Mark Koetsier

A veteran animator and story artist, Mark Koetsier has been a mainstay of Disney’s core animation team for nearly three decades. Before Disney, he worked as a character animator on several features including Babar: The Movie (1989), Rover Dangerfield (1991), and FernGully: The Last Rainforest (1992). Koetsier began at Disney Animation as a character animator on The Lion King (1994), Pocahontas (1995), The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1996), Tarzan (1999), Atlantis: The Lost Empire (2001), Brother Bear (2003), Home on the Range (2004), One by One (2004), The Little Matchgirl (2006), Big Hero 6 (2014), and Moana (2016).

Mark Koetsier jumped to DreamWorks Animation as a story artist in 2007 for Bee Movie, Kung Fu Panda (2008), Madagascar: Escape 2 Africa (2008), and How to Train Your Dragon (2010). Koetsier continued his story artist work at Illumination Entertainment’s animation unit for The Grinch (2018) and Minions: The Rise of Gru (2022). After working as a story artist on Paramount Animation’s Rumble (2021), Koetsier stepped up to the director’s chair for the first time with Nickelodeon Movies’ animation feature, Paws of Fury: The Legend of Hank (2022), featuring the vocal performances of Michelle Yeoh, Samuel L. Jackson, Michael Cera, Ricky Gervais, Mel Brooks, Djimon Hounsou, Aasif Mandvi, and George Takei.