Graduate Faculty

Mark Henne joined DigiPen in 2012. He directs the MFA in Digital Arts program and teaches the senior animated film course in the BFA program, among other topics.

He started working in animation and visual effects in 1990 when he joined Rhythm & Hues Studios in Los Angeles. In 1994 he moved to Pixar, where he worked on the original Toy Story and continued there until coming to DigiPen. On Pixar’s Brave, he spent four years refining the technology and finished look of the hair and clothing. His major credits include Crowd and Simulation Supervisor for WALL-E and Hair and Cloth Simulation Supervisor on The Incredibles. His other projects include Ratatouille, Monsters, Inc., A Bug’s Life, and the short film The Blue Umbrella.

Henne has spoken in courses at SIGGRAPH about his work on Toy Story and Monsters, Inc., as well as co-authoring a Pixar technical report titled “Volumetric Methods for Simulation and Rendering of Hair.”

While at Rhythm & Hues in 1993, Henne earned a Primetime Emmy certificate for Outstanding Individual Achievement in Special Visual Effects, recognizing his work on the wormhole effect for Star Trek: Deep Space Nine. His pioneering cloth animation for the 1992 Lexus “Car Cloth” commercial was included in the New York Museum of Modern Art’s presentation titled “The Art and Technique of the American Commercial.” Henne also worked on smooth skin articulation algorithms for the very first Coca Cola Polar Bears commercials.

Henne has an MS in Computer Science from the University of California Santa Cruz. His expertise is in using simulations to create organic movement in computer animation and the design and implementation of facial articulation software and controls.

Film Credits

• The Blue Umbrella (2013)
• Brave (2012)
• WALL-E (2008)
• Ratatouille (2007)
• The Incredibles (2004)
• Monsters, Inc. (2001)
• A Bug’s Life (1998)
• Toy Story (1995)

Ryan Finnerty is a Seattle-based artist and educator. He holds a BFA in Painting from Savannah College of Art and Design and an MFA in Drawing and Painting from the University of Washington. Finnerty has exhibited paintings and drawings in several galleries in the Seattle area and throughout the country. He has also served as an artist-in-residence with numerous arts organizations both nationally and locally.

As an educator, Finnerty’s coursework ranges from traditional drawing and painting to integrated art history/design courses. He has been working with DigiPen’s MFA program since 2013 and became a full-time faculty member in 2015.

Matt Brunner started out as an artist with a BFA from the University of Colorado Boulder. He survived as a classic starving artist in Austin, Texas, for about 10 years showing in various galleries and museums until he finally gave in and got a job as an art director for an educational live-television production studio. This led him to graduate school to get a degree in computer animation and digital cinema (then a brand new field) at the Texas A&M Visualization Lab.

After getting his master’s degree, he went to a stop-motion animation studio in Portland, Oregon, called Will Vinton Studios (aka Laika) and founded the studio’s digital animation and VFX department. He directed and animated many high-profile commercial projects and short films, incorporating traditional animation media with digital and 3D characters and effects.

When video games began to emerge as a powerhouse animation and storytelling medium, Brunner decided leap to the next wave of innovation and work with a new, unreleased platform at Microsoft: the Xbox. He worked at Microsoft as an art director, cinematics director, and experience director on several projects, most notably on the game Crimson Skies: High Road to Revenge. With the next wave of consoles, he left Microsoft and co-founded Airtight Games. He was the Chief Creative Officer at Airtight and Art/Animation/Cinematics Director on all their large console projects, including Dark Void and Murdered: Soul Suspect.

At DigiPen, Brunner has been teaching art direction, helping student artists learn how to make video games, coaching student teams, and advising BFA and MFA film and game projects. He also teaches Houdini as a game and film development tool.

He has been a featured speaker at many key conferences and industry shows, including SIGGRAPH, GDC, FMX, and the BAFTAs. He still stays actively engaged in all his art loves: painting, sculpture, animation, and film.

Selected Game Credits

• DragonSoul (PerBlue)
• Titan Empires (PerBlue)
• Murdered: Soul Suspect (Airtight Games)
• Dark Void (Airtight Games)
• Crimson Skies: High Road to Revenge (FASA Studio)

Randy Briley believes in a world where outstanding art, originality, and a creative spark can be combined to tell stories that touch our hearts and inspire our lives.

As an art director for over 20 years in the game industry, he’s been honored to direct over sixty successful games across all platforms and partner with Disney, Pixar, DreamWorks, Warner Bros., New Line, EA, Microsoft, and others to entertain millions of happy gamers around the world.

When he’s not teaching, you can find him in his studio hunched over a glowing screen or covered in muck trying to find the proper mix of clay, paint, words, pixels, and magic to conjure into life a new universe filled with heroes, monsters, and misfits.

Chris Mosio’s career as a filmmaker began after graduating the University of Southern California’s School of Cinematic Arts. Since then, he has worked as a professional cinematographer for 30 years.

Mosio has worked on nearly two-dozen feature films, from small independent projects (like The Gamers: Dorkness Rising) to Hollywood studio productions (Akeelah and the Bee). He’s had the good fortune to work with such talents as Will Smith, Lily Tomlin, Angela Bassett, and Laurence Fishburne, as well as the supreme privilege of filming some the most extraordinary ordinary people all around the world — amputees in Haiti, flood victims in Bangladesh, and people whose lives have been indelibly touched by cancer, right here in Seattle.

Documentary films are an important aspect of Mosio’s filmmaking background, and perhaps the genre he loves most. Mosio received an Emmy Award for his cinematography on the documentary film The Cultivated Life. He continues to find his voice and vision in filmmaking as well as teaching and mentoring young adults at DigiPen.

Danny earned his BFA in Illustration from Ringling College of Art and Design and MFA in Digital Art from DigiPen Institute of Technology. As a sculptor, painter, and digital 3D artist, he started his career interning with LAIKA on the Oscar nominated film The Boxtrolls. His contributions in the art space include painting murals and props for Disney’s scenic shop and doing sculptural development for their Imagineering departments, as well as creating commercial assets for Mattel Toys, Ford, Farmers Insurance, the NHL, and other companies. His other credits include the Golden Globe-winning animated film The Missing Link and Emmy-winning TV shows such as Robot Chicken. His sculptures have been shown in galleries across the United States.

In recent years, his interests have turned toward tabletop gaming, serving as an art director for board game publisher Privateer Press, creative director for tabletop game producer Trans Atlantis Games, and co-owner of Terrainiacs Studio. He is an award-winning miniature painter and has designed and sculpted products for clients such as PAX and UK Games Expo and miniature wargames like Marvel: Crisis Protocol and Trench Crusade.

Danny’s lifelong career dream has always been in education, and he is overjoyed to be a part of DigiPen’s full-time faculty. Danny’s educational philosophy is that fun is everything, and he believes there is always a way to make something engaging and exciting. Danny loves to play music with friends, sing karaoke, explore new places, and hug other people’s dogs.

Bill Hooper is a figurative painter living in Seattle. After graduating with a BFA from the Maryland Institute College of Art, he had the opportunity to study with several different figurative artists, including Dan Thompson, Robert Liberace, Charles Miano, and sculptor Stephen Perkins. In his work, he tries to bridge elements of abstract color with his classical figurative training. He has participated in solo and group exhibitions in Baltimore, Barcelona, New York, Portland, and Seattle. His artwork is shown in both private and public collections in the United States and Europe.

Hooper began teaching anatomy and figure drawing at DigiPen in 2018. He firmly believes that talent is the ability to work hard.

Christopher Poplin is devoted to visual storytelling and art. He has worked for 20 years in the animation industry for studios such as Walt Disney Feature Animation, Dreamworks Animation, Sony Pictures Animation, and others. His primary role on 23 film titles has been as a layout artist focused on cinematography. He has also served as an environment modeler, an effects artist, and technical director.

At DigiPen, Poplin enjoys helping students learn the practice of production, modeling, and storytelling. When he’s not teaching, you will find him spending time with family, sketching, painting, wood carving, or learning other new ways to create art.

Antony de Fato teaches both introductory and advanced animation theories and techniques at DigiPen. He graduated from the University of Missouri with a Bachelor of Arts with an emphasis on drawing and a Bachelor of Science in Home Economics for housing design.

De Fato began his pursuit of an animation career in 1987 by moving to Los Angeles and landing his first job in the industry at Walt Disney Feature Animation. In 1994, he moved to Florida to work at Disney’s animation studio in Orlando. After that studio shut down in 2004, he worked on freelance animation projects, including Stitch’s Great Escape for one of the Disney theme parks. In 2005, he was hired by Cecropia, a Boston game company, and worked at their Orlando-based studio on The Act, a hand-drawn arcade game. After that studio also closed, de Fato moved to Flagstaff, Arizona, where his wife was a whitewater river guide in the Grand Canyon. He joined DigiPen near the end of 2008.

“I come from an industry rather than an academic background, and although I miss the excitement of the production atmosphere, I enjoy teaching a subject I am passionate about and sharing that passion with students,” de Fato says. “It is most gratifying to see students grasping new concepts and to watch their growth as artists and animators. Working in the animation field was always a dream of mine, and hopefully, in some small way, I can help the students to realize their dreams, too.”

Film and Game Credits

• The Act (2006), Lead Animator
• Brother Bear (2003), Assistant Animator
• Lilo & Stitch (2002), Assistant Animator
• The Emperor’s New Groove (2000), Assistant Animator
• John Henry (2000), Assistant Animator
• Tarzan (1999), Assistant Animator
• Mulan (1998), Breakdown Artist
• The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1996), Breakdown Artist
• Pocahontas (1995), Inbetweener