Marcell Jankovics was born in Budapest, in 1941. In 1960, one year after leaving school, he joined Pannonia Film Studio. He began as an inbetweener, soon was appointed to assistant animator, then to animator. From 1963 he makes animated films independently. In 1964 he was chosen to be the member of the directing triumvirate of the worldwide popular animated series Gustavus.  From 1965 he is filmdirector. In 1995 he became artdirector of Pannonia. Between 1996–2007 he was the managing director of the aforenamed studio. He has written, designed and directed several hundred animated shorts: singles and series. The first full-length animated film produced in Hungary – Johnny Corncob – is associated with his name. He was the leading director of the series Gustavus, Hungarian Folktales, Legends from the Hungarian History. Besides direction he was writer, storyboard and graphic designer and partly animator of his three full-length animated films: Johnny Corncob, Son of the White Mare, Song of the Miraculous Hind and of his independent shorts. From 1988 he is working on the animated adaptation from the drama The Tragedy of Man of the greatest Hungarian dramatist, Imre Madách. (The play written in the 19th century was translated into 90 languages and was put on stages around the world at the big theaters of that time.) The production will be finished at the end of this year. He also involved as animator, animation director, graphic designer, scriptwriter, storyboard designer or simply as an adviser in films of others. In 1997 as a graphic designer  he worked in the pre-production creative team of the feature-length Disney production entitled The Emperor’s New Groove in the Burbank Studio, Los Angeles.

He is the recipient of more than forty Hungarian and international awards. He was member of juries on international filmfestivals nine times (Zagreb, New York, Tehran twice, Espinho, Ottawa, Oberhausen, Krakow, Hiroshima). He has written a textbook on animation and taught this artistic form more than twenty years in Budapest. First in the Technical School for Art and Design (1971–1972), later (from 1981) at the Academy of Applied Arts, now Moholy-Nagy University of Art and Design, where he is a private tutor (from 2000) with DLA qualification (from 1997). He has given lectures at the Kossuth Lajos University of Science of Debrecen and the  University ofTheatrical and Film Art of Budapest.
He has tried his hand at theatrical work. He designed set and costume of a Plautus’comedy for a strolling company (around 1980), directed two folkmusic and dance-show on the University Stage of Budapest (1981–1982), put on the stage his own play about the Bible for children in the Budapest Puppet Theater (1997). Now he is working on animated décor of the ballet Csongor és Tünde (2012-13).