Alex Mann studied at California institute of fine arts, with Jack Hannah, an animator notable for many Disney films and shorts featuring Donald Duck, and graduated with a Bachelor of fine arts (BFA), Alex first worked for Robert Joseph on “Rage of Angles” although not as an animator but as a writer, however he first started working as an animator as an inbetweener at 16.
After working on “Rage of Angles” at Universal Studios He was hired by Hyperion Pictures in the story department, he worked on a film called “The Brave Little Toaster” which won awards, at the same time He worked with Willard Carroll on “The Backyard Gang”.
After Alex worked at Walt Disney Studios first co-writing and co-directing “Mickey’s Once Upon A Christmas”, after He worked on several projects while working for Disney that include “Treasure Planet”, “A Goofy Movie”, and “Lilo and Stitch 2”, overall He worked over 10 years at Disney in story development.
Over the years He has worked with many companies and help produced many popular movies and shows such as; Nickelodeon “Tak and the Power of Juju”, Sunbow “G.I. Joe”, Filmation Associates “He-Man”, Ruby-Spears productions “Mister T”, Warner Bros “Space Jam” and most recently with Columbia Pictures “Planes”.
Furthermore in 2002 Alex, as a writer and story artist, worked on a 4D movie for Disneyland theme parks, “Mickeys Philharmagic” included new updated CGI graphics of many of Disney’s most popular films like “Aladdin”, “The Lion King” and “Peter Pan”, “Mickeys Philharmagic” is now one of Disney’s most popular and profitable attractions around the world for Disney.
He was also hired to help make storyboards for Jack Smith’s “On The Waterfront” because the moving set pieces needed pre-visualization, Additionally He is a member of the Animation Guild and The Writers Guild of America.
To date Alex has earned two awards, the first is the ProMax awards in 1992 and the second is an Annie award in 2000 for “Mickey’s Once Upon A Christmas.
Overall Alex Mann has worked as; Story artist, character designer, character stylist, layout artist, background designer, background layout artist, inbetween artist, assistant animator, co-writer, co-director, storyboard artist, production artist, storyboard revisionist, story director, stage manager, blue sketch artist and a creative consultant. Although for some of these He was uncredited.
When he was working on “A Goofy Movie” his job roll was character designer that meant that he elaborated on the designs of the characters, the movie is set several years later than the animated series, so He had to take the design of middle school characters for example and design what they could look like in high school, he also had to design various facial expressions and body positions to go with the designs.
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Animations and Research 