Gary Goldman folds his arms across his chest and looks over the top of his wire-rimmed glasses into the distance. It's an unusual position for him--he's most often handling a dozen questions at once, ranging from artwork to sound effects.

But today the young producer sits in his office at Don Bluth Productions pondering the importance of his primary work, animation--soon to be seen in "The Secret of NIMH," an action fantasy in the classical style to be released in July by MGM\UA Entertainment Co. The Aurora presentation is the first feature from Don Bluth Productions and was produced by Goldman, Bluth and John Pomeroy when the three left Disney Studio, and assured futures, three years ago in a struggle over creative quality.

The film, the story of a widowed mouse who seeks the help of a mysterious, advanced civilization of rats to save her family, was completed in two-an-a-half years, about two-thirds the time it used to take to produce an animated feature.

"Animation is an art form that fits well into the motion picture, which is in itself a very popular and accessible art form. With a movie done in classical animation, there's every chance that it will be seen by more than 200 million people. Only a fraction of that number of people have probably ever really seen the Mona Lisa.

"With that sort of exposure, our ideas, our statements about what we consider life to be or what it should be are reaching a very broad base of people."

Communication is important to Goldman. "It's important to me to be capable or giving something of myself that will entertain people. I feel proud when I can do that. I go nuts when I realize we might be reaching people all over the world. It makes a person stop and think what a force films have on people's lives, and what a responsibility filmmakers have."

He continues, "We each have all the resources in us with which to be something, to accomplish something in life. It seems to me that we all should really take that chance, doing what we choose to do in the best way that we can possibly do it."

Though he is a renowned creative artist, Goldman at 37 is the steady, high-energy force that keeps the studio running on a day-to-day basis.

At any given point in any day, it is likely that Goldman can be found holding two telephone conversations, checking someone's animation scene on videotape, conferring with the sound effects and editing department, supervising business procedures and operations, and discussing the complications of intricate camera work or special processing of some scenes.

In addition, though his manner is most forthright and he has been called brash, Goldman is the creative force behind the softer, more sentimental characters, and excels at animating child characters with lots of heart but no schmaltz, like Timmy, the sick child in "The Secret of NIMH."

He explains, "I animate more through feel than through design. Sometimes the visual result is not as strong, but the overall effect provides the balance needed among the characters."

Goldman was born in Oakland, California, raised in nearby Watsonville, and began devoloping his artistic pursuits in his early teen years. He joined the Air Force as an electronics technician, during which time he was stationed in Japan for two years and Germany for 18 months. He attended Cabrillo Community College at Aptos, California, and graduated from the University of Hawaii in 1971 with a degree in fine arts.

He came to Los Angeles to investigate a career in animation and joined Disney Studios in 1973 assisting veteran animator Frank Thomas on "Robin Hood" and animating on "Winnie the Pooh and Tigger Too" (1974). He also animated on "The Rescuers" (1977) and was a directing animator on "Pete's Dragon" in 1977 and "The Small One," a featurette released in 1978.

His last assignment at Disney was animating on "The Fox and the Hound." He left Disney with Bluth and collaborated with him and Pomeroy on "Banjo" as producer and animator. He coordinated the two-minute animated segment for "Xanadu," a Universal film starring Olivia Newton-John and Michael Beck, and was responsible for most of the optical work on that project.

"Animation is a different sort of art form and movie," Goldman says, "because the key people involved have to be artists as well as understand production values, entertainment timing, acting, action analysis."

One of the places Goldman "animates" the action in "The Secret of NIMH" is through the intricate camera moves, each of which have to be painstakingly and mathematically plotted. Because of his affinity for math, Goldman can figure the exposures and the degrees of movements for multiple levels in each scene fairly easily.

A member of the Shorts Branch of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, Goldman resides in Northridge, California, with his wife Jan and their two sons.

On "The Secret of NIMH," Goldman was a producer, directing animator, story adaptor, camera scene designer and animator.

"The Secret of NIMH" features the vocal talents of Elizabeth Hartman, Dom DeLuise, Peter Strauss, Derek Jacobi, John Carradine, Hermione Baddeley, Arthur Malet and Paul Shenar. Bluth, 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. MGM/UA Entertainment Co. will release the film throughout the U.S. and Canada.