LILO AND STICH - Movie Feature 2

If the makers of LILO AND STITCH are to be believed, Disney is entering a dynamic new chapter in its history. "If this film had been pitched ten years ago, it probably would've been rejected for being a little too different," says co-writer/director Dean DeBlois. A film about an alien genetic experiment that is banished from its native planet, only to wind up in Hawaii and befriend a lonely orphan girl, it certainly fulfils Disney's more recent mandate: "To make smaller films that are riskier and gutsier in terms of their story," as DeBlois puts it.

Then again, with the rise of Pixar's computer-generated TOY STORY franchise, can a traditionally animated movie, like LILO AND STITCH, be classed in those terms? Given that the filmmakers decided to render the backgrounds in watercolour, it surely can. With animation firmly entrenched in the digital age, creating an entire feature film with such backgrounds (which Disney had not done since DUMBO in 1941) would seem a major risk. "There were a lot of nervous painters who had never used this medium before," recalls the film's art director, Ric Sluiter. "Convincing them and the rest of the studio that this was feasible was not easy." The artists, based in Florida, spent months preparing to paint in this old-fashioned style. As background artist David Wang notes: "Clouds were very hard to do. When I painted my first cloud I was so nervous because I don't like to fail. After quite a struggle, I finished it and give it in for approval. What surprised me was that my boss liked it very much. The problem was that after that I painted many, many clouds. Maybe too many."

Sluiter even solicited advice from veteran Disney artist Maurice Noble who had worked on SNOW WHITE AND THE SEVEN DWARFS and DUMBO among others. After examining the trial efforts run by the Animation Research Library in Burbank, Noble revealed there was no secret to the skill, saying: "If you folks can paint like this, then you won't have any problem doing a film in this style. We did it. No reason you can't." While the film may have a classical texture to it, it also takes great pains to retain the idiosyncratic nature of co-writer/director Chris Sanders' original drawings.

When Disney's president of Feature Animation, Thomas Schumacher, confirmed to DeBlois that the company was going ahead with LILO AND STITCH, he told him to "make sure the film looks like a Chris Sanders drawing". Largely unchallenged, Sanders' cartoon-creations make it in tact to the screen, giving Lilo and Stitch a distinctive flavour. "By the first time Chris had fully pitched this to the studio, he had done a book with a lot of pen-and-ink illustrations," says DeBlois. "Most of the character designs were done from that point. A few were invented afterwards for characters that came into the film in the coming months, but for the most part, the character designs are still very much what they were when we started." From the early sketches to the finalised drawing, even the central character of the blue-tinged alien Stitch did not undergo a huge redesign. "Except for really his colour, which was green, he's largely the same creature that he started out as," says Sanders. "We just liked the proportions of his face. He's designed to look a little koala-like, but primarily he has the dimensions of a bat's face. His nose is very high, a little higher than his eyes, and he has black eyes, with very solid pupils."

As DeBlois notes, much in the film - thematically and visually - can be seen as a departure from previous Disney efforts. "It's not because we didn't like them, but just because we were looking for new ways of telling the stories. Just as a visual departure, it's not in our sensibilities to do girls with tiny non-existent noses and little arms and legs. We kept the project secret for a while...a lot of people were asking us 'What are you guys doing in that room?' When we finally put some of these things out in the halls, all the girls at the studio really liked what we did. Then all the boys came in and said: 'Are they gonna let you do that?'"

With a more realistic approach adopted for human characters, DeBlois and Sanders were also keen to show their chosen setting of Hawaii in a similar way, with the use of watercolour backgrounds ideally suited to bringing the rich hues of the island into sharp focus. "It's such a beautiful, pleasant place, and I think a lot of people who have done films involving Hawaii in the past may not have treated the culture with a lot of seriousness," says Sanders. "As we started this, we had seen hula-dancing performed, and one of the reasons we put it at the beginning of the film was that we were so struck by its beauty and power. It was one of the only times in the film where we went to our animators and said: 'In this particular case, there is no interpretation you get to do. You have to be hyper-accurate to this particular dance.'"

The filmmakers also managed to seamlessly implant real-life photography into the animation. Lilo's photo of her pop music idol Elvis Presley, for example, and also Stitch's encounter with a TV set. "We're so true to this world, but there are moments when we throw it out of the window," says Sanders. "Stitch walks past a store and sees the TVs with a 1950s-style Monster Movie playing, which he loves, because he is a 1950s-style monster. This kind of works - if you have a live-action world, where something is playing a cartoon; this is the reverse for them."

It all adds up to making LILO AND STITCH a thoroughly modern affair. While the animation remains deeply respectful of past traditions, it's use in a contemporary setting, highlighting characters buzzing with the vibrancy of one man's imagination, makes it one of Disney's most visually-appealing films to date. A lesson for pixel-people everywhere, it would seem.

With a more realistic approach adopted for human characters, DeBlois and Sanders were also keen to show their chosen setting of Hawaii in a similar way, with the use of watercolour backgrounds ideally suited to bringing the rich hues of the island into sharp focus. "It's such a beautiful, pleasant place, and I think a lot of people who have done films involving Hawaii in the past may not have treated the culture with a lot of seriousness," says Sanders. "As we started this, we had seen hula-dancing performed, and one of the reasons we put it at the beginning of the film was that we were so struck by its beauty and power. It was one of the only times in the film where we went to our animators and said: 'In this particular case, there is no interpretation you get to do. You have to be hyper-accurate to this particular dance.'"

The filmmakers also managed to seamlessly implant real-life photography into the animation. Lilo's photo of her pop music idol Elvis Presley, for example, and also Stitch's encounter with a TV set. "We're so true to this world, but there are moments when we throw it out of the window," says Sanders. "Stitch walks past a store and sees the TVs with a 1950s-style Monster Movie playing, which he loves, because he is a 1950s-style monster. This kind of works - if you have a live-action world, where something is playing a cartoon; this is the reverse for them."

It all adds up to making LILO AND STITCH a thoroughly modern affair. While the animation remains deeply respectful of past traditions, it's use in a contemporary setting, highlighting characters buzzing with the vibrancy of one man's imagination, makes it one of Disney's most visually-appealing films to date. A lesson for pixel-people everywhere, it would seem.