He is, like many real-life heroes, unlikely enough.

His white jeans, oxford shirts and tennis shoes set the casual mood he likes to work in, and his easy smile and professionalism give other artists the motivatioon they need to reach just a little further.

Don Bluth, producer and director of "The Secret of NIMH," his first animated feature, unfolds across the chair in his cluttered office and talks of risk.

"All art is a risk," he says. "Art wihout risk is simply industry."

Risk is a subject the 44-year-old knows something about. Nearly three years ago, Bluth, heir apparent to the Disney animation department, left an assured future at that studio and set out with partners Gary Goldman and John Pomeroy and a handful of animators in a dispute over creative quality.

Bluth had felt that it was not too costly to make an animated feature in the classical style, using artistic methods discarded or ignored by other studios. His aim was to make a film as rich and engrossing as the early animated classics.

And now The Bluth Brigade has done it.

"It was very scary when we left. We felt as if we had cast off from the Queen Mary in a very small dinghy. Some people said we were crazy, that it couldn't be done." He laughs. "There were times when we thought they might have been right."

But detractors' comments were far fewer than the votes of confidence they received from people who ached to see a finely orchestrated animated film and who cheered the courage and--(blush!)--heroism of the men who chucked it all to follow a dream.

Bluth shuns the assessment. "The world needs heroes now more than ever, I agree, but I don't see my own life as heroic because I'm IN here. My heroes were people who set about to make world peace, love, harmony and understanding so that people can live together and enjoy the world. In that sense, I'd like to be a hero. Right now, I animate because it brings joy to people, and joy, when it's shared, is absolutely explosive."

The producer is acutely aware that he has a responsibility to the public. "I'm not sure the world needs any more movies right now. But if a man is going to go ahead and make one, surely the film he makes ought to offer something to the audience."

There are, Bluth says, two types of entertainment, that with a message of some sort, either good or bad, and that which is strictly escapist fare.

"Both have their importance," Bluth says. "Right now I choose to make films that have a message, but I want to do it well enough so the audience doesn't feel the needle when the medicine's injected."

"About the only truly anti-heroic thing I know of is selfishness," he ocntinues, "We live in an age where everything is for the self. Self-love, self-aggrandizement, self-realization. Heroes are those who can find enough within themselves to pour it out to others for the betterment of mankind. In this Age of Realism and Naturalism, what too many people don't see, I think, is that the truth isn't just physical facts; it's also feelings.

Bluth says he wants his art to elevate. "If I can lift one person's life by this movie, then perhaps he will affect another, and they will change a family, and who knows, then a city, then maybe the world. All art should do this.

"I have to believe that it should, I have to try to make mine do it because I've got to make my own existence worthwhile to myself. I'm not in this alone, there's a whole army of people doing this; scientists, poets, artists. If we don't keep trying, then society gets sucked down and down until it's just a question of survival over who owns which stones."

Born in El Paso, Texas, the second oldest of seven children, Bluth moved six years later with his family to Payson, Utah, where he grew up milking 24 cows every morning, picking tomatoes for school money and dreaming of one day becoming a Disney animator.

"I'd ride my horse to the movie house in town and tie him to a tree while I went in and watched the latest Disney film. Then I'd go home and copy every Disney comic book I could find," Bluth says. He never took art lessons.

His family moved to Santa Monica, near Los Angeles, when Bluth was a senior in high school.

He landed a job as assistant animator at Disney in 1956 and worked under veteran animator John Lounsbery on "Sleeping Beauty."

"Of course, I couldn't tell them I trained myself at home copying their art, so when they talked about my 'natural abilities,' I just sort of smiled," he says, "and thought that somewhere there's a kid with this horse tied to a tree, and he's going to love this work I'm doing."

After a year-and-a-half, he grew restless and left, first to conduct a teaching and recruiting ministry in Argentina for the Mormon Church, then to attend Brigham Young University at Provo, Utah, where he majored in English.

He and a brother ran a little theater in Culver City, California, for three years, and during this time, Bluth picked up a few pointers on resourcefulness.

"One time while we were all performing, someone realized that we'd just done the third act instead of the second. We panicked. We knew the audience didn't seem to care, but they would expect a longer show. So, he shrugs, "we made up another act."

In 1967, he joined Filmation Studios as a layout man. In addition to humdrum work on Saturday morning kidvid, Bluth formed a touring young people's singing group called "The New Generation."

In 1971 he returned to Disney and joined their new training program for animation. He animated on "Robin Hood," released in 1973, and "Winnie the Pooh and Tigger Too," a featurette released in 1974. He was directing animator on "The Rescuers," released in 1977, and director of animation on "Pete's Dragon," a musical fantasy combining live action and animation released at Christmas, 1977. He produced and directed "The Small One," a featurette released the next year at Christmas, and was animating on "The Fox and the Hound" until he resigned in September, 1979.

In 1972, Bluth and Goldman started working nights and weekends in Bluth's garage on their own animated featurette. Pomeroy joined them in 1973, and soon others came, interested in learning and restoring the classical animation techniques that had fallen by the wayside. They scrapped the original venture, but started another called "Banjo the Woodpile Cat," which they finished after their departure from Disney in 1979. It recently aired on ABC-TV.

After completion of "Banjo," Bluth and some of his crew produced a two-minute segment from Universal's "Xanadu," starring Olivia Newton-John and Michael Beck.

He is a member of the Shorts Branch of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.

He currently resides in Culver City, California.

On "The Secret of NIMH," Bluth was a producer, director, layout designer, story adaptor, storyboard artist and animator.

"The Secret of NIMH" features the vocal talents of Elizabeth Hartman, Dom DeLuse, Peter Strauss, Derek Jacobi, John Carradine, Hermione Baddeley, Arthur Malet and Paul Shenar. Blut, Goldman and Pomeroy produced and Bluth directed. The story was adapted by Bluth, Pomeroy, Will Finn and Goldman from the Newbery Award-winning novel, "Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NIMH" by Robert C. O'Brien. Jerry Goldsmith composed and conducted the songs and score and Paul Williams wrote the lyrics. Rich Irvine and James L. Stewart are executive producers of the Aurora presentation of a Don Bluth Production. MGM/UA Entertainment Co. will release the film throughout the U.S. and Canada.