Lilo & Scratch uses a new animation pipeline to blend hand-drawn and CG animation. The Walt Disney Animation Studios short opens in theaters before Disney’s Hexed this Thanksgiving.
One scene pairs a hand-drawn truck driver with Scratch, a CG cat who pulls the driver from the vehicle. The truck itself uses CG. That approach also extends to the scene’s layout and planning.
Original watercolors and new paintings
About 25 percent of the short’s backgrounds come from the original Lilo & Stitch. Production designer Kevin Yang and the creative team studied those watercolors at the Disney Animation Research Library.
Tia Kratter, Larry Wu and other artists created more than a dozen new background paintings. The filmmakers combined those paintings with digital backgrounds and set extensions to preserve the original film’s look.
Artists could choose their preferred medium. Some backgrounds were hand-painted on paper. Others were painted digitally in Photoshop to resemble watercolor.
VFX supervisor Jeremy Sikorski says the technique builds on experiments in Paperman and Once Upon a Studio. The new pipeline lets animators work in their chosen medium while retaining the familiar visual style.
Returning talent and a Hawaiian score
Alex Kupershmidt returns as character animation lead for Lilo & Scratch. Kupershmidt supervised Stitch’s animation in the original film.
Writers and directors Fawn Veerasunthorn and Malcon Pierce encouraged artists to push the characters’ behavior further. “We wanted to bring the anarchy back into Stitch,” Pierce said.
The voice cast pairs Maia Kealoha as Lilo with Chris Sanders as Stitch. Kealoha reprises the live-action role; Sanders returns from the animated original.
The story introduces Scratch as the newest member of Lilo’s family. Before leaving for errands, Lilo puts Stitch in charge of the mischievous cat.
Composers Haim Mazar and Grace Fisher recorded with a nine-piece Hawaiian ensemble and a 70-piece orchestra in Los Angeles. Their score uses six or seven connected cues, designed to sound like one continuous arrangement. Music plays throughout, apart from a few spots using source music.
Source: The Walt Disney Company
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