Animation Guild | We are 839 Digital Magazine
Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/1544997
Jackie Gorman has never met Lauren MacMullan, but that doesn't stop her from feeling kinship with the industry veteran whose credits range from The Simpsons to Avatar: The Last Airbender. MacMullan's work, especially as the Production Designer on Mission Hill, has had a monumental influence on Gorman's career. Gorman recalls sneakily watching the adult-oriented series when she was in grade school, and then rewatching it in college, bingeing it over and over during the process of working on her senior thesis film. "Lauren came up with the general look," Gorman says, "and the color specifically was something I had never seen—such unique saturated color palettes in an adult cartoon." Gorman admits that she didn't really know what color design entailed as a job when she was starting out. She came to the role in a roundabout way as a Design Assistant on Solar Opposites. She was hoping to get into props, but she didn't pass a props test. Then the Art Director, who had seen her personal work, asked if she'd like to test for color. This led to a role as a Color Designer on Seasons 4 through 6. Working with a color design team of two, Gorman is responsible for anything that isn't background, from a massive alien monster to a crumb. Along with standard base colors, she has to decide on tints when, for example, lights are dimming or the time of day is changing. It's here that she often leans on lessons observed from MacMullan's work on Mission Hill. She recalls a particular scene with the show's blue-haired brothers. It took place at night, and MacMullan changed the color of their hair to black. "Using true black, and so much of it, is an unusual and bold choice in animation," Gorman says. "I thought it was very effective, very unique. I hadn't seen [this], where you're changing the whole palette of the character." On a sci-fi show like Solar Opposites, where backgrounds range from the mundane to the other-worldly, MacMul- lan's outside-the-box approach has been invaluable to Gorman. "For me, the hardest thing in color design, the most challenging thing for me really, is working with a character, prop, or effect that appears in multiple scenes [with] very different backgrounds," she says. "A character has to be able to pop out against a normal kitchen back- ground, but they also have to pop out against a lava scene and an ice scene." Gorman says she looks at how playful MacMullan gets with tints, noting how delicately she can tweak a color, "shifting it just enough to be its own thing and separate from the background… The goal with color is to have nice crisp storytelling and framing… I think she did some really creative workarounds." Gorman's interest in MacMullan's style has paid off in surprising ways. In 2023 she was hired to illustrate posters and help design merchandise for Mission Hill's 25th anniversary tour. This gave her an opportunity to dive even deeper into MacMullan's work as she tried to capture the essence of each city on the tour while staying true to the show's color palettes. Not only does Gorman use what she continues to learn from MacMullan on the job. MacMullan has also influenced Gorman's personal art. Because of Mission Hill, Gorman finds herself trying new styles, mixing bright, saturated colors with more muted tones. "Getting into her mind a little bit about what her thought process was for some of these color palettes," Gorman says, "I'm definitely testing out things I wouldn't have done in the past." FLYING COLORS JACKIE GORMAN Color Designer Solar Opposites, 20th Television INSPIRATION LAUREN MACMULLAN "I had to study Lauren's art style, [and] I carried a lot of it with me professionally, her attention to detail and intention." Solar Opposites images © 2026 20th Television. SUMMER 2026 31