Animation Guild | We are 839 Digital Magazine
Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/1512296
Photos by Tim Sullens MARK HENN Changing of the Guard In 1980, in his second year at CalArts, Mark Henn was hired at Disney. At that time, the studio was reaching the end of an era. His training program was under the direction of Eric Larson—the last of Disney's Nine Old Men still working at the studio. Henn started on The Fox and the Hound, assisting Glen Keane's unit, and then was working on some effects when, a year in, in order to get a promotion, he was required to do a personal animation test. He based his on Mickey Mouse. This grabbed the attention of Disney veteran Burny Mattinson, who assigned the relative newcomer to animate the legendary mouse for Mickey's Christmas Carol. Henn calls being trusted with Mickey "certainly a good way to start." It meant that he was being recognized for producing quality work. He did a brief stint on Black Cauldron before Mattinson pulled him over to The Great Mouse Detective. "Things took off after that," he says. This was a pivotal time for Disney as the studio figured out how to move beyond the Nine Old Men who had helped shape it. "Obviously there was the literal changing of the guard," Henn says. "But there was also a lot of dust yet to settle when I started because [they'd just had the] Don Bluth exodus." Bluth had left to start his own studio, taking more than a dozen Disney animators with him. "That left Fox and the Hound in the lurch," says Henn. But while the moment was a rocky one, he feels it opened up opportunities that he and other animators might not have had right away "had Bluth stuck around." A few years later, Jeffrey Katzenberg took over Walt Disney Studios, and changes were afoot again. There had been ongoing doubts about whether The Fox and the Hound should be finished. Finally, Katzenberg said, "'We'll make it, but I want it made in 18 months,' which was at that time unheard of," says Henn. "[Disney] just made movies, and every two or three or four years at some point somebody would say, oh, I think we can wrap this thing up in six months and let's make that our target. It's not like it is today where you set release dates and almost back into it. That was a big adjustment that of course affected everything since then." As the 1990s arrived, Henn participated firsthand in the Disney renaissance that snowballed with the Academy Award for Best Picture nomination for Beauty and the Beast. He was the Supervising Animator for Belle, as well as The Little Mermaid's Ariel and numerous other iconic characters. But Henn believes there was a natural progression that led to the era of blockbuster successes. "With The Great Mouse Detective, things started to turn around. I think there was a trust the studio was developing with our [new] generation of artists," he says. "The stories, the ideas, the management that we had. We grew in confidence as to our abilities. We had an enthusiasm, we had some success. That was the stepping stone to each subsequent film—a little bit better and a little bit better after that. … Working here at Disney has been a wish for me since I was small boy. Having that opportunity to be the next generation after the first generation —I've been very blessed." WINTER 2023 33 "Working here at Disney has been a wish for me since I was small boy."