John earned an Academy Award nomination in 2003 as the producer of Gone Nutty, an animated short created at Blue Sky Studios featuring the popular Scrat character from the "Ice Age" films. Donkin came to Blue Sky Studios in 1998 as the managing technical director. One of his first projects was to help complete the Academy Award winning short film Bunny. He developed the production pipeline for Blue Sky's first animated feature film project Ice Age, before becoming the film's Associate Producer. Donkin went on to produce several other Blue Sky Studios projects including Rio and Rio2, which became a global hit franchise, Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs, which grossed over $887 million worldwide, Ice Age: Continental Drift, Robots, and Blue Sky's Academy Award nominated short No Time for Nuts. Donkin began his computer animation career in 1983 where he studied with the world renowned CGRG (Computer Graphics Research Group) at The Ohio State University. He went on to be a senior animator at the pioneering CG company Cranston/Csuri Productions.