Mark Henn va in pensione Opzioni

[veu]

Mark Henn, creatore e supervisore all'animazione di Jasmine, Tiana e Mulan, oltre che co-animatore di Ariel e Belle e creatore del design di Elsa e Anna, è ufficialmente andato in pensione dopo 43 anni di lavoro alla Disney.

Dal sito Cartoon Brew:

Animation Legend Mark Henn Retires After 43-Year Run At Disney

Mark Henn, 65, a key animator at Disney in the studio’s modern era, retired from the company this week after 43 years.

Henn started his career at Disney in 1980 and, amazingly, never worked at another studio during this time. Quiet and unassuming, Henn hasn’t received as much attention as other Disney animation stars, but he has been deeply influential in defining the contemporary style of Disney animation and continuing the legacy of the studio’s original Nine Old Men crew of animators. He was known for being able to produce prodigious amounts of footage and for animating characters with sincerity, warmth, and restraint.

He was known as the lady’s man around the studio, having supervised five female leads, more than any other person in the history of the animation studio. Those characters were Ariel (which he supervised with Glen Keane), Belle (supervised with James Baxter), Jasmine, Mulan, and Tiana.

He gave life to each through careful observation and nuanced performances. For example, with Ariel, he took inspiration from the physical gestures of the character’s live-action model Sherri Stoner. “One of [those gestures],” he said, “was her habit of biting her bottom lip when she was intent on something. I used that, and the gesture made her personality real for a lot of people.”

With Belle, he looked to Paige O’Hara, the character’s speaking and singing voice. Said Henn, “I was looking for a physical trademark for her personality, and one thing that struck me was the lock of hair that – no matter how much hairspray she uses – just won’t stay in place. So Paige just had an unconscious habit of continually brushing her hair out of her face. As I grew up with two sisters, and certainly observed them fixing or adjusting their hair, it seemed true-to-Belle to me to have her do that.”

He animated far more than just women though, also supervising young Simba in The Lion King and Winnie the Pooh and Christopher Robin in 2011’s Winnie the Pooh feature. Other animation credits include The Great Mouse Detective, The Rescuers Down Under, Lilo & Stitch (on which he did the famous hula dance sequence), and Home on the Range. Henn also directed the 2000 animated short film John Henry.

Some of Henn’s biggest contributions to the studio though can’t be seen onscreen. When Disney launched a satellite studio in Orlando, Henn moved to Florida and spent the entirety of the Nineties there. The studio was originally envisioned as a secondary outpost for short-form production, but Henn’s presence and his drive for excellence quickly made it clear that the studio could handle feature production as well. As the star animator at the studio in the early Nineties, he took on more of a public role, even making an appearance on the sitcom Full House.

The Orlando studio was a unique experiment for Disney and it complicated the logistics of production. For the iconic “A Whole New World” sequence in Aladdin, Jasmine and Aladdin were animated on opposite sides of the country, with Henn handling Jasmine in Florida and Glen Keane animating Aladdin in California. In the pre-internet era, this required careful coordination between the supervising animators, who often telephoned, faxed drawings, and overnight mailed drawings and discs of rough animation to each other.

By 2000, Henn had returned to Burbank, just in time for the studio’s transition to computer animation. This was an era of crisis for Henn, who tried to adapt to cg animation on Meet the Robinsons, but found the process to be too alien from his approach to traditional 2d animation. In an interview, he spoke about this dark period in his career:

From a spiritual point of view, from my world view, it was very eye-opening, because I didn’t realize how ingrained being at Disney and being a Disney animator [was] … the roots were so deep that when that got threatened, it really hurt. It really hurt. I remember I called a friend of mine and I was just in tears saying, ‘I don’t know what to do. This is all I know how to do.’

A testament to Henn’s talent and presence at Disney, the studio found ways to accommodate him in the cg era, either by finding him work on 2d sequences, like the Maui tattoos in Moana or on the hybrid film Enchanted. He also made countless contributions to short films (The Ballad of Nessie, Get a Horse!), special projects for the theme parks, and early character exploration and 2d sequences on the features.

More importantly, Henn took on the new role of mentor/coach at the studio. Starting on Frozen and continuing on films like Big Hero 6 and Ralph Breaks the Internet, Henn worked behind the scenes with the cg animators, offering suggestions to improve posing, timing, and performance.

Henn accepted the role of elder statesman gracefully, though in interviews, one could sense the frustration with no longer being involved in the day-to-day production of the studio’s features. In an interview on the Bancroft Brothers Animation Podcast, he explained his new job of mentor and how it differed from the role that Keane had had on Tangled:

The difference between [Keane’s] role and my role is that he could say, ‘This is what I want to see in the movie,’ because he was one of three [animation supervisors], whereas my role, I can’t necessarily say, ‘This is what I want to see,’ but I can say, ‘May I make a suggestion. I think this might be stronger if…’

Henn has not publicly revealed what he will do in his post-Disney life. Perhaps he will follow in the footsteps of other “retired” Disney veterans like Andreas Deja and John Musker and make a film of his own. He has his own personal creative passions too, like sculpting, which he has done for the last 25 years. One thing is for certain: he has been a towering figure in animation over the last four decades and a key part of the Disney studio’s success. The characters that he brought to life with his mighty pencil won’t be forgotten anytime soon.



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[Hiroe]

Un altro dei grandi che saluta la Disney. Chissà se tra un po' lo troveremo a fare qualcosa per altre case d'animazione, come tanti prima di lui. Peccato, poteva ancora dare molto, ma ormai ha ragione a godersi un po' di riposo!

[veu]

Si torna a parlare del pensionamento di Mark Henn

Da Cartoon Brew:

Disney Legend Mark Henn Says He May Have Not Retired “If The Work Had Been More Meaningful”

Recently-retired Disney legend Mark Henn appeared on The Bancroft Brothers Animation Podcast last week and shed some light on his decision to leave the only studio he’s ever worked for after 43 years with the company.

The 90-minute interview covers a lot of territory and while Henn answers diplomatically, the chat is surprisingly somber in tone. Twin brothers Tom and Tony Bancroft worked at the Disney Animation Florida studio in the Nineties, when Henn was one of the studio’s artistic leaders, and they press Henn to discuss how he was treated by the Disney Company over the years. They also repeatedly come back to the subject of how Disney features have abandoned hand-drawn animation in favor of cg.

Here are five takeaways from Henn’s appearance on the podcast.

Henn’s Work At Disney No Longer Felt Meaningful

About 20 minutes into the podcast, Henn explains that one of the key reasons he decided to pack away his pencils was that the studio was asking him to do work that didn’t feel meaningful. Asked if he would have liked to stay until his 45th or even 50th anniversary with the company, Henn replied in the affirmative, saying:

If the work had been more meaningful, I think I would have stayed… It wasn’t what I signed up for. Some of it was interesting. Some of the stuff we were doing for the parks was kind of fun, but the other projects — I know the people that are running that [legacy] department are doing everything they can to keep 2d alive as long as they possibly can… it just wasn’t as fulfilling.

Blacklisted?

Henn says that for over 20 years, since he directed the 2000 animated short John Henry, he’s felt “like I’ve had a sign on my back that said, ‘Don’t let this guy direct.'” Making matters worse, Henn says two ideas he pitched to the studio were later made by other filmmakers at other Disney-affiliated studios:

I had pitched an idea about a true story based on a carrier pigeon in World War II… there was some interest, and then they finally passed on it. Several months later, the studio announced they’re doing Valiant, and I had a development person come racing down to my office to try to explain why these things happen. And then, in the early 2000s, I pitched the idea of having airplanes, and they got some interest, and then it was passed on saying it was too close to Cars.

Valiant ended up being produced by Vanguard Animation, which had a distribution deal with Disney, and Planes was later produced by Disneytoon Studios.

At Disney, ‘It’s a CG World’

Asked about how Disney has changed in the four-plus decades he was at the company, Henn didn’t hesitate in answering:

Well, it’s a cg world, and that’s a fact. That changed years ago. Home on the Range was supposed to be the last [2d film]. Thankfully, we got to do Princess and the Frog and Winnie the Pooh after we had another management change.

He went on to explain the reasons why 2d animation has fallen out of favor at the studio and explained why it’s highly unlikely that modern-day Disney would ever consider a return to hand-drawn animation:

Since then, I think it’s just too difficult for the studio to justify essentially creating a second studio within this current studio in order to do 2d, which is what you had when we had Princess and the Frog and Winnie the Pooh. We essentially had literally two smaller studios under one roof, and I just think that that became too much of a financial risk. Right now, we’re barely able to house everybody that we have on staff. So, I mean, there’s all kinds of logistical things from where you’re going to put people to taking that risk.

End of an Era

During the interview, the Bancrofts and Henn talk extensively about friends and colleagues that they share. Two names that come up repeatedly are Disney’s only other top hand-drawn holdovers: Eric Goldberg and Randy Haycock.

According to Henn, Goldberg and Haycock are mostly working remote these days. In fact, he says that Goldberg recently moved, and the Bancrofts imply that he may be joining Henn in retirement soon. When Goldberg and Haycock do call it quits, there will be no key 2d animators from the Nineties “Disney renaissance” period left working full-time at the studio. Besides the latter two, the only full-time 2d animation artists currently employed in the company’s ‘creative legacy’ department are supervising key assistant animator Rachel Bibb and a couple trainees.

Not Finished Just Yet

Although Henn’s time as a full-time Disney employee ended earlier than he may have hoped, he explained that he would be back at the studio this spring to wrap up one loose end:

The plan is I will be going back, as I left a project that I had started unfinished. I had started a little short film. I had a conversation with [Walt Disney Animation Studios president] Clark [Spencer], and he assured me to not put the pressure on myself to try to get it done by the end of the year.

So, while Henn’s time as a full-time Disney animator is done, there is still a bit more to come from the artist who supervised the animation of iconic Disney characters such as Ariel, Belle, Jasmine, Mulan, and Tiana.

[GayFairytale]

Mi soffermo sulla questione dell’animazione tradizionale
Veramente triste e desolante che siano rimasti solo due animatori, non vogliono tornare ad usarla perché non vogliono assumere altre persone creando un piccolo studio dentro lo studio, ma secondo Andreas Deja “Gli ultimi film in CGI non sono andati bene, quindi quella non è più una garanzia, forse il pubblico è pronto per qualcosa di nuovo, oppure vuole tornare indietro a ciò che rappresenta l’infanzia”
Infatti ormai la CGI iperrealistica ha stancato, non ha più nulla di sorprendente, e l'ibrido di Spider-Verse che è una novità sta prendendo piede, ma sta crescendo tantissimo anche la nostalgia per il 2D, il successo de Il Ragazzo e l’Airone dimostra che il pubblico moderno è capace di apprezzare l’animazione tradizionale, quindi si Disney dovrebbe rischiare facendo un nuovo lungometraggio animato a mano, verranno ripagati
Anche il maggiore apprezzamento del corto Once Upon a Studio rispetto a Wish dimostra che il pubblico vuole di nuovo il 2D dalla Disney