Mark Henn

He also viewed The Reluctant Dragon (1941), remembering a scene of "Ward Kimball drawing a scene of Goofy. He picked up all that paper, started flipping and everything kind of came to life. From then on, the animation bug beats hard for me."

At seven years old, Henn watched a reissue of Cinderella (1950) and decided to become an animator.

Mark Alan Henn (born April 6, 1958) is an American animator and film director.

His work includes animated characters for Walt Disney Animation Studios films, most notably leading or titular characters and heroines.

For the mice characters, Henn studied the mannerisms of Bob Newhart and Eva Gabor during voice recording sessions, and looked to George C. Scott's performance in Dr. Strangelove (1964) for inspiration while animating McLeach.

In 1976, Henn graduated from Trotwood-Madison High School.

He next attended Bowling Green State University and sent an animation portfolio to the Disney studios, but did not accept it though they recognized his potential.

He then attended Sinclair Community College and sent a second portfolio, which was rejected.

He sent a third portfolio a semester later, to which he received a rejection letter from Don Duckwall, the studio's production manager.

Henn recalled, "[Duckwall] sent a nice rejection letter back and he wrote a sentence that was burned into my memory saying that it wasn't that I wasn't a good artist, but they just didn't think I had what it took to travel the narrow roads that their animators travel."

In 1978, he attended the California Institute of the Arts (CalArts) and was accepted into the Character Animation program.

His professors there included former Disney animators Jack Hannah, Elmer Plummer, Jack Kinney, T. Hee, Bob McCrea, and Ken O'Connor, while his fellow students included Joe Ranft, Mark Dindal and John Lasseter.

Henn spent a total of 43 years at Walt Disney Animation Studios, from 1980 until his retirement in 2023.

Henn grew up in Dayton, Ohio.

In 1980, Henn was hired by Walt Disney Productions and entered the animation training program where he was mentored by Eric Larson.

He began work as an inbetweener for Glen Keane on The Fox and The Hound (1981).

According to Henn, Keane was finishing the climactic bear fight scene and Henn worked with him on that.

He was promoted to animator less than a year later for Mickey's Christmas Carol (1983), in which he animated Mickey Mouse.

Henn looked to past Mickey Mouse shorts animated by Freddie Moore, Frank Thomas, and Ollie Johnston for inspiration; overall, he remembered, "He [Mickey] was an easy character to get, for me at least. Putting him in the role of Bob Cratchit was a perfect match as far as casting goes."

On The Black Cauldron (1985), Henn was initially assigned the role of Creeper, the Horned King's assistant.

He also animated scenes of Gurgi and Fflewddur Fflam.

He next joined The Great Mouse Detective (1986), primarily animating Basil, Dawson, and Olivia while drawing Ratigan in a few scenes where he confronts Basil.

On the next animated film Oliver & Company (1988), Henn mainly animated Oliver and his human owner, Jenny.

For the 60th Academy Awards telecast, in April 1988, Henn, along with Rob Minkoff and Nancy Beiman, animated Mickey Mouse as he presented the Academy Award for Best Animated Short Film.

In 1988, Henn was selected by directors John Musker and Ron Clements as one of the two supervising animators for the character Ariel in The Little Mermaid (1989), alongside Glen Keane.

The animation workload was divided by Keane, who mostly animated Ariel during the underwater scenes, whereas Henn animated her in the film's opening scene and when she was a human.

A year later, Henn moved to Orlando, Florida to work at the newly-opened Feature Animation Florida studio at the Disney-MGM Studios.

He served as the lead animator for Ariel in The Little Mermaid (1989), Belle in Beauty and the Beast (1991), Jasmine in Aladdin (1992), young Simba in The Lion King (1994), the title character in Mulan (1998), and Tiana in The Princess and the Frog (2009).

His first assignment there was The Rescuers Down Under (1990) animating the lead characters Bernard and Miss Bianca, as well as the villain Percival C. McLeach.

For Beauty and the Beast (1991), Henn was next assigned as the supervisor animator for Belle, sharing the role with James Baxter.

For character reference, Henn decorated his studio with photographs of famous women, specifically Hollywood actresses Natalie Wood, Elizabeth Taylor, Grace Kelly, and Audrey Hepburn.

However, Henn hardly met the character's voice actress Paige O'Hara apart from rare occasions when he would travel to California for production meetings.

Regardless, he incorporated O'Hara's mannerisms during the recording sessions into the animation, including her pushing a lock of hair off her forehead.

Meanwhile, Glen Keane was the supervising animator for the Beast at the studio's California division.

To coordinate the staging of the characters, Keane and Henn agreed the characters who were most dominant in their scenes would be animated first.

For scenes in which the Beast was most dominant, Keane animated first and placed scribbles for Belle.

The animation was then exchanged through the 3000–mile distance via an overnight courier.

Having animated two previous Disney heroines—Ariel from The Little Mermaid and Belle from Beauty and the Beast, respectively—Henn was afraid he had been typecast when he was assigned his third heroine, Jasmine.

By this point, he had been dubbed as the "Julia Roberts of Disney animation".

He directed the short film John Henry (2000).